Dear Future President,

My name is Emma and I am a student at Chaska Middle School East and I believe gender equality is a problem in our world today. Society still seems to find loopholes to make men and women unequal. Now this may seem like a problem of the past but within the last year or two women are paying more money for common household items than men, they also make 16 to 20% less money than their male counterparts, and black women have had to work 19 months to make what white men did in 12 according to the National Women’s Law Center. Although women make up almost 51% of the U.S. population, only 20% of the Country’s Congress is made up of women and despite the passage in 1972 which demanded gender equality in schools, nearly 28% of the nation’s public schools (about 4,500 high schools), have more gender inequality in sports. There are many different places in the US that still aren’t equal between men and women. For example Kentucky, Alabama, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming have the largest pay disparity. In Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut has the largest executive position disparity. South Carolina, Connecticut, New York, Arizona, and Rhode Island have the largest educational attainment disparity among people who have bachelor’s degrees. And Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Georgia, and Louisiana have the largest political representation disparity. All of these having the disadvantaged gender being women. I believe that gender equality should be the priority of our future president because the United States Constitution equal rights amendment clearly states that civil rights will not be denied based on sex but there is nothing that takes away the discrimination against women. Even if it’s slight, it’s there and as we don’t do anything about it we are showing the country that it’s ok and it’s not.

Women and men should be treated 100% equal. First of all, Women should be treated equal in pay. In 2015 fulltime working women were paid $0.80 for every $1 a man made. That is a 20% difference! A reporter from the Institution for Women’s Policy Research stated, “In 2015, female full-time workers made only 80 cents for every dollar earned by men, a gender wage gap of 20 percent. Women, on average, earn less than men in virtually every single occupation for which there is sufficient earnings data for both men and women to calculate an earnings ratio. This matters because society keeps putting a difference between men and women creating an unfair Nation when we were promised a fair one. Secondly, women’s everyday household items should cost the same as men’s. Studies show that women’s products are typically more expensive than men’s. Products in men and women that were almost exactly the same product cost 7% more than women’s which is a lot when it really comes down to it. Over a lifetime women end up spending tens of thousands of dollars more on goods and services than men do. Catey Hill (a researcher from Market Watch) claims, “In fact, a number of studies show that many items are routinely more expensive for women than for men. A study of 800 nearly identical products with male and female versions released in December 2015 by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs found that the women’s products, on average, cost 7% more than the men’s products. And a study from the state of California on this so-called woman tax found that women, on average, pay about $1,351 annually in extra costs for similar goods and services.” This matters because women tend to be spending more money than men and making less causing women to overall have less money which is how many continue to make our country unfair. Just by fixing these two problems we are already on our way to a completely free and fair country.

On the contrary, some may claim that women are already equal to men. There are already laws in place that guarantee equal rights between men and women. In fact, the equal rights amendment states that equality is not compromised based on sex. (“The Equal Rights Amendment: Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.”- "Home." ERA:. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Nov. 2016.) This is important because it shows us what we already have achieved in the genre of equality. Although women and men have equal rights they still have not reached equity.

As the president of the United States you can do a few things to help resolve this issue. I believe you should start by creating laws enforcing men and women in the same position to be paid the same and for stores to price their men and women's products the same if they are similar enough. This issue can relate to global goal number 5: Gender Equality. This matters because once the United States completes Global Goal number 5 we can help work towards Gender equality in other countries and contribute to the UN’s goal of have the goals completed by 2030. Resolving this issue should be a priority for our next President’s agenda because the president contributes a big factor into running the country, so he has the authority to suggest and make the laws that we need complete global goal number 5 in the United States before 2030. 

This illustrates my point because it shows how unequal men and women are and that even though it is slight, it is there.