Kiana Jeronimo
Professor Gillen
Philosophy 152
4 August 2018
The Fight for Equal Rights
Women lose just for being women. They earn a mere 77 cents of the dollar that a man earns, just purely for being a woman and overall there is a lack of advancement for women in the workforce. Gender equality is a basic human right, but today we still face this as a large problem with persistent gap in adequate opportunities. There are fewer opportunities in government, less access to higher education, larger health risks, and minimal political representation. Many external factors related to gender cause this problem. In our society, women are expected to work, cook, clean, care for children, maintain their physiques, and remain happy. Many of these factors create the perfect environment for the disaster known as inequality. From the prospective of utilitarianism, gender inequality is morally wrong. It leads to a reduction in the total utility of the world and does not correspond with the theory. Gender inequality also creates a production of people being unhappy.
Utilitarianism is based on your direct consequence of the action performed and the amount of utility that will come from the action. (Mill, 1863) An action is deemed as ethically desirable when the utility for everyone involved increases. When the action decreases the total utility, it is deemed as ethically undesirable. This theory focuses on lack of pain that results only in pleasure or happiness. Mill had his own golden rule focused on treating people as you would want to be treated, and to love your neighbor as they were yourself. (Mill, 1863) Gender inequality causes a utility change for the world and the main people affected are women, therefore is the opposite of utilitarianism.
Gender inequality leads to many negative consequences for our population. These negative impacts consist of lack of respect, less authority, unemployment, and less opportunities for higher education. Some women are not even able to control their own lives. They cannot choose their husband, their careers, or even their choice to birth children. All of these situations cause a decrease in utility. This decrease in utility for women gives men an advancement for utility. Men are able to get ahead with greater opportunities, greater power and respect. In contrast, men suffer in a different way due to this gender inequality. Men are less likely to report pain, discomfort, and large focus of physical activity create a shorter lifespan for them. (Gensler, 2011) Gender inequality has more negative aspects towards utility, even though it allows men these greater opportunities. There is a dramatic impact on the utility for businesses, communities and the entire society as a whole. Woman face unpaid leave at work for childbearing, and this disrupts our economic growth. (UNFPA, 2014) These inequalities also lead to inefficient distribution of resources in the economy. Inefficient distribution of our resources leads to men’s activities being preferred over women’s. Another aspect that is negatively impacted is health related. Women will face higher rates of HIV/AIDS, increased spread of infectious diseases, and teen pregnancies. (UNFPA, 2014) This greatly impacts an entire society for many reasons.
Utilitarianism has both strengths and weaknesses in application towards gender inequality. It can be greatly applied to real life situations and it allows us to focus on making moral decisions. It has a large focus on the pleasure of people with absence of pain. This can create a productive society with equal play from both genders. It is also focused on a democratic sense that it relies solely on the effects of actions for the entire population. With sectioning women from the same opportunities as men, we are hindering our human improvement. Mill argues that the progress of society requires that men and women, not be imprisoned in the fixed social position that they are born into, but instead be given opportunities to develop into who they are internally. (Mill, 1886) He believes that women will benefit society and also benefit women themselves by giving them a sense of autonomy that is essential to happiness.
On the other side, utilitarianism has its downfalls. Its focus is on pleasure and that pleasure is what determines utility, but pleasure does not cross all individuals the same. Pleasure for one may never be the same for the other. Utilitarianism is based mostly on the total amount of utility for social groups, but it is a difficult advancement to measure precisely. How does one determine if the suffering of women causing a greater utility for men is greater overall than the increase suffering for all women by itself? To inquire all of this it would require you to make assumptions basing on statistical data and premising your information on the fact that these limits and discriminations would cause more suffering than their absence. According to Bernard Williams, utilitarianism is morally wrong because in essence the person must choose the lesser of the two evils in order to produce a happiness for themselves. (Williams, 1993) He uses a perfect example of a tourist and a soldier. The soldier must shoot twenty innocent people unless the tourist shoots one. With that being said, he feels that Mills has a confused notion of responsibility and inadequate notion of his personal integrity. (Williams, 1993) Pertaining to gender inequality, the utilitarian would say that if the gain men receive from women’s inequality creates a greater happy for society, then it would be acceptable to have inequality. Although consequences matter, they are not all that matters.
In Utilitarianism, total utility should be considered for every single person involved in order to determine is morality. The research shows that gender inequality does more harm than good and causes more suffering for our society. It negatively impacts women all around and is only partial to its negative aspects for men’s health, but positively impacts their well-being and pleasure. Our gender inequality causes a mass amount of economic inefficiencies in our communities because of lack of work and education, it is detrimental to relationships and has a large scale negative impact on health. With that being said, it is determined that gender inequality is morally wrong.