Women carry out the triple burden in the household; the domestic labour, emotional labour, and paid labour. As shown in the item most of this work is ‘unpaid and hardly recognised work at all’. Oakley argues the only way women will gain independence and freedom in society is for the role of the housewife to be removed aswell as the present structure of the family. Wilmott and Young believed the family is symmetrical and that both husband and wife have joint conjugal roles making the family a functional institution and their research showed that men do help women with housework. Radical feminists such as Dobash and Dobash also disagree with Willmott and Young’s theory that the family is symmetrical.
The Depression hit women, like other minority groups in American society, similarly harsh because of that payrolls of many communities and private companies were open only to males. The main role of women during the Great Depression was that of the homemaker. Some women had gone through college level education and, like their male counterparts, were having a difficult time of finding employment. Those with families had the task of keeping their family together, as the traditional view of motherhood role, when the principle moneymaker of the family was out of work. However, some women joined the work force and would do jobs that men previously had held.
Abigail Adams was one of the first women to question male superiority and the importance of laws for women which ultimately led to establishment of Women’s Rights. For women in America life in the early 18th century was associated with domestic activities. They were required to take care of household and raise the children while men were expected to support family with food and other common needs in order to survive. Even women who belonged to the upper class and had maids to help around the house were still expected to stay at home and be by the side of their husbands when necessary. Marriages were usually based on economic partnership and cultural believes.
Not a man, of course. Back then men were viewed as superior because that’s all they were ever taught. “It takes a lot of dishes and a lot of washing up, for mum to build an athlete” (Fairy Liquid and the Olympics) this reinforces the idea that women do the household chores in service to the males of the house. The implication that housework is purely a woman’s work is completely unacceptable in today’s day and age where women are seen as strong and independent. The unequal distribution of domestic responsibilities has held women back for generations; it still today continues to hinder women’s progression in the work-place.
Many turned to prostitution to make ends meet, or joined convents to work as servants for the nuns. The attitude towards women, their treatment and their rights, underwent many changes during the Renaissance. During feudal times women were given more liberties and enjoyed freedoms. They could own land and had many of the rights men had. However, this period where so many great changes had been made in the church, in literature, and in all other artistic areas, women took a big step backward in their fight for equality.
Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen and Punishment by Rabindranath Tagore are both stories that have women that are conflicted and bounded in a man’s world. In Hedda the play focused on a Victorian high class living society on a woman named Hedda Gabler who only cared about herself and had no qualms with manipulating her friends and family. On the other hand, Punishment focused on an agrarian and poor society about two brothers, one who killed his wife and blamed it on Chandara, Chidam’s wife and she cared about her family especially her husband. Hedda and Chandra are two people who have different personalities and were brought up in two different worlds. Despite these differences, both stories surrounding these two women are realistic and of real women who are conflicted in their role as women in a man’s world and this ultimately led them to take control of their life even if it meant killing themselves.
These were at first common among the educated, urban, wealthy and middleclass dwellers (.Reynolds, Jenny, and Penny Mansfield 1) This later spread to rural dwellers. Women were oppressed and were not allowed to talk about how they were dissatisfied or mistreated in their marriages. During this period, opposite-gender marriages were practiced, and girls were marrying at a remarkably young age. Women were submissive to their husbands, and marriages were mainly planned, other than the couples
Lohman 1 Gerald (Jerry) Lohman Bill Reyer COR 300 Exploration of the Liberal Arts 27 April 2011 The Men in Her Life “The Awakening” describes the social standing of New Orleans Creole women of the Victorian era. The women do not define themselves. They are defined by the men. Their lives are devoted to their fathers, their husbands and finally their children. They are mother-women who have no lives of their own and, in most cases; they are fine with their position in society.
The movement helped bring about major changes in the lives for women as a whole, and also in everyday life of others in the United States. Before the women begin to act out about the treatment they received for society, their expected roles was to sit home, bear children, clean the house, clean the clothes and cook. Tired, stressed and frustrated women had many demands that the societal expectations of them change, from being servile house-bound creatures expected to save themselves for one man in marriage, after and during this movement women were able to get professional and blue-collar jobs that were available only for men. Women were treated as though they were second class citizens and not as an equal to man. It put the demands for women’s equality, religion, sports, marriage and child bearing on a higher scale.
Story of an Hour and Yellow Wallpaper It was the norm of the society in the nineteenth century to have women dependent on the males. Women were most often than not, regulated by their spouses, and were expected to do nothing but make life, and living, an easy experience for their husbands; in return, the women of that era, were loved, protected, and cared for by their husbands. It was while ensuring that these norms of the society were maintained, that both women in the short stories, “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, were destroyed by death and madness respectively. In the two stories, both women were trapped in a situation in which they would have preferred not to be in, with the husband and the expectation of the society being the cause of their imprisonment. However, it should be understood that in neither of the situations were the husband’s actions intentionally done; instead, they too were living up to society’s expectations in order to maintain social order.