March 22, 2022, marked the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, a document considered by many to be the 28th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. First introduced to Congress in 1923, The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was designed to guarantee a person’s constitutional rights could not be denied based on their sex, anatomical variances between males and females. Even though the ERA has not officially been ratified, let’s consider sex and gender from a sociological perspective.
It is important to understand that sex and gender are not synonymous. Sex is biological. The term intersex also refers to a biological condition in which a person is born with a combination of male and female sexual organs. On the other hand, gender is the socially learned expectations and behaviors associated with being male or female. When the ERA was introduced, American society had very strict gender roles in terms of the public expression of one’s gender, and gender norms, behaviors or traits that society attributes to a particular sex. With that in mind, variations in an individual’s inner sense and identification of being a male or female or gender identity have always existed, even if not acknowledged by the larger society.
A person who identifies with a gender that is different from his or her biological sex is considered transgender. The process of having surgery and taking hormone medications to become the opposite sex is sex reassignment. As of late, Texas has become the hotbed for issues of gender because the state legislature tried to label parents who support their transgender children as child abusers.
The topic of equal rights often segues to equal pay. Looking at the numbers, one finds that economic equality between the sexes has still not been achieved. On average, a woman earns 82 cents for every dollar a man earns. When the overlap of personal and social identities that manifests as disadvantage and discrimination in people’s lives or intersectionality is applied, the pay gap is nothing short of disheartening. A Black woman earns, on average, 64 cents for every dollar a White man earns, and a Hispanic woman earns 57 cents. Even in instances when women and men are literally doing the same job, the wage gap persists. Case in point, the U.S. Women’s Soccer team. For years, their record far surpassed that of the men’s team in terms of international wins, yet they were paid substantially less. Specifically, women were paid $3,600 per game, with a $1,350 bonus for winning. Men were paid $5,000 and an additional $8,166 respectively. For a World Cup first-place win, the women players got an extra $75,000, while the men players got an additional $390,625. This is literally for playing the same sport, on the same size field, with the same rules. Least you think it was simply an audience or viewership issue and that more people watch men’s soccer, the women’s team actually has the record for the most viewers of any U.S. soccer game. These inequalities are evidence of the glass ceiling, social and legal barriers designed to prevent minorities and women from advancing in the workplace. For the women’s soccer team, that ceiling finally cracked in February 2022 when the U.S. Soccer Federation agreed to pay U.S. Women’s National Soccer $24 million to settle their equal pay lawsuit.
