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Discuss sexism according to religion and science in Africa

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- Sexist attitudes are attitudes that see individuals solely because of their gender as being less than their male and female counterparts.
- We can distinguish between overt and institutional sexisms. Overt sexism is the intentional discrimination against a person because of that person’s gender e.g. if a person is denied a job because that person is a male or female, that is an act of overt sexism.
- In contrast, institutional sexism occurs when a person is (perhaps intentionally) discriminated against because of factors that pertain to that person’s gender e.g some college sports such as basketball and football, women may be under represented if teams were open to both male and female applicants. If athletic scholarship money was given only to those who made the team, the indirect result would be that far fewer women would receive athletic scholarship than men.
- Although there may be no intent to discriminate in athletic scholarships against women, the net result might be precisely such institutional sexism.
- One of the more contentious areas of discussion in regard to sexism is language

There are two distinct aspects of this issue:
- The gendered structure of our language.
- Its specific vocabulary.
- In regard to linguistic structure, many have pointed out that English, like many other languages, is gendered, we often are forced by our language to identify a person as either male or female, even when we don’t know the persons gender.
- Since the masculine gender is the default gender in cases where we don’t know, we usually supply the masculine pronouns and adjectives e.g. instead of talking of ‘The pioneer rode on his or her wagon’, we talk of the pioneer rode on his wagon there by giving a wrong impression that only men were pioneers.
- Advocates of a gender-neutral language have tried with only partial success to encourage us to have language in gender neutral ways.
- Sexist vocabulary abounds in our language. Some times it is rooted in differential perceptions; a man is seen as assertive and when a woman behaves in the same way is seen as aggressive.
- Overt discrimination, where a woman is denied a job or a promotion solely because she is a woman or is paid less than her male counterparts in the same job has decreased significantly in recent years. Equal pay for equal work has become one of our accepted ideals.
- One of the more subtle ways in which sex discrimination occurs is when predominantly female occupations are paid less than comparable occupations whose employees are predominantly male e.g. plumbers and truck drivers versus cleaning staff and secretaries
- It is important to note that it is often insufficient simply to pass legislation prohibiting something like sex discrimination unless there is a monitoring and enforcement structure to implement legislation. The impact of the legislation can be undermined if there is insufficient funding for implementation.

Wilfykil answered the question on March 13, 2019 at 13:13

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Discuss sexism according to religion and science in Africa

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