As this series concludes, I want to take a second to look
to the future. I am not here to doomsday predict or make unsupported, “Doomsday”
allegations, but I want to illuminate certain changes that have recently been
enacted and how they have the potential to truly set back women’s progress.
The first change that has recently occurred is the revocation
of the 2014 Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces on April 3. This act, signed into
action by President Obama, had previously been a major victory for women in the
struggle to obtain equal wages to men in law and practice.
An issue with revoking this law is that it gives more
power to corporations to further commit acts of sexual harassment and cover
them up under the guise of arbitration clauses, which essentially are private
proceedings that can be about any number of topics, but are kept secret. The
act placed a ban on forced arbitrations, which would essentially force the women
into secrecy if they wanted to press charges against a perpetrator of sexual harassment.
The act also had a paycheck transparency section, which
essentially had no purpose besides guaranteeing that all paycheck affairs were
made public so no gender discrimination could be committed behind the guise of “privacy.”
The bill essentially attempted to eliminate all possibility of wage gap in
businesses, because it had come to the Obama administration’s attention that
corrupt businesses were receiving millions of dollars while committing violations
in payment.
Many sources have reported
that Trump still has close ties to his multi-billion dollar industries, even
though he claims to have severed all ties to running the companies and has left
them in the hands of his children. However, rolling back this act demonstrates
no practical purpose besides to protect businesses that are corrupt in terms of
how they pay women versus men, which is concerning in addition.
In addition to this, Trump’s executive order that blocked
travelers from 9 Muslim-majority countries miraculously did not include
countries with which he had close business ties, sparked more beliefs that his
business interests were conflicting with his duties as President. So, I believe
there is clear evidence that Trump still has significant vested interests in
his business ventures, so we must be wary going forward of where he may violate
women’s progress to protect his businesses.
 |
| Taken from Forbes.com |
Another area
that merits concern going forward is the international relations status of the
United States. As I mentioned in a previous post, the United States has withdrawn
its funding for family planning in numerous other countries that we had
previously had stakes in, which could have devastating effects going forward.
However, as I write this, the story develops about the United States dropping a
MOAB on an ISIS-affiliated network of caves and tunnels. This bomb is the first
of its kind to be used and its effects appear to be drastic.
What I want to
draw attention to is the combination of restrictions on immigration in the
United States in addition to heightened aggression toward ISIS and eliminating
the threats abroad and how this can have repercussions internationally on women’s
progress.
I thoroughly
believe that as tensions become increasingly stressed, there will be an issue
as refugees who want to escape the cultures of terrorism and fear that ISIS and
other radical Islam groups promote in the Middle East. Women, who are placed in
extremely restrictive
places and often kidnapped, raped, abused, and killed in these cultures, have
lost a country that could have been a place of safety.
One part of the
third wave of feminism that I have been well versed in is international
feminism, so women in the United States need to band together with other
nations to ensure that women’s rights are being protected in other nations.
However, with the stricter restrictions on women entering the United States and
the United States’ more aggressive, violent approach toward that region of the
United States, women who want nothing more than to escape are the collateral
damage.
So, going
forward, we need to be careful about restricting women’s rights both
domestically and internationally – because there can be devastating results if
we are not conscientious of the overarching effects of the new administration.
