The way I'm seeing it.... The Fight for Equality

To average young men equality doesn’t mean an awful lot. To me it stands for everything. As a member of the LGBT community in the North of Ireland, i know firsthand what it’s like to be discriminated against from the base of society and not conform to the social norm. I often can’t help but wondering will there ever be full equality in society.


Since the Civil rights struggle in the USA, worldwide it seems to have sparked a fight for human rights. Be it Women’s’ rights, Children’s rights, Trans rights, or deaf and disabled people’s rights. It all seems to be happening and is long overdue. With all the political activism and campaigning people do in our country and worldwide today, I would have thought things would have changed a lot more by now. I won’t take away the progress the human rights movement have made in the past 60 odd years. But I think social attitudes take a long time to change and develop.


For feminism and women’s rights, to some extent the law has changed to allow gender equality to partially exist but social attitudes haven’t. In a heterosexual relationship women get 6 months off for maternity leave and men get 2 weeks for paternity leave. In my opinion the couple should be able to take the 6 months and 2 weeks and divide them between the Man and Woman as they see fit. To me this is the state echoing the outdated view that women are to be kept at home looking after the children even though this may seem as an extreme view i do feel that the state should give the couple the choice.


I study sociology, in a quick survey of the class of roughly 18-25 year olds the female members of our class were asked do they think gender equality exists in Northern Ireland, most of them nodded. The reasons were that women were allowed paid time off for maternity leave, women have equal pay and equality laws make sexual harassment illegal etc. To me, on the surface gender equality may be dressed up as being an okay issue, with equality laws making everything slightly chipper. Law is one thing, but it isn’t illegal to be prejudice. Maybe it’s the Social attitudes we need to change and back them up with the laws. The same thing applies to Gay rights. Again I won’t shadow the impressive progress made in relation to gay rights and the equality act.


However to be blunt I think the politicians society elect are hardly ever in the minority. For example there are only a few openly gay politicians is this why gay rights will be slow? Again most politicians are men so will women’s rights take a back seat? I have to be careful not to over generalise on the issue as this isn’t always the case. But I’m a firm believer in if you want a change you have to get to the top and be active. People could be more active and passionate with issues they think need addressing. Politicians are elected to change things on our behalf. I do find that not enough people speak to their local MLA or MPs asking what they’re doing for an issue they feel needs raised. I know it’s something i feel i need to do more.