Phelps 1

Kara Phelps
David Turley
Honors English I
17 December 2015
Religion and Gender in Social Injustice
Social injustices such as discriminating based on religion or gender is a big problem in
the world today. In todays society people who follow a particular religion are discriminated
against because people do not agree with what people who follow that religion believe in.
Because of that, different religions around the world are being persecuted by other religions.
People are also discriminated against because of what gender they are all around the world today.
Women in most countries do not get paid the same as men even though they have the same job as
men. These acts of discrimination have caused and are continuing to cause problems all around
the world.
People that are Muslim or Christians are being discriminated against all over the world
today and nothing is really being done to stop it. Most people only realize that Christians are
being persecuted in the Middle East but some people disagree. Religious discrimination is an
equal opportunity. That means that it is not just one religion that is being discriminated against
(Foreign Affairs). While in the Middle East ISIS is killing people it is not just Christians; they
kill anyone that does not agree with them. Everyone has the right to practice any religion no
matter what county they are in. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and
religion. That became a right that everyone has when the Declaration of Human rights was
created and keeping people doing that is a huge social injustice (Religion, Peace and Justice).
While in America Muslims are not being killed they are still greatly discriminated against by the

Phelps 1
American population. A vast majority of people label Muslims are terrorists even if they have
never committed an act of terror. This is not as extreme as other religions being killed off but it is
still a very widespread act of social injustice. Even with all this going no one is really trying to
stop it, Muslims are still being discriminated against and labeled as terrorists and ISIS is still
trying to kill off many different religions in the Middle East.
In some cultures today women are still seen as inferior to men and while there are people
who are trying to eliminate this cultural view there is not a large push to end it. Gender inequality
is hold back society as a whole. United Nations says, Gender inequality remains a major barrier
to human development. There are many countries in the world that have very little gender gaps
and then there are many countries that have very large gender gaps (United Nations). If you were
to put all of the countries of the world onto a scale and measured their gender gap, the first
country having the smallest gender gap and the last country having the biggest gender gap,
Norway would be first, the United States would be eighth and Niger would be last at one
hundred eighty-eight (United Nations). While Norway is first for having the smallest gender gap
Globally, no country has fully attained closing the gender gap. (Peace Corps). Gender
inequality has been around for ages now; it was around in ancient China when women were seen
as property and only being good for having children, in the Middle Ages women were not free to
marry who they wanted and they did not have a say in much in their life. In early American
history women were being discriminated against then, we see this in To Kill a Mockingbird.
This book takes place 1930s and you can even pick out little things that show gender
discrimination, But I kept aloof from their foolhardy schemes for a while, and on the pain of
being a girl. (Lee). Gender discrimination extended to children back then. In many countries

Phelps 1
gender discrimination has not completely gone away and even though it has cause many problem
there is still no big push to stop discriminating based on gender.
Acts of social injustice such as the persecution of different religions or discrimination
based on gender is a very prominent problem in society today. There is no big push to stop
persecution of religion or discrimination of gender but there needs to be. These problems will
continue to be persistent and as long as they do society as a whole will be held back. There needs
to be a bigger push to stop these problems so that the world can make the progress that it is
capable of.