Daily Archives: November 5, 2018

Gender Equality, Especially Now, Appears to be Reliant Upon One Major Issue…

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Essentially I focused on the goal of gender equality in my report. And mostly surrounding the thought that sexual violence, and violence in general, towards males and females is essentially what is going to hold that goal back from being achieved. I reiterated the fact that we need to greatly decrease or eliminate entirely the practice of victim blaming and need to institute a safe way for survivors to come forward. We have all heard this statistic, but its worth repeating that 1 in five women will experience rape in her lifetime, and 1 in 71 men will experience rape in their lifetimes. Sexual assault and rape cases are America’s most expensive crimes, costing the country around 127 billion dollars, and even then that number doesn’t nearly include the amount of cases that are un-reported. Because, the truth is, we won’t be able to start on gender equality in earnest unless we first handle the issues surrounding sexual, and non, violence towards women and men.

Not an Intersectional Feminist? Misogyny it is then!

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The whole world benefits from gender equality. The rights of women are important on the basis of human equality, regardless of an individual’s gender identity, and using up all of the world’s human potential to tackle big issues. Women are constantly over looked as sources of power in the military, in politics, in STEM fields, and in everyday life. We need to stop boxing women into roles that do not allow them to reach their fullest potential. Our global society will reap the benefits that women will be able to produce and contribute in every field they are underrepresented once this potential is encouraged and allowed to flourish.

Often times when I tell people I’m a intersectional feminist they look at me like I have three heads, but intersectional feminism=gender equality. When people, including women, argue with me and tell me that we are post sexism I simply break down all of the areas of oppression women currently face for just identifying as female (that global goals has conveniently outlined for everyone in the form of goals here: https://www.globalgoals.org/5-gender-equality):

  1. Discrimination against Women and Girls-seen in the wage gap (which is present in every country in the world except Iceland right now), day-to-day gendered micro aggressions, the over-sexualization of female bodies, the glass ceiling, etc.
  2. Violence and Exploitation of Women-women and girls are disproportionately trafficked as sex slaves, and slaves; women and girls are disproportionately abused in homes and in public spheres, femicide(: a gender based hate crime–>”the killing of a woman or girl, in particular by a man and on account of her gender.”
  3. Forced Marriages and Genital Mutilation
  4. Unpaid Care and devaluation of the Domestic Responsibilities Women take on or are forced into at disproportionate rates compared to men
  5. Disproportionate Amount of Female Leadership and Decision Making-this is seen in and out of politics, and in the gap of  venture capital women have. In 2017, only 2.2% of all venture capital in the United States went to companies founded solely by women, only 4.4% of transactions went to female-founded companies and only 11.3% of partners at venture capitalist firms were women according to Forbes.
  6. Lack of Access to Reproductive Health and Rights- reflected in the number of Planned Parenthoods that have been defunded all across America, and the all male American female reproductive health board that is single handedly attempting to control the bodies and choices of women in America.
  7. An Unequal Amount of Female Property Owners- seen in farmlands, financial services of the family unit, etc.
  8. Lack of Women having access to technology
  9. Lack of Global Legislation to Eradicate the Above Issues ^^^

Everyone should identify as an intersectional feminist if they want to see the Anthropocene thrive, if they believe in human rights, and if they believe in freedom and equality for all. If you don’t identify as an intersectional feminist….de facto, the word to describe you is a misogynist.

 

 

Mathematics, Sustainability, and Global Learning

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The Earth’s natural systems provide an environment for living beings on Earth. However, overtime, the human population has grown at a very fast pace, especially over the past hundred years. Human societies, up until recently, have not been very environmentally conscious due to a lack of understanding and technology regarding sustainable living and treating the Earth respectfully. Human society, at out large current size, is at a global overshoot—this means that we are using more resources than we have, and eventually our environment will run out of means to sustain the human population. We calculate how to reduce overshoot by either linear or exponential change, depending on the rate at which governments could potentially set goals to reduce our extravagant and careless use of resources. Global learning needs to occur, and for this to happen it is important that humans work as a team to live more sustainably—this means that all humans need to recognize that there are significant issues with our environment and the way that we are living. Governments need to be the leaders that they are supposed to be, and implement policies to work towards this goal, and also to implement mandatory learning about our environmental crisis. There are clear relationships between our human activities and destroying the Earth’s natural system, and the biggest issue that I see is our amount of waste and our lack of properly dealing with our waste.

Global Engagement

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One aspect of sustainability and our global impact I focused on and have been thinking about throughout this class is the importance of education. I believe that so many of our goals to reduce waste, increase economic sustainability, etc., are realistic, but only after we get more people involved. I think that one reason many people do not think about or want to acknowledge their global carbon footprint, for example, is because it seems very difficult to change effectively. However, if everyone were educated on small things, such as what types of plastics are recyclable and which are not, for example, a big difference can be made. I believe that most people would be more willing to make positive changes if they were more aware of the great impact those changes could make. One example could be if someone is renovating their house and considering which toilet/ faucet/ shower head to buy. If they are informed about how efficient flushing greatly impacts our water footprint, they might be more willing to buy a toilet that uses less water per flush. If this water-saving toilet uses 2 gallons per flush and a not-as-efficient one uses 6 gallons per flush, even for a household of one person that saves around 24 gallons of water a day. I think many fo the goals outlined on the 17-goal list will become more feasible once we get everyone on the same page about how we can easily change our individual impacts on the world.

Global Awareness about Clean Energy Sources

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For this paper, I focused on the use of clean and affordable energy sources as one of the global goals in the Mathematics, Sustainability, and Global Learning unit. I found this an incredibly useful topic to focus in on due to the fact that it is such a needed topic for people to know more about and for them to utilize in their every day lives.

Throughout this course, we have talked a great deal about the importance of utilizing renewable resources to create the energy we need for our everyday lives. However, the reason I am now choosing to focus in on the “awareness” aspect of the paper is because I feel as though this is not fully known to so much of our planet. The United States has one of the larger carbon footprints when compared to other countries, showing that we are in overshoot and are not living a sustainable lifestyles. With this in mind, it is impossible to imagine that our planet will be able to survive if we keep up these actions. For this reason, I think awareness of alternative, and clean energy sources is an incredibly needed tactic in order to help save our planet and move towards a more sustainable lifestyle, in which we utilize other forms of energy.