Who has more opportunity in the United Sates: Men or Women? 

This question is an important one, yet most people don’t look into it seriously. Many people have never heard of the term, “MRA” and even those who know what the Mens Rights Movement is, often have misconceptions concerning what the Mens movement is fundamentally about. On the flip side, an increasing number of Americans are beginning to see our societal gender-balance through the MRA lens, without first learning the feminist side of the spectrum (I’m guilty). This is not inherently an issue, so long as an individual is devoted to understanding both sides of the debate and becomes educated before they begin to argue for one side or another. This is why there is such a great divide between opinions on the subject matter of gender equality in the first-world. Not only does each side fail to emphasize with the other, but people are also split between what they consider “equality” fundamentally, 

     Some people consider “equality” to be fairness on a demographic level. For example, in the USA, there is a wage gap between men, and women. It is said that women only make 77% of what men make in our country. Of course, that is not equal – but does that mean it’s not fair? Studies that compare men and women of equal job titles, experience, age, and education levels, show that women make 96% of the money that men make in America. (1) While there is still a $0.04 gap, this is attributed to men having stronger negotiation skills during their interviews to be hired.  

        With this in mind, the ultimate question is, do we want a fair society, or a society where demographics are equal? We would have to pay women a drastically higher salary for doing similar work to men, if we wanted to create an equal demographic between the income of men and women. This is because there are less women in the workplace. It would be unjust to pay either sex more money for doing the exact same job as the other sex, assuming their qualifications were similar. With this in mind, the most effective approach from those seeking to create a fair society where everybody has equal opportunity (regarding their salary at work) would be to create classes for women, that teach personal marketing/ negotiation skills. If we taught women how to negotiate their salaries as effectively as men, then the wage gap would shrink to an insignificant number, and the binary genders would then have a fair playing field when it comes to their pay at the workplace. 

This is the approach that should be taken in order to create the most effective, and fair, results, for men and women both. It isn’t fair that women are born into a society which raises them to have weaker negotiation skills than men. They are raised to be more docile and agreeable – and back down from confrontation. One person can’t change society on their own - but the government has the power to shape and mold things to it’s liking. For the sake of equal opportunity, we need to get the governments attention, and find a way to create womens courses that will teach women to negotiate better. Then, they will have equal opportunity to achieve the same pay as men for their jobs, and we would not have to worry about the wage gap as an issue any longer.

Sources:

(1): http://www.payscale.com/gender-lifetime-earnings-gap

When will men and women finally have equal rights and liberties?  

This is a tough topic to address without upsetting either side of the gender-issues spectrum. To answer this question, we must first assume that people of the male and female sex are treated differently in their day-to-day lives. Everybody who asks this question can agree that men, and women, are not treated the same in every area. Where the divide happens regarding this topic however, is in the perception that people have about which gender is "ahead" of the other. Mainstream knowledge is that women are "behind" men as a collective sex, when it comes to the rights they are granted by governments, and when it comes to the social expectations that society has in place for them. However, as time progresses, more and more men are raising their voice and saying "hey – we have problems too!" - in a humble attempt to argue that men may have it as bad as, or worse than, women, when it comes to economic and social liberty. 

In order to answer the posed question, you must first choose a side of this spectrum. You must believe that either the male sex, or the female sex, are "ahead" of the other. My goal is to be able to make an educated argument in favor of each side, and to fully understand the current challenges that each sex faces, simply for being born with their respective reproductive organs. Once I have achieved this, I will be able to create a hypothesis in response to the posed question, as I will understand the differences and struggles that males and females must go through and live with.  

The toughest part about this for me, could be my bias for the MRA movement. I am already well versed in the realm of "Mens Rights" and I understand that end of the spectrum well. However, that brings up a secondary goal of mine, which is to eliminate my previous bias – or at least, to understand the "other" (feminist) side of the spectrum well enough that I could emphasize with people who fall on that end. With that in mind, I may need to spend more time researching and writing about feminist ideals and arguments, which may pain me a bit. However I understand that the end result for me will be a proper unbiased mindset, and regardless of my end position on the "gender rights spectrum" I will be better able to argue and articulate my position.