Assignment 1: News Essay
This news essay will review the subject of women’s equality in an educational background. The New York Times article “After Class, Skimpy Equality” (Belkin, 2011), looks at the attitudes found in students on college campuses relating to sexual equality. The author returns to Princeton University as a professor 20 years after obtaining her degree, and takes the time to contrast how things have changed in the educational and social aspect of university life. The feminist goal of equal access to education for all women has made great strides over the last few decades, but the state of gender relations between those attending the university has changed as well. Belkin is shocked by the ground that seems to have been lost in the area of gender relations and the treatment of women, and looks at both sides to come to better terms with the modern view that seems prevalent.
Gender equality and more specifically, equal access to education is a cornerstone of the feminist movement. The author attended Princeton University over two decades before and points out that the ratio of men to women was close to 2:1. Now the ratio is nearly equal between men and women, and there are significant amounts of women in positions of power within the university, to include a women president. The steady erosion of the difference between men and women in academic terms has been a success, but the author is not pleased with the decline that appears to have happened in gender relations.
The author noted an incident that occurred where men from a fraternity sent out an offensive email to students on campus asking that women come dressed like sluts to a party they were hosting. There were many women’s groups that publicly criticized this obvious act of treating women like sex objects for men. Naturally this behavior should be condemned and is further proof that men just don’t think of women as equals. Despite all this natural condemnation, the author points out that...