Women have it easier overall in the U.S.

First of all, in my previous address I just noticed that my footnotes did not appear when I tried to copy and paste the text. Sorry for that. Since the scholarship intended for women have certain objectives, namely to aid women on the basis that women are underrepresented in certain occupations, that women face gender discrimination and poverty, my opponent"s argument against the excess availability of options of grants and scholarships for women would only be valid if the issues mentioned does not exist. However, if it turned out that the said issues are real, then you can"t say women have it easier since the scholarships offered would be justified for the very purpose of to offset the reasons why women don"t have it easier. The fact that gender discrimination exists and is a concrete hindrance for women to get certain jobs in comparison to their male counterparts, I clearly demonstrated in my previous address. To illustrate that women continue to fare worse than men in important fields of work " often high-paid jobs " we can take CEO:s, COO:s, and EVP:s as examples. A report from Sciencedirect in 2008 showed that women were substantially underrepresented in upper-management jobs in comparison to men. Despite the fact that women are about equally represented as men are " in 2008 hey comprised 46,5 percent of the workforce and occupied nearly 51% of the managerial and professional jobs " the total percentage of women in the said chef positions were only 7%. Thus men are overrepresented in this field by a factor of about 13! http://www.uky.edu... The poverty rate is considerably higher for women. A report from National Women"s law Center found among other things that more than half of all poor children lived in families headed by women; that poverty rate for women in 2012 (14,5%) were 3,5 percentage points than it was for men (11%); that the rate of extreme poverty for women (6,3%) was 1,5 percentage points higher than that of their male counterparts (4,8%) . Even when looking at older women, a report from Center for American progress showed among other things that elderly women are far more likely to live in poverty than men; they found that when looking at women over the age of 75 their poverty rate lies at 13% compared to 6% for men over at the same age; Among people 65 or older twice as many women (2,6 millions) were living in poverty than men (1,3 millions) which corresponds to a 4.4 percentage points higher poverty rate for women (11%) than for men at that age group. Approximately 18.9 percent of women 65 and older lived alone compared to 11.9 percent for men 65 and older . http://www.nwlc.org....http://cdn.americanprogress.org... Thus, as it seems, I conclude that the fact that more scholarships are offered to women is but a testament to the fact that they are underrepresented in important areas of society, that they are subject to gender discrimination and that are more prone to live in poverty. The scholarships are therefore justified and fair. Concerning the pay gap, statistics shows that the difference in work hours between the sexes is very slight, and should not contribute to such a wide gap in wages. "Amongst full time workers, men work on average 8.2 hours while women work 7.8 and amongst part-time workers men on average work 5.2 hours while women work 5.4". http://www.bls.gov... When looking at the total earnings of the sexes, we see that men earn considerably and their incomes have grown more than for women. This despite the negligible difference between men and women in the workforce. http://www.debate.org... You pointed to the rape statistics which was interesting. First off, you said that "at least" ten percent of the male inmates are raped without making any justification for that number at all. If you read the statistics in the article you referenced to it says the following: "According to the latest National Inmate Survey, 4 per cent of prisoners, 3.2 per cent of people in jail and 9.5 per cent of those in juvenile detention said they had been the victim of sexual abuse." In the article it doe not differentiate between women and male in terms of the percentage of women and male respectively being raped out of the 216,000 cases of rape in all the different detention facilities in the United States. As far as we know, there could be just slightly more men than women raped or perhaps even a near 50/50% ratio. However, I did show that women are to a much higher extent subject to sexual assault than men are. Even though sexual assault is not the same thing as rape, the statistics that you and I have provided combined still clearly shows that women are, to a much higher extent than men, more prone to be subject to a, we might call it, a"sex crime": an umbrella term for including both rape and sexual assault. However, my opponent did mention something interesting, namely that unemployed women have more lucrative opportunities to support themselves than unemployed men have in fields such as prostitution, exotic dancing and sugar-daddy arrangements. This is an interesting argument since these type of "poverty combating" avenues might not always be something one enjoys but something that is borne out of necessity. Obviously poverty is the main reason for entering these business. The fact that women on average earn about 81 cents of every dollar that their male counterpart makes and the fact that they are, statistically poorer, this would of course offer a reason for why prostitution would be an avenue of last resort in order to be able to pay the bills and provide for the family. Even though prostitution is a noteworthy means of making a living, it also carries the risk of ending up the hands of pimps and unscrupulous sex traffickers. Although a distinction has to be made between voluntary prostitution and coerced sex trafficking, research from among others Williamson and Cluse-Tolar (2002) found that 53% of women entered the business with a pimp and that approximately 80% over time became involved with pimps . This shows that even though there is a principal difference between the two, in reality there is a grey area in which there is a evidently obvious connection between prostitution and increased sex trafficking. Not all women that engages in prostitution ends up as sex slaves, but many of them do. Another study by Silbert, MH and Pines (1984) of 200 women and girls working as prostitutes in San Francisco found that 70% of the women and girls were sexually assaulted an average of 31 times. 65% of the women and girls were physically abused or beaten an average of 4 times. A study made from Sister Speak Out of 222 women over the age of 18 showed that: "25% of the women in prostitution in drug houses, hotels, and on the street were raped more than 10 times; the pimps were the most frequent perpetrators of violence; 79% of the women had money was withheld from them; 86% of the women were physically abused by pimps; 50% of them assaulted frequently or daily; 69% of the women were isolated, confined, or restrained by pimps; 80% of the women were sexually assaulted by pimps; 34% of the women had death threats to them or family by pimps; 85% of the women were psychologically abused by pimps; 71% of the women had pimps use drugs to control them; etc. Even though this seems like an overload of information, I think that it sufficiently stresses the point about the dangers and the plights that prostitution potentially could lead to. It is important to note that these problems are practically non-existent among men prostitutes. Thus, even though men haven"t managed to break through the social stigma surrounding male prostitution, it is of importance to point out that male prostitutes work in a considerably less dangerous working environment than women do. http://www.sagepub.com... http://webcache.googleusercontent.com... Sources for my previous address http://psycnet.apa.org... http://psycnet.apa.org... http://www.bjs.gov... http://www.bjs.gov... http://www.psychologytoday.com... http://www2.ohchr.org... http://www.deptofnumbers.com... 8.http://www.latimes.com...