Task Read the short article on gender equality below and reflecting on your read

Task Read the short article on gender equality below and reflecting on your reading and comprehension of the article, write an essay on the pros and cons of gender equality applying relevant academic writing skills and the use of appropriate vocabulary. Gender Equality: A realistic Ambition or a Dream. Developed from extracts from the UN Sustainable Development Goal https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/women-and-the-sdgs/sdg-5-gender-equality The UN Sustainable Development Goal proposes to achieve the following targets: ? End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere. ? Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation. ? Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation. ? Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate. ? Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision making in political, economic and public life. ? Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences. 4 ? Undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and natural resources, in accordance with national laws. ? Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women. ? Adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at all levels. Women and girls, everywhere, must have equal rights and opportunities, and be able to live free of violence and discrimination. Women’s equality and empowerment is not just one of the sustainable development goals but also integral to all dimensions of inclusion. Gender equality by 2030 requires urgent action to eliminate the many root causes of discrimination that still curtail women’s rights in private and public spheres. For example, discriminatory laws need to change and legislation adopted to proactively advance equality. Yet 49 countries still lack laws protecting women from domestic violence, while 39 bar equal inheritance rights for daughters and sons. Eliminating gender-based violence is a priority, given that this is one of the most pervasive human rights violations in the world today. Based on data from 87 countries, 1 in 5 women and girls under the age of 50 will have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner within the last 12 months. Harmful practices, such as child marriage, steal the childhood of 15 million girls under age 18 every year. Women do 2.6 times more unpaid care and domestic work than men. While families, societies and economies depend on this work, for women, it leads to lower earnings and less time to engage in non-work activities. In addition to equal distribution of economic resources, which is not only a right but accelerates development in multiple areas, there needs to be a fair balance of responsibility for unpaid care work between men and women. Sexual and reproductive rights are critical in their own right. Shortfalls in these multiply other forms of discrimination, depriving women of education and decent work, for example. Yet only 52 per cent of women married or in a union freely make their own decisions about sexual relations, contraceptive use and health care. However, some critiques are of a different view. They consider that treating everyone equally doesn’t mean treating them the same. The different genders have different needs, and the world needs to acknowledge them. For example, if you buy pulled pork tacos for an office for lunch, that won’t sit well with Jews and Muslims who don’t eat pork. In the same way, if you expect both genders to do physical work, a man is likely to do better than a woman. These fundamental gender differences mean that “equality of outcome is undesirable”. Men and women won’t sort themselves into the same categories if you leave them alone to do it of their own accord. In Scandinavian for example we have 20 to one female nurse to mal and approximately the same ratio for male engineers to female engineers. That’s a consequence of the free choice of men and women in the societies that have gone farther than any other society to make gender equality the purpose of the law. Hence such differences cannot be eradicated. You can eradicate them with tremendous social pressure and tyranny. But if you leave men and women to make their own choices you will not get an equal outcome.