Wrapping Up

            Throughout this women’s gender study course there have been a great deal of things that I have taken away from the course.  I wouldn’t necessarily say there was a whole lot that I learned for the first time; majority of this course was more of a perspective change or an eye opening look at the lives of women.  One of the things that I did learn about was the factory fires that have occurred over the years, killing hundreds of women working.  I never realized that the factory workers in the sweat shops were mainly women.  I always assumed they were men that were working in the sweat shops.  I figured the workers would be lower class males who were sacrificing trying to put food on the table for their families.  This is obviously a stereotype that I believed.  I guess the thing that stuck with me the most throughout this course was how ridiculous it is that these factory fires continue to happen after basically one hundred years of data showing that the leading cause of death in these fires was the emergency exit doors locking the workers inside.  I can’t wrap my mind around why these continue to occur when we know what the biggest problem is.  Another thing that I took away from this class is the continued discrimination against women that occurs in our country in present day.  It is more so in the sense of abuse, whether physical, emotional, verbal, or even financially in the work force.  With the amount of abuse women take on a day to day basis, it is sickening.  I feel than men have a skewed vision of what it means to lead women.  Instead of loving them, being gentle and humble when leading women, men have a skewed idea that to lead women means to be brute, violent, aggressive, and controlling.  This messed up mindset leads to men thinking they have to be abusive, whether physically, emotionally, verbally, etc. to make a woman follow them.  This only leads to a hurt, broken woman who becomes dependent on others.  This is no way to lead a woman whatsoever.  Financially, I learned that in the workforce, women who have the same credentials, experience, and expertise in an area; who have the same job as a man will get paid significantly lower than a man with that job.  This still doesn’t make sense to me in the world we live in where we claim freedom and equality among genders, yet this is still going on.  These are just a few things that I took away from this course throughout the semester.