Commentary!

I read a blog post on U.S. Government Views about unequal representation within the government, which I completely agree with, but there’s also plenty of evidence for the ideas the author is presenting. While it is an unequal representation, I feel like unequal representation isn’t the best way to phrase the pure societal prejudice against women in the government.
    There is plenty of evidence for basically everything the author is writing about in their blog post when it comes to how women are perceived. In the recent election, there were news articles about both Trump and Clinton, but there was a major difference about how Hillary was perceived throughout the news. Although Trump has flat-out stated his racism and sexism it was always dismissed as things such as “locker room talk”, while Hillary was constantly bashed for being a woman. Trump retweeted a post that said “If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America”, and this directly is about being a woman and her qualifications for the presidency. Not only was this posted by the current President, but it was a frequent argument throughout the news. Articles about her being unfit for the presidency because of her personal life as well as her being a woman.
    Women in America are highly criticized due to the societal norms we have in place. It’s deeply rooted in our society due to women being forced to be homemakers throughout history. While other parts of the world have been evolving to combat instilled sexism, America hasn’t necessarily been making leaps and bounds. This is a way bigger problem, but I will keep it limited to women in the workforce. In the workplace women on average earn 79 cents for every dollar a man makes (AmericanProgress), are less likely to be employed because it’s instilled in our brains that men perform better at their jobs (hbswk), and the list goes on a lot longer. These problems for women in the workforce are seen heavily in the American Government as women only make up 19.1% in the House and 21% in the Senate, and this is not at all fair or equal because there are more women than men in the United States.
    There are plenty of problems within our government, but the unequal representation and pure prejudice at work in our system against women is a major problem. I completely agree with U.S. Government Views when stating that there needs to be more encouragement, but I believe our society as a whole needs to work on fair treatment before this can work. If a woman were to be in office it would be amazing in my opinion and most likely inspire more women to join the field, but I feel like a major problem that would need to be solved before we can, would be getting more women in the House and Senate to show that women are more than capable. It’s an extremely difficult task to work on, but we are on our way!