Sexism in American Society Sexism is a long-standing historical and global problem. Nowadays, many countries still exists with the concept that a man has more power than a woman and women should listen to men, especially in American society. Even though the practice of feminist movement have never stopped, hostile sexism and benevolent sexism is still very common in American society. The relationship between Lou, Mindy and Albert in A Visit From The Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan) reveals the hostile sexism, benevolent sexism and self-discrimination in women in American society because it shows how a powerful man despises a less powerful woman and how women discriminate themselves. Hostile sexism is a negative emotion directed towards women such as anger, resentment, revile and so on.
The common perception of marriage is that it was originally weighted heavily in favour of the male member of the couple, and that this has shifted slowly to a more even-handed arrangement in recent years. This essay will examine the question of how accurate this belief really is. Historically, marriage was highly unequal. While the husband took the role of breadwinner and went out to earn the necessary money to support the family, his wife was expected to stay at home and look after the more mundane tasks that make up the day-to-day running of a household. As the former role was commonly seen as more valuable than the latter, this often meant that the husband held most of the power, such as deciding where they would live, how resources were distributed, etc.
We see two of these characters in Delia from Zora Neale Hurston’s story “Sweat” and John’s wife in Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The male dominators in these stories are clearly driven by their necessity to control and feel superior, leaving their spouses feeling trapped and suppressed but yet still holding on to a faint glimpse of loyalty and love they feel for their oppressors. It is a natural ambition to want to have control and authority in your life. The problem we sometimes encounter is that this comes at the expense of another person. Men like John from “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Sykes from “Sweat” are examples of how this typically happens, especially in marriage.
Overall it could therefore be argued that rather than partners becoming more equal, women now have to carry a ‘dual burden’, whereby she is responsible for two jobs of unpaid or paid labour. Factors such as patriarchy and conforming to a gender script will lead to these divisions. Secondly, it could be argued that the money management within a family has an effect on the power relations between couples. Edgell argues that the reason why men are likely to take the decisions is because they earn more; women usually earn less than their husbands, and as a result of being dependant on them, have less say in the decision making. Similarly, Michelle Barrett and Mary McIntosh additionally argue that men usually make the decisions about spending on important items.
Modern context in where social movement and increasing gender and equality threaten the traditional male dominance may be directed on those woman who challenge the power of a man and the status (e.g. career women), as well as towards women who are alleged as using their sexual appeal to gain power over men. However, sexual reproduction and the dependency and intimacy that man have on women and the domestic fulfillment of women. These roles create a dependency and intimacy between the two counterbalances the sexist hostility with a subjectively benevolent view of women. As per the 22-item ambivalent sexism Inventory (ASI; Glick & Fiske, 1996) initiated and validated in six
Believing sexism will go away without putting major changes in place, is not a reality. Sexism blatantly exists in the work place. Obvious (and most common) examples of this would be: women are often paid less than their male counterparts for the same position, men often receive rapid job promotions in comparison to women and women are usually the targets of gender based harassment. Women frequently struggle with the lack of pay they receive, in comparison to their male counterparts. A woman working in the same job as a man will usually earn less, despite the fact that she may have the same or better training, education, and skills required for the job ("Study Shows Female Managers in Britain Earn Less than Men, and Equality Could Be 57 Years Away."
A patriarchy is defined as a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it. Such systems currently exist in several forms and areas around the world; however, the most common place for these patriarchies is in our literature. Men are distorted by patriarchy both in being socially labeled as aggressive but, also shamed as they look into the mirror and see themselves. Shakespeare uses polarizing examples of feminism in Hamlet. He depicts women as completely sexual creatures and also devalues women in the eyes of men.
(Aeschylus 116). Intelligence and cleverness, while celebrated in a man, are threatening characteristics in a woman. In the palace of Argos, Clytaemnestra has been having an open affair with Aegisthus. The chorus, who acts as the voice of the common man, and therefore the voice of morality, condemn her for this affair even though it is common practice for men in ancient Greece to have many extramarital affairs themselves. In this way Aeschylus overlooks the double standards placed upon the women of the time period, but he also, perhaps unwittingly, sets up Clytaemnestra as the antagonist of the plays.
The older couple that was observed showed the common construction of a relationship in which the women was the household caretaker and the men took care of the “manly” things. Although there is a division of labor in human affairs between the sexes, there are changing social expectations, which are reflected in somewhat different gender roles at different time (Neuman, M.D, 2013). Through the observation I realized that both men and women no longer have specific “roles” it is now a whoever can get it done should get it done type of attitude. With this new attitude women can now by financially responsible for the family such as the case with the younger couple I observed. Many of the things that the older couple exhibited was frowned upon by the younger couple.
Such as women can not perform manual work as well as men, on the other hand, a man’s entire chemistry is different allowing him to be less emotional than a woman. Jane Addams and her colleague Ellen Gates Starr founded Hull House a place for down and out women. Jane treated these women as friends and ignoring their faults, became very close to these women. Being close to these women allowed Jane to understand their struggle but much of the information she gathered remained unpublished. She saw social differentiation as a block that society needed to get over, infuriately she herself was a victim.