The American Dream Harder to Achieve

The American Dream is a dream full of hope that promises all who live in the United States the chance to succeed in life. Gender inequality has been a problem for many years. Women are often seen as inferior to men and less capable of doing jobs that do not involve cleaning, cooking and taking care of kids, putting them in a box of expectations. Regardless, most women are stepping outside this box of restricted expectations and are going out to achieve their own American Dream. While it may be more difficult for women to achieve the American Dream, new programs are helping to change that.

The American Dream as defined by John Truslow Adams in The Epic of America may not be the dream every person is thinking of. Some believe it to be acquiring materialistic things, others define it as having tons of money, others owning a house and the list goes on. However, the original definition of the dream is the dream that life will be, “better and richer and fuller for every man”. This life can be obtained by taking advantage of opportunities given due to one’s own personal achievements and merits (Adams). The problem with the American Dream is that people no longer believe that they are responsible for their own destinies, but instead their lives of being set in stone for failure. This then makes people give up trying to get where they want to go (Schwarz), this proves especially true for women.Yet, at the same time, it is hard to achieve the dream if opportunities are not offered. Women are tremendously underrepresented in businesses, making up only 5% of business owners. Devin Hughes, a speaker, writer, storyteller and author from Washington DC points out how, “women on average are simply denied the opportunity to advance more frequently than men." This means that it is not the dream that is being denied, but their chance to achieve the dream. If this was to change and women had the same opportunities as men to advance in their chosen fields, the American Dream would be easier to achieve for women.  To believe the American Dream is dead for women is to believe that there is no hope for advancing for any female for that matter. There are, however,  people such as my mentor, Lauren Wiesenthal, who operates a women-owned search firm. She is living her American Dream, getting there with a lot of hard work and opportunities. If more opportunities arose for women, more could be able to achieve their American Dream, like she did.

A deterrent of a women’s American Dream can come from income inequality. It is a known fact that men and women do not get paid equally. In fact, statistics show that women are not making enough money to achieve the American Dream(Haltiwager). Make no mistake, no matter the ethnicity of the women, the men of that same ethnicity will on average be paid more than the women. A woman earns around 80 cents to a man’s dollar, that may not sound like a lot but with constant accumulation, if a man earns a thousand dollars, a woman will only earn eight hundred(Hughes). That is two hundred dollars less, is this fair? No. For women to not be able to advance or accumulate as equal as men, is making the dream for women harder than it needs to be.  

The disadvantages women face seems as if no women will be able to achieve the dream, but, programs have been developed in order to help them achieve the dream. Girls Inc. for example, is a program that provides girls in middle school through high school with courses on developing financial literacy skills. This will later help those girls achieve their American Dream by giving them the tools they need to wisely deal with money. Another program, Girls on the Run, develops girl's confidence and teaches them habits of healthy relationships and ways to deal with stress (Mosles). There are even programs that assist in providing opportunities for women to own their own businesses, such as the U.S Small Business Institute (SBA). This program provides women with the resources needed to grow their business and compete in the global market. These are just a few examples of the programs that help women achieve the American Dream they long for. There will continue to be programs like Girls Inc, Girls on the Run and SBA until opportunities for women become more plentiful and equal to those of men.

The American Dream can be achieved, though sometimes it may seem like it can’t. Just because a certain race or gender can achieve it more easily than the other doesn’t mean that the dream is dead. It’s harder to obtain, but it is certainly not dead. With that being said, we should work towards a better America where opportunities are equal for all. Only then, would the American Dream be more attainable for both men and women.