Diversity Organizations

Diversity Orgs The following table covers the websites: National Women's Law Center http://www.nwlc.org This org works to make changes in the legal environment concerning women and girls. Human Rights Campaign https://www.hrc.org/ LGBT rights org. Civil rights org, raises awareness, launches campaigns, highlights issues Equality Federation http://equalityfederation.org/ Fighting for LGBT rights, especially at the legal level The status of women in the United States for most of its history has been quite poor, with respect to rights and opportunity.

For most of the country's history, women were excluded from participation in the democratic process. To this day, no woman has ever held the highest office, while even repressive countries like Pakistan have had female leaders. For women, the fight for rights and equality is an ongoing battle. After being granted the right to vote, the next major advancements for the rights of women came in the 1960s with things like the Equal Pay Act and the Civil Rights Act.

For the first time, laws were being put into place that made discrimination on the basis of gender illegal. Yet today, women still do not have the same status in society. With respect to the social element, women still face considerable discrimination. Women are often discouraged from pursuing the more lucrative careers, and this results in a raw pay gap between the genders and the persistence of the glass ceiling.

Even though systemic discrimination has been outlawed for fifty years, it still persists to such a degree that something like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was required to remedy judicial discrimination (NWLC, 2013). Furthermore, there is considerable political pressure to roll back women's rights, stripping away hard-earned rights in the areas of reproductive freedom in particular (ACLU, 2013). The media will often promote specific concepts of masculinity and femininity. These concepts by their nature reinforce gender roles and identities, which makes them problematic even for those who are studying them.

The media, however, will often promote specific roles. Advertising is probably the worst, playing to base stereotypes about the roles different genders play in society. Negative stereotypes are particularly challenging. Women are more commonly portrayed as sex objects, for example, or playing strong domestic roles in society. Men are portrayed as aggressive, violent and with a high level of emotional detachment (Graydon & Verrall, 2013), to say nothing of the male doofus role portraying fathers as essentially stupid and useless creatures (Ivy & Jove, 2013).

These roles play to the worst in either gender -- the women think negatively about their husbands and their contributions, and that men think little more about women than sex. Both characterizations are rampant in the media, and both insult both genders. The social status of LGBT people is even more problematic. They are outcasts in society for the most part, and while their status is improving among younger generations, those generations do not yet hold much power in society.

Opposition to LGBT rights remains high among males in particular, and there is a strong correlation between religion and opposition to LGBT rights (Hooghe et al., 2010). With respect to rights, there are few if any. Gay marriage is somehow still a contentious issue, especially among the religious, and there are no federal protections against workplace discrimination of LGBT persons. Social and political issues are especially relevant to LGBT and women in the U.S.

Ultimately, it will take a social push for government to make changes to the laws and to give these groups more power in society. Thus, changing social attitudes will tend to lead to changes in laws. Where social attitudes are more progressive, we see same sex marriage; but this needs to happen on the national level. Where social attitudes are largely against women's rights, we see even women in leadership.