Which Problem Caused By Gender Inequality Is The Most Difficult To Fix?

I Believe the Most Difficult Issue Caused by Gender Inequality to Fix is Stereotypes

I think this because no matter what you do, you cannot change what someone thinks unless they really believe in it, and you cannot know if they are telling the truth about their opinions. Stereotypes are things that we have grown up with and lived our whole lives with. William Cox, from the University of Wisconsin, compared stereotypes to times tables. "Going through the world making assumptions about people with stereotypes we've learned is another form of mental practice, " he said, "With more rehearsal, those assumptions get stronger over time even when we have no real evidence to back them up." (The Science of Stereotyping)

The more you practice these assumptions and stereotypes, the more real they become to you, even when they aren’t.

Another reason for this view is that even if more women and people from minority groups go into the space industry, it’s quite likely that people will believe their parents or whoever taught them these stereotypes instead of one of the people that they’ve spent their whole lives discriminating against. It is a nice thought, that more people from minorities being in the space industry would reduce stereotypes, and it is quite possible, but it is also quite unlikely that this would work with everyone.

Research has told us that around 90-95% of people hold stereotypes against groups of the public, but many of them are unconscious stereotypes, which leads on to my next point.

If you have unconscious stereotypes, or don’t realise that the beliefs you hold are stereotypes, you might think that you don’t have stereotypes at all, and that you do not need to change your beliefs if you have even recognised them. This means that even if more people from minority groups do get into the space industry, which could make a massive difference in the stereotypical views of other people, it mightn’t matter to you because the message this is all sending doesn’t apply to you. For example, if you have unconscious bias, this might influence your decisions and actions elsewhere, which could lead to the gender pay gap.

In summary, I believe that the most difficult gender inequality issue to solve is stereotypes, because although going into space is a lot, it may take a lot more to change the biased views of many people.