The Difference Between Men and Women

"Men are respectable only as they respect.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

The more time I spend in Cuenca, the more I realize how unequally men and women are treated in Ecuador. I recognize there is still inequality amongst the sexes in the United States too, but here it tends to be even more prominent. Ecuador is a very patriarchal society. In other words, men rule. In their households, men are expected to be the main providers for their families, but in reality, women actually end up doing even more work. Not only do they have full time jobs, but they are expected to cook, clean, take care of the household, and take care of the kids, which is a full time job in itself. I found this all out after having a discussion about male and female roles with my host-mother, and I know what she says is true just from observing everything she does in a day. She wakes up two hours early just to make me breakfast, goes to work for four hours, returns to make me lunch, goes back to work for five more hours until 7 pm, returns to fix me dinner, and then helps me with homework, cleans up the kitchen, picks up her daughter from the university, and maybe even runs to the store to get a few items needed for lunch the next day. In cotrast, I hardly ever see my host-father, mainly because he’s either at work or just up in his room resting. In addition to women having more responsibilities than men, men seem to lack respect for women in a lot of cases. For example, on the streets, simply walking to school, I have been whistled at, cat-called, and looked up and down in broad daylight by various men at least a few times a week. It is mortifying and obnoxious, and yet the Ecuadorian men don’t seem to have a care in the world that it disgusts us women. Don’t women deserve the some respect after all of their hard work?