Assignment Rough Draft - Essay Example

Assignment Rough Draft College: The concept of gender is the central one when it comes to defining the terms of interaction in the society. It is a complex construct that is regarded as a divide of the population into two groups, males and females, and is used a basis of any kind of relationships that can take place in the society. Being an elaborate notion, it refers to a range of characteristics of human beings, such as physical and psychological characteristics, patterns of behavior, self-image, abilities, and a number of others.

Based on gender and roles imposed by this concept on an individual, the latter as a social being carries a symbolic meaning of his / her role in the relationship. As this concept is quite important and complex at the same time due to the fact that it acts as a basis of any type of relationships, it gives birth to number of issues, the key of which are gender inequality and the fight against it. The concept of gender is best explained from the point of view of symbolic interaction theory, which states that every person plays a particular role in the society (Turner, 2012).

In accordance with Turner (2012), a person is a social actor who performs an assigned role, which includes patterns of behavior and feelings. Even in the twenty-first century, the issue of gender discrimination still takes place. In order to fight the problem, there exists a range of federal laws, among which are Civil Right Act, the Equal Opportunity Act, Family and Medical Leave Act, Pregnancy Discrimination Law and others (“Gender Discrimination,” 2013). At the same time, these and other laws and programs appear to be not very effective for women.

However, the Affordable Care Act is believed to change the situation for the better: due to the act, about 13 million women will gain coverage by 2016 (National Womens Law Center, 2013).These days, triple jeopardy of African American Women with disabilities occurs in the United States. Because of the existing stereotypes, this group of women experiences the following difficulties. First of all, they are expected to have traditionally female occupations. Secondly, African American women have difficulties which result from group-specific factors, such as likelihood of being a single parent.

Finally, the disabled have decreased work opportunities because of lack of compliance on behalf of the employee (Smith & Alston, 2008).A human service professional should be culturally competent to meet the requirements of the sphere as well as to be able to work in it. For every person, it is natural to have biases or inner conflicts regarding one or another question. For me personally, gender discrimination is not the issue to be indifferent about as equality is one of the main things for me when it comes to life in the society.

Also, for me being a culturally competent service professional means being able to understand the impact of social injustice on people’s lives as well as differences between people. ReferencesGender discrimination: Applicable laws. (2013). Retrieved from http://civilrights.findlaw.com/discrimination/gender-discrimination-applicable-laws.htmlSmith, D. L., & Alston, R. J. (2008). Employment disparities for minority women with disabilities. Impact, 21(1), 16-17. Retrieved from https://ici.umn.

edu/products/impact/211/211.pdf National Womens Law Center. (2013, May 16). Women and the health care law in the United States. Retrieved from http://www.nwlc.org/resource/women-and-health-care-law-united-statesTurner, J. (2012). Symbolic interactionist theories of identity. In J. Turner (Ed.), Contemporary Sociological Theory (pp. 331-355). SAGE Publications.