Life in short

Essay by Peter242College, UndergraduateA, June 2014

download word file, 5 pages 0.0

Jessica Akinorhaish



Written Final Exam

Life in Short

For the past years, there have been tremendous evolutions in women's status in society and in one's expression of his/her feelings and thoughts. In Ivory Coast, my native country, the culture is very different from that of the United States. Despite all cultural evolutions throughout the world, the Ivorian culture is still very traditional and conservative. For example, in most western African countries, gays are not publicly accepted and homosexuality is considered taboo. Also, the Ivorian social system is still very patriarchal. Throughout my paper, I will analyze two personal experiences using the four concepts of gender inequality, discrimination, patriarchy, and homophobia.

The two concepts related to my first personal experience are discrimination and gender inequality. I have always lived with my mother and my two older brothers. Being the only girl in the house, I was always engaged in boys' activities such as watching and playing soccer.

By doing so, I started to enjoy playing soccer. During my last year of high school, the school authorized girls to integrate the soccer team, so I decided to attend the try out session. The team's coach refused to take me because he assumed that I was a girl and would not be able to play with the boys who played hard and had more experience than I had. Firstly, gender inequality is defined as one's unequal treatment due to his/her gender. Individually taken, the concept of gender refers to how we identify ourselves in society (male or female) while inequality is defined as the difference in education, status, success, power, and opportunities between two or more people. Secondly, the concept of discrimination means to act on prejudice. The notion of gender inequality...