Women have it easier overall in the U.S.

Thank you for the interesting arguments presented. I merely pointed out that I am fairly acquainted with the feminist movement in general and their conception of the world. This will provide me with a general outline on which I can ground my case while, however, simultaneously being sure to keep my arguments within the bounds of this debate and making sure my arguments are relevant the US, of course. You make a lot of good arguments and factual claims which I will try to answer and offer you my perspective on. For instance, you pointed out the fact that women are offered more scholarships than men. There are of course various reasons for why this is so. For instance, the fact that so many scholarships are offered to single mothers and pregnant women is because they are weaker groups in society burdened with having to take care of a child or for the fact that they are actually carrying one (with all types of symptoms and inconveniences that entails) and are thus obviously is in need of support. To claim that single mothers and pregnant women are on equal footing with a person absent the plight caused by single-motherhood and pregnancy is just outlandishly absurd. Another reason why more scholarships are offered to women to a higher extent than to men is because of gender discrimination, which is more likely to affect women in a directly negative way, thus providing a justification for the use of scholarships assigned to women in order counteract the effects caused by discrimination. For instance, according to a study conducted by researchers at San Fernando Valley State College, they found that when men and women with comparable qualifications that were applying for positions at different universities, the men were significantly more likely to receive an offer of a academic position leading to tenure . Other studies show that the social stigma pertaining to gender discrimination still lingers on, affecting men as well as women. Research from Lawrence University found that women were more likely to be hired in traditional feminine jobs such as secretary or receptionist, and men, conversely, more likely to be hired in traditional masculine professions, such as in sales management. What this would indicates is a possible valuing of certain stereotypical male and female characteristics as a basis for hiring, thereby cementing the already existing gender stereotypes and thus serve to maintain women and men in their traditional professions struggling. Since female-dominated professions generally struggle with lower wages than typically male-dominated professions, this would keeping women in a disadvantage to their male counterparts in terms of wage level. Though my opponent has made the case that 3x more men are incarcerated than women he failed to mention that, for instance, women are roughly 6 times more likely to be a victim of homicide by a spouse and are almost 3,5 times more likely to be the victim of a sex-related homicide, just to name a few examples. This in light of the fact that men commit approximately 90% more of all homicides. The fact that the incarceration rate for males is greater by a factor of three to that of women, seems to fit the results from a comprehensive study conducted by the US department of justice which showed that approximately 75,6 percent of all offenders where men whereas only 20,1 percent were female . Thus the fact that there are 3x more men incarcerated than women is but a testament to the fact that men are more violent than women " and several biological and evolutionary and evolutionary explanations can be attributed to that fact - and my opponent has not presented any evidence to demonstrate that the slight disfavour of men in the courthouse can gloss over the fact that men are staggeringly over-represented in crime statistics. Even though criminality have psychologically detrimental effects effecting the offenders, we shouldn"t forget about the damaging effects that criminal acts put upon victims, especially on innocent women who are physically inferior to their male offenders. The sad fact is that more men are murdered than women as you pointed out. However, as opposed to gang-related crimes and homicides that effect men to a much higher extent than women, there is to a certain degree a free choice involved in being a member of a criminal gang (the issue of whether there is a sheer free choice can be up for debate for another occasion), but being an innocent victim by the hands of a superiorly stronger male is something horrific that is definitely not freely chosen. As I pointed out earlier, women are more likely to be victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. Another study that corroborates this sad fact was a report from the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center that reported that more than 1 million sexual assaults were committed against women in 2008. This was represented after a report had come out from the Justice Department that reported that the number of sexual assaults amounted to 182,000 cases of sexual assault, which would have meant that the rate had decreased by 70% since 1993. What they showed was that the report from the methodology used by the Justice Department was flawed. By asking the victims behaviourally based questions such as "has anyone ever forced you to have sex?" it failed to uncover and correctly reflect the number of sexual assault committed in households because victims seldom label their experience as "rape" when someone they know attacked them. By instead asking women if they had been subject to "rape, attempted or other type of sexual attack" the actual number of rapes proved to be significantly higher in 2008 . Partly the reason why unemployment among men is higher than for women is due to the fact that it is the men that have borne the brunt of the job losses and experienced sharper layoffs than women as a result of the economic recession which disproportionally hit male-dominated industries such as construction and manufacturing . However, since we are now seeing an economic recovery, you"ll see on the bottom of my 7th source in my reference list " the source that that you used as well " a graph that shows that the unemployment gap between the sexes has quite rapidly narrowed and men are now rapidly catching up with women in employment rate. In fact, what the diagram shows is that during times of economic prosperity " or at least economic stability " the unemployment rate for women has actually been slightly higher than for their male counterparts. Even though typically male-dominated occupations are more prone to economic downturn during economic hardships " and are thus more immediately stricken in the wake of an economic recession " the economic effects on women and the effect it has on their unemployment rate can to the same degree be cumbersome as the recession lingers on. This was particularly apparent in January last year when the unemployment rate rose from 7% in the preceding month to 7.3% as a direct result of heavy budget cuts that were put in place in state and local governments. Since women make out a large part of local government payrolls, constituting nearly 2/3 of the workforce in the public sector, women were disproportionally hit by the tough austerity measures. This would have been especially hard for single mothers since such households already have a disadvantage due to the fact that they make less money than men (an argument I will expound upon later on during this debate). Though women have more stable occupations, the trade-off for increased security is lower wages. Thus, the increased security protected them initially from the heavy layoffs seen for men. If we were trying to gauge whether women or men are worse on the basis of the definition of "easy" you provided in the first round, you could point out the high extent of male workers that were laid-off during the economic crisis and compare it to, for instance, the economic hardships dealt with by single mothers working in the public sector that not only earn less money but who also experienced heavy layoffs, and on the account of that try to determine which gender has it "easiest". Even though the layoffs were arguably heavier for men, we saw and are now seeing the return to an equal level of unemployment between male and women. However, since the poverty rate is higher for women and because the gender pay gap still exists and continues to persistent (I will delve into these issues in more depth later on during the debate) I would still argue that women fare worse off in economic terms. They definitely don"t have it easier. Because of a lack of writing space, I"ll provide you with more arguments for the next two rounds as well as my reference list (as you might have noticed, I used the Oxford style for referencing). Good Luck!