My case study is complete on Malala Yousufzai and her heroic yet tragic story of what has happened to her within the past couple weeks. I chose to share her story as my case study because I want others to realize how severe sexism against women is still in some places of the world. Although we have came along way with sexism and women's rights along the years, what has happened to the young 14 year old girl Malala is telling us that there is so much more that needs to be done in Pakistan and other parts of the world. Although this individual case study is very sad and does not have a solution yet, I hope that it teaches and encourages others to help to prevent this from happening to other young girls. The other part of my project is the naturalistic observation and experiment. So far, I have gone to Victoria's secret, Hyundai car dealership, and Home Depot and timed how long it took for an employee to come up to me, as well as watching to see how long it took to come up to other men and women. As expected, employees were more likely to come up to a man in the car dealership and in home depot over a woman. Out of doing this, I also discovered how ageism became part of my sexism project as I was treated differently in some of the stores than an adult women was. I believe this was because in the car dealership for example, the employees in there were more likely to go up to an adult woman over a teenager because they believe that the adult women may have the money to buy a car instead of a teenage girl. 

I have not started my naturalistic observation or my experiment yet but I have started my case study. For the case study, I am going to tell the story of Malala Yousufzai, the 14- year old Pakistani girl nearly killed by the Taliban. Malala was shot in the head on the school bus just because she was supporting education for girls. It is terrible how girls and women there are treated so different from the men and that all that young girls there want is to be able to go to school and they are told they cant or they will get killed? Its disgusting and a terrible thing that is going on there so I think it has a huge impact on sexism around the world and how women are treated. I am going to do the naturalistic observation and the experiment on the same days and going to do it on Saturday, December 1st, Wednesday, December 5th, and I am going to try to go on one other day. I am choosing a Saturday and a Wednesday to go to Victoria's Secret, Home Depot, Coach, and a car dealership because I want to see the difference of the responses I get on a busy day of the week and a not so busy day. I am going to personally go in these stores and see the responses I get for how long it takes for employees to come up to me and I am also going to observe other people, men and women, and see the responses I see from that. 

I am going to include a case study, naturalistic observation, and an experiment in my sexism project. I am going to target sales people in various industries such as car dealerships and retail stores such as Victoria's secret, coach, and home depot. I am going to time how long it will take a sales person to come up to me in these various stores and I am also going to observe others and see how long it takes and determine where the sexism exists. Throughout the next few weeks, I am going to go to these various stores with my iPhone to time the responses from the sales people and a notebook to record the data. I also plan to conduct my experiments and observations during both busy and quiet hours to see if there is going to be a difference. 

For my project, I would like to combine the two methods of a survey and a case study in my presentation. I want to make a survey with about twenty questions on regards to peoples opinions on sexism in the workplace and society. Out of the survey, I hope to do an analysis and conclude if there is any difference between peoples opinions based on their age, marital status, and occupation. For the case study, I am deciding between an example of sexism against a student in Pakistan or sexism in the workplace with my mother where she was replaced by a man and didn't receive equal pay. I would like to do a case study to provide a clear example of sexism today and the impact it has on people and society.  

I looked through many pictures on sexism and a majority of them were from the 1950's. The 1950's was a time when sexism was not only tolerated, but it was highly encouraged and expected in a society. Many extremely offensive sexist ads, such as the one posted below were published and seen all throughout America during the 1950's. The ad below depicts a woman being so emotional to her husband on the verge of tears in fear of doing something her husband could be annoyed by. This picture is saying that women are incapable of doing anything successful without breaking down into tears of sobbing when confronted by a man. During this time, it was believed that women were completely useless if they could not make their husband happy.

These types of ads were seen as humorous but also very true during these days so it makes me thankful in a way to see that we don't see these types of ads being published anymore. This image shows how far our world has come and how different the world was during the 1950's. Can you even imagine living in a world where seeing these images would be normal and encouraged? Now if we saw these type of things in our generation we would be extremely offended and we would certainly not allow for this to happen.

London 2012: The Women's Olympics

As I have been posting many articles on all of the sexism that we need to fix around the world, I decided to post an article about a positive way that we have overcome sexism. I came across an article about the London 2012 Women's Olympics where it was a very important and significant time for many women as it was the first time in Olympic games history when all countries participating have had women athletes on their team. Two women from Saudi Arabia walked proudly and modestly dressed and veiled into London's Olympic stadium at the games fabulous opening ceremony. These two women had come a long way in order to be walking into that stadium and it was a huge achievement because of the country they were coming from. Jacques Rogge, head of the International Olympics Committee, had said within his speech at the opening ceremony that this was "a major boost for gender equality".

I believe that we often forget about the sexism that goes on in the other countries around the world so I was very eager to post this article. This was an extremely important day for these two women from Saudi Arabia because they were representing a country where there is so much sexism going on. Saudi Arabia is a country where we would perfectly see sexism in the household. In Saudi Arabia, a women's place is suppose to be in the kitchen taking care of the husband and family. Only 5% of the women there make up the workforce and there is a law that permits them from driving. After hearing about the sexism in Saudi Arabia, it truly does amaze me that these two women were representing their country into the Olympics.

Sexism in the workplace 

One example of sexism in the workplace comes from a personal experience from my mom when we first moved here in 2002 from England. My mom transferred to the United States and switched jobs with a man here. The job was vice- president of Information Technology. My mom did exactly the same job with the same responsibilities as the man she swapped roles with but was paid less money than he was for the same job. Another example of sexism in society of when we first moved here, and even now, is the question we often get asked is did you move here for your Dad's job? People made the assumption that it was my dads job and career that we moved for as society often assumes that the man takes the more important role in his position in the workplace. 

The fact that my mom was paid less money for doing the same job with the same effort and number of hours is wrong both morally and illegally. Although women are protected under the Sex Discrimination and Equal pay Act, women often don't speak up as my mom didn't in fear of retaliation and losing their jobs. People in society instinctively assume that the man must have the more important job and career, so even though it is wrong for them to assume I don't know how much you can really blame society for it as they often are not trying to be sexist or discriminate but its the just the way they think.