For decades women have been discriminated against, at home, place of worship, but most of all, in the workforce.

The world today is facing a tremendous amount of social problems amongst which this negative behaviour towards women’s rights has been making the subject of so many articles and conferences. It cannot be ignored and, unfortunately, no major changes will be seen very soon. Why? It’s because its birthplace is somewhere along the history, with deep roots in the mentality of generations.

Discrimination against women is applied in many forms, one of this being in the employment area. More than two million U.S. women and minorities are affected by discrimination, says a study funded by the Ford Foundation. Finding a job was never as easy for a woman as for a man. Women are usually considered incapable, in comparison to a man, of performing that specific activity. For example, being a surgeon seems to be a job made for men, but the reasons for this statement has no logical proof. The reverse of this situation would be the baby-sitter who is more likely to be a woman, but there are men who have this job also.

Women are generally paid less than their counterpart in the workforce, especially minority women. A man and a woman can go to the same interview, but the man will walk away with the job, more money, and a great place to work, and maybe even a company car. The woman could have been more qualified for the job, but maybe she would obtain the job, at the cost of a cheaper salary. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women earned approximately 77 percent as much as men did in 1999.

Understanding how occupational differences contribute to the gender pay gap is made more complicated by the fact that both men and women in predominately female occupations earn less than men and women in male dominated occupations.

In many countries, women are seen only as mothers or wives and are not encouraged to build their own career. Like in Ukraine: some job advertisements specify “man” amongst the requests (in business and government agencies). In another sense, this can be considered a good thing. For example, in countries like Mexico, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic, the manufacturing companies are denying work to pregnant women, which in the end protect them. But a more serious form of discrimination is applied in South Africa, where farm owners are not assuring legal contracts to black women workers, are paying them less than men (for similar work), and deny their maternity benefits.

As a direct result of inequalities found in their countries of origin, women from Ukraine, Moldova, Nigeria, the Dominican Republic, Burma, and Thailand are bought and sold, trafficked to work in forced prostitution, with insufficient government attention to protect their rights and punish the traffickers. In Guatemala, South Africa, and Mexico, women's ability to enter and remain in the work force is obstructed by private employers who use women's reproductive status to exclude them from work and by discriminatory employment laws or discriminatory enforcement of the law. In the United States, students discriminate against and attack girls in school who are lesbian, bi-sexual, or transgender, or do not conform to male standards of female behaviour. Women in Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia face government-sponsored discrimination that renders them unequal before the law - including discriminatory family codes that take away women's legal authority and place it in the hands of male family members - and restricts women's participation in public life.

These are few of the cases in which women are seriously exposed to discrimination…because they have no alternatives (many of them have children to feed) and no power to defend (that’s why there are so many cases of abuse and sexual harassment). Something needs to be done.

In order to protect women rights the UN General Assembly adopted (in 1979) ‘The Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women’ (CEDAW). This international bill of rights offers the legal support to all the women workers who are being discriminated.

Art.11 (b): The right to same employment opportunities including the same criteria of selection.
Art.11 (d): The right to equal remuneration … and equal treatment in respect of work of equal value.

Art.12 (b): Introducing maternity leave with pay or similar social benefits without loss of former employment …

This list of rights (which has been approved by 182 countries from UN -2 March 2006) can be used as a weapon against discrimination of women, in many areas of social life;

Here we are in 2006 and it seems like the fight has just begun. Great strives and efforts have been made to end this discrimination, but who are ‘we’ to make a protest for ourselves? More and more, regardless of gender, success depends on hard work, ambition, and adding value to the bottom line. What is needed is more publicity. Women must know their rights, and must also be constantly informed. We must write as much as we can about this situation. Ignorance is the biggest enemy.