Gender Inequality In Taxi By Helen Potrebenko

Gender inequality is something women have always struggled with due to the domination from their male counterparts, however, women are not the only ones affected by this. Taking the workforce of a city as an example, women are indeed deprived of the freedom and opportunities that are given to men in terms of choice of career and salary, however this in turn also affects the city as a whole. Helen Potrebenko’s Taxi! gives many examples of such situations, and in my paper I will prove that Potrebenko shows that employment opportunities being limited for women due to patriarchy is what keeps the city from changing in a positive manner. The first thing that comes to mind when I think of the word “city” is home, and home is somewhere where one …show more content…
For instance, when Shannon picks up a businessman, he tells her that, “he [earns] $24,000 to $30,000 a year and [has] 180 people working for him” (37) and Shannon replies by telling him that “women [earn] an average of less than half of what men [earn] and that few women got to be the heads of anything” (37). As the conversation between the two extremely different people continues, it is visible that the man doesn 't care about Shannon 's situation. I think that the reason for this is because that’s how society is shaped, to only care about the rich and more powerful. In this case, that is not the powerless female, Shannon who is expected to not dare to speak up against a man, especially when it comes to talking about something like money, which is a driving force within the city. Being a man, he 's treated better than Shannon, and women like Shannon are not given opportunities to work at higher levels as a result. Not only does this show that women were not considered equals, it also shows that people with power will get rich through private companies because they cheat their way through the system, giving rise to the concept of capitalism. If women were given the oppourtunity, it’s possible that they could have succeeded alongside men in fully meeting the needs of all citizens, however, since …show more content…
presents the daily struggles of life that women have to face as a result of being dominated by the opposite gender and not being given employment opportunities that men are. She shows that these struggles of women and the decisions they make, whether it’s to keep a job they don 't like or to not speak up against men, only result in affecting the city in a negative