Question 1

Suggested reading time-15 minutes

Suggested writing time-40 minutes

Directions: ​The following prompt is based on the accompanying seven seven sources.

This question requires you to synthesize a variety of sources into a coherent, well-written essay. When
you synthesis sources you refer to them to develop your position and cite them accurately. ​Your argument
should be central; the sources should support this argument. Avoid merely summarizing.

Remember to attribute both direct and indirect citations.

Introduction

The rights and value of women has been a controversial topic for many years. Many people say they are
equal, while others disagree and say they are inferior and not valued enough.

Assignment

Read the following sources (including the introductory information) carefully. Then write an essay in
which you develop a position on whether or not women are valued and equal in today's society.
Synthesize at least three of the sources for support.

You may refer to the sources by their titles ( Source A, Source B, etc.) or by the description in the
parentheses.

Source A (History)
Source B (Yousafzai)
Source C (Carter)
Source D (Bryant)
Source E (visual one)
Source F (mercado)
Source G (visual two)
 Source A

History.com Staff. “Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” ​History.com​, A&E Television Networks, 2009,

www.history.com/topics/womens-history/ruth-bader-ginsburg.

The following passage is excerpted from an article about a woman on Supreme Court.

In 1980, President ​Jimmy Carter​ appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the District of Columbia. She served there until she was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1993 by
President ​Bill Clinton​, selected to fill the seat vacated by Justice Byron White. President Clinton wanted a
replacement with the intellect and political skills to deal with the more conservative members of the
Court. The Senate Judiciary Committee hearings were unusually friendly, despite frustration expressed by
some senators over Ginsburg’s evasive answers to hypothetical situations. Several expressed concerned
over how she could transition from social advocate to Supreme Court Justice. In the end, she was easily
confirmed by the Senate, 96-3.

As a judge, Ruth Ginsburg favors caution, moderation, and restraint. She is considered part of the
Supreme Court’s moderate-liberal bloc presenting a strong voice in favor of gender equality, the rights of
workers, and the separation of church and state. In 1996, Ginsburg wrote the Supreme Court’s landmark
decision in United States v. ​Virginia​, which held that the state-supported Virginia Military Institute could
not refuse to admit women. In 1999, she won the American Bar Association’s ​Thurgood Marshall​ Award
for her contributions to gender equality and civil rights.

Despite her reputation for restrained writing, she gathered considerable attention for her
dissenting opinion in the case of Bush v. Gore, which effectively decided the 2000 presidential election
between ​George W. Bush​ and ​Al Gore​. Objecting to the court’s majority opinion favoring Bush, Ginsburg
deliberately and subtly concluded her decision with the words, “I dissent” a significant departure from the
tradition of including the adverb “respectfully.” She continues to promote women’s rights from the High
Court and will undoubtedly play a pivotal role in many controversial cases in the future.
 Source B

Yousafzai, Malala, and Christina Lamb. ​I Am Malala: the Girl Who Stood up for Education and Was

Shot by the Taliban​. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2016.

The following passage is excerpted from a first hand experienced book of a girl who grew up inferior to
boys.

“I was a girl in a land where rifles are fired in celebration of a son, while daughters are hidden
away behind a curtain, their role in life simply to prepare food and give birth to children.” [Page
13]

“I knew as we got older the girls would be expected to stay inside. We’d be expected to cook and
serve our brothers and fathers. While boys and men could roam freely around town, my mother
and I could not go without a male relative to accompany us, even if it was a five year old boy.”
[page 26]

“No struggle can succeed without women participating side by side with men. There are two
powers in the world; one is the sword and the other is the pen. There is a third power stronger
than both, that of women. But General Zia brought in laws which reduced a womens evidence in
court to count for only half that of a man’s. Soon our prisons were full of cases like that of
thirteen-year-old girl who was raped and became pregnant and was then sent to prison for
adultery because she couldn’t produce four male witnesses to prove it was a crime. A women
couldn’t eve open a bank account without a man’s permission.” [page 31]
 Source C
Carter, Jimmy. “Why I Believe the Mistreatment of Women Is the Number One Human Rights

Abuse .” ​TED: Ideas Worth Spreading,​

www.ted.com/talks/jimmy_carter_why_i_believe_the_mistreatment_of_women_is_the_

number_one_human_rights_abuse/transcript#t-140550.

The following passage is excerpted from a speech given by Jimmy Carter, a former president.

So our overall commitment at the Carter Center is to promote human rights, and knowing
the world as I do, I can tell you without any equivocation that the number one abuse of human
rights on Earth is, strangely, not addressed quite often, is the abuse of women and girls.
First of all is the misinterpretation of religious scriptures, holy scriptures, in the Bible,
Old Testament, New Testament, Quran and so forth, and these have been misinterpreted by men
who are now in the ascendant positions in the synagogues and the churches and in the mosques.
And they interpret these rules to make sure that women are ordinarily relegated to a secondary
position compared to men in the eyes of God.
One is genital mutilation. Genital mutilation is horrible and not known by American
women, but in some countries, many countries, when a child is born that's a girl, very soon in her
life, her genitals are completely cut away by a so-called cutter who has a razor blade and, in a
non-sterilized way, they remove the exterior parts of a woman's genitalia. And sometimes, in
more extreme cases but not very rare cases, they sew the orifice up so the girl can just urinate or
menstruate. And then later, when she gets married, the same cutter goes in and opens the orifice
up so she can have sex.

Another very serious thing is honor killings, where a family with misinterpretation, again,
of a holy scripture -- there's nothing in the Quran that mandates this -- will execute a girl in their
family if she is raped or if she marries a man that her father does not approve, or sometimes even
if she wears inappropriate clothing. And this is done by members of her own family, so the
family becomes murderers when the girl brings so-called disgrace to the family. An analysis was
done in Egypt not so long ago by the United Nations and it showed that 75 percent of these
murders of a girl are perpetrated by the father, the uncle or the brother, but 25 percent of the
murders are conducted by women.
 Another thing that's very serious about the abuse of women and girls is the lack of equal
pay for equal work, as you know. (Applause) And this is sometimes misinterpreted, but for
full-time employment, a woman in the United States now gets 23 percent less than a man.
 Source D

Bryant, Alison. “8 Rights Women Didn't Have a Century Ago ...” ​All Women's Talk,​ 28 Aug. 2012,

lifestyle.allwomenstalk.com/rights-women-didnt-have-a-century-ago/5.

The following is a passage excerpted from an article about rights of women.

Women's rights are something we take for granted these days. Because it was all a ​long time​ ago
that the suffragettes fought for the right to vote, wasn't it? However, women's rights still depend very
much on where they live, and even some of the rights we take for granted were relatively recently
achieved. Here are some of the women's rights that have been accomplished over the last 100 years or so
…
The right to vote has been one of the most important of all the women's rights achieved over the
last century. We might wonder at times whether it's even worth voting, but let's not forget that not so
many generations back, women didn't even have the option of choosing who would govern them. That's
one of the reasons why it's so important to keep informed about candidates and take the time to get out
there and vote.
Do you think that countries like the US and the UK are more enlightened? Well, an American
woman needed her husband's permission to open a bank account as recently as the 1960s, and it wasn't
until 1975 and the Sex Discrimination Act that a ​British woman​ could open a bank account in her own
name. And as for getting a mortgage on her own … forget it.
The right to receive the same pay for doing the same job as men has been a relatively recent
advance in women's rights. In fact, there is evidence that women still don't always earn as much as their
male colleagues who are doing exactly the same work. This one is a ​right​ for which many women are still
fighting, all over the world.
If we have the right to vote, then we should have the right to be voted for! Gradually throughout
the 20th century, women in various countries were granted the right to stand for election. The first woman
MP was elected in the UK in 1919, and the first ​female Ministe​r​ in western Europe was appointed in
Denmark in 1924. Disappointingly, women are still not adequately represented in the governments and
parliaments of most countries.
The ​right​ to fight on the front line might seem one of the more dubious women's rights achieved in recent
years. Yet it could be argued that if we want to be treated equally with men, then we should be prepared
to do everything that they do – including risking our lives to fight for our country. Remember, bravery
knows no gender.
 Source E

Misra, Amee. “Why We Need To Stop Telling Women They're Equal To Men.” ​Huffington Post India​,

Huffington Post India, 14 July 2016,

www.huffingtonpost.in/amee-misra-/the-biggest-disservice-we_b_7963972.html.

The following is a picture to represent males and females.

 Source F

Mercado, Mia. “7 Ways Our Culture Devalues Femininity.” ​Bustle​, Bustle, 22 Feb. 2018,

www.bustle.com/p/7-ways-our-culture-devalues-femininity-40400.

The following is a passage excerpted from an article about women not being valued

If you want to see just one example of the ​subtle ways our culture devalues femininity​, all
you have to do is Google a few things. First, search for “define masculinity,” and look at how it’s
used in the example sentence. It says, “Handsome, muscled, and driven, he's a prime example of
masculinity." Now Google “define femininity.” That sentence reads, “She celebrates her
femininity by wearing makeup and high heels.” I was going to try to make some point about how
“Wooow, look at the stark difference between how men and women are viewed wooow,” and
maybe there’s something there about ​women being valued for how they look​ and ​men being
valued for what they do​. But my gut reaction to high heels and makeup being "bad?" That's
exactly what I'm talking about. Our culture devalues femininity in all kinds of ways, and so
much of the time, we don't even notice it's happening.

Despite the 56 percent of males who’d like to wish it so, ​sexism is far from over​. In the
same way that having a black president didn’t end racism, things like Hillary Clinton being the
first woman nominee of a major party didn't end sexism. Racism and sexism and other -isms like
them exist and persist based on who has historically been in power and what continues to be
valued as powerful. The way we think about women is deeply embedded into our culture.
Although all of these things are important and notable and needed and good, it will take more
than one presidential candidate, one ​successful movie​, one ​Beyoncé performance​ for society to
view women (and characteristics associated with women) as equal and as important as men.

Blatant sexism is getting easier to call out and acknowledge. This isn’t to say that blatant sexism
doesn’t still exist, as evidenced by these ​facts on sexism​from Mic. However, people arguably
have an easier time understanding why violence and harassment against women is bad than, say,
why calling something “girly” shouldn’t be an insult. This in no way is meant to compare those
two examples as equally harmful; they aren’t. But the subtle way we talk about women, the
nuanced ways we view attributes associated with women, become ingrained in us individually
and as a culture. The less we value characteristics attached to women, the easier it is to justify
devaluing women as a whole.
 Why does doing something "like a girl" mean you aren't doing it well? Can you think of a
female equivalent to “acting manly”? Acting “ladylike” definitely doesn’t imply the sort of
strength that “man up” does. I know it seems like I'm arguing about semantics, but ​words do
matter​. Like I said earlier, the way we talk about women and femininity shapes how we treat and
view women — and gender — as a whole. What do you think the impact of consistently hearing
"girly" as an insult has on the perceptions of kids of all genders of being female? How are we
teaching girls to think about themselves when we ​equate women to objects​ or use their gender as
an insult?
 Source G

“Do Men Really Earn More Than Women? - Infographic.” ​PayScale,​

www.payscale.com/gender-lifetime-earnings-gap.

The following is a picture of graphs from a website