Forget about equality ladies
Last Tuesday Nasa announced that the mission had been cancelled in part because the agency did not have enough spacesuits that fit the astronauts.
This week, we got a reminder that despite all the advances made over the years, it still is a man’s world.
Why do I say this?
The first all-female spacewalk was set to take place later on March 29, 35 years after a woman first took part in one.
That honour belongs to Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya, who set the trail for women coming after her.
The US space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) said astronauts Christina Koch and Anne McClain will walk outside the International Space Station on a mission to replace batteries installed last summer.
Last Tuesday Nasa announced that the mission had been cancelled in part because the agency did not have enough spacesuits that fit the astronauts.
Also read: Nasa finds a rectangular iceberg in Antarctica
More than 500 people have been into space, but only 11 per cent have been women.
Both Koch and McClain were part of Nasa’s 2013 class, which was 50 per cent female. Still, it’s very disappointing that an agency this powerful could make such an epic blunder of things.
What kind of message does it send to little girls around the world who were dying of anticipation to see this walk?
That women don’t count?
Unfortunately, Nasa is not the only agency that is guilty of pushing women into the background.
One only has to look around to see what it means to be a woman in the world.
The 2017 Pulse of the People report run by market research firm Ipsos found that, on average, women in South Africa earn 27 per cent less than their male counterparts.
The report surveyed more than 3 500 employed South Africans across various occupations and regions.
It found the pay gap becomes even wider when looking at top earners, with local men are earning as much as 39 per cent more than women at a similar level.
On the sporting field, women’s teams are consistently paid less than their male counterparts even when they perform better.
Also read: Here are some fitting Twitter tributes to celebrate International Women’s Day
A good example, our beloved women’s national soccer team, Banyana Banyana.
Banyana Banyana players earn R4 000 for a draw and R5 700 for a win in a competitive match.
It’s crumbs compared to the R60 000 that Bafana Bafana players get for a win and R30 000 for a draw.
Of course, the public outcry over this gap has seen our national football federation and sponsors increase the money the women’s players get but they are still not paid equally.
Even for items that women simply cannot live without, women are penalised.
What is this you ask?
Menstrual products.
Women are taxed for items like pads and tampons as if they chose to bleed out of their vaginas every month.
This so-called pink tax is a controversial subject and thankfully many countries have made menstrual products tax free.
So people, when you see women protesting, it’s not because it’s that time of the month, it’s because we’re just simply trying to get our fair share of the pie since we do just as much work, a lot of which is invisible to the men of the Earth.
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