Are women treated equal to men?

This week we were asked to read an article called "Why Aren't We Shocked" by Bob Herbert.  The article starts off by talking about two shootings that happened in an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania and another in a large public school in Colorado.  In both circumstances, the shooters went out of their way to separate the girls from the boys and then proceeded to attack the girls only.  When the news got a hold of this story they did not make it a point to talk about how the girls were targeted over the boys.  The crime was clearly a hate crime against girls but that was never brought up in the media.  The article talks about how crimes happening to women; such as, rape, murder, and mutilation, are seen so often in the news that now sometimes they are seen as not worth mentioning.  This is because we have become accustomed to hearing about violence against women. 

            This article made me think of a discussion that I am having in another one of my classes about the same issues.  In my deviant behaviors class we talk a lot about crimes against both men and women along with crimes against different races, and religions.  This week I had to read a chapter called ‘Predatory Violence’ in the book “The Relativity of Deviance” by John Curra.  In this chapter it talks about different violent crimes.  An example given is in West Africa if an Ashanti woman calls a man a fool, it can be seen as a violent crime and the woman can then be killed for it.  If the roles are reversed though, insulting a man is a very serious matter. 

            Both of these stories made it even more obvious that once against women’s rights are still not as important as a mans.  The story in West Africa is something that is still going on today and still happens to women.  To me, that is absolutely crazy.  Even though this would not happen now a day in the United States, it shows that other countries are still treating women much lower than men.  The two stories about the school shootings really got my attention.  Clearly the shooter separated girls from boys and then targeted women and I believe that was a key part of the crime so I am surprised it was not mentioned much in the media.  I think that if the same scenario had taken place but the males had been targeted rather than females, the story would’ve talked about the separation more.  

            Overall, I believe that although the United States has come a long way from how our world used to be, there is still so much room for improvement.  Other countries still treat women with little to no respect and even America can be unfair towards women in certain circumstances. Clearly these are all extreme cases of how women are not respected but they get the point across.