True Women and Real Men: Myths of Gender Men and women are equally valuable to society and everyone has their opinions on the qualities that lay within them. There is no right way to act like a man and there is no right way to act like a woman. Society has the biggest effect on genders and their characteristics. “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid’s story specifically gives details about girls’ responsibilities. “Girl” explains how society comes into play when you’re a girl and the effect it has on you in a negative and positive way.
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. It seems like everyone thinks mum will stay at home and do the dishes, her little boy will grow up to become a big, strong man but not her daughter, of course, she is far too busy washing her own children’s dishes. But it is not just women who suffer sexism, men do also. For example: Shelia’s Wheels sell cheaper car insurance to women only, and they say it's because statistics show women to be safer drivers. Would it would be fair for a bank to offer men better rates on loans if stats showed that men were better at paying back loans than women were, utterly ludicrous.
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.
“I want a wife who will keep my clothes clean, ironed, mended, replaced when need be, and who will see to it that my personal things are kept in their proper place so that I can find what I need the minute I need it.” (para. 4). Most of the essay shows how husbands are demanding when it comes to taking care of the family. The writer is trying to get a point across that wives are expected to a whole lot of things perfectly but are not giving the due appreciation. The writer makes her readers aware that she knows what she is talking about in the early parts of the essay because she has experienced it herself.
Her role of a house-wife doesn’t leave her with much of a social life as she has to deal with keeping the house clean, cooking the food for her husband and looking after the children. During New Zealand at these times this was the socially acceptable norm, the hard working husband who supports the family financially and the role of woman at home; cooking, cleaning etc. It doesn’t help that her family isn’t as tightly knit as she’d want it to be. Nig, The eldest son, doesn’t speak to her and has abandoned the family to join a street gang and one of the middle children Boogie is due in court because of trouble with the law. The only family member who seems to support the mother is the Eldest daughter, 13 year-old Grace.
Also, it gives an opportunity for women how to be independent such as cleaning, cooking, running errands, and serving her family. At the same time, by the way girls are taught in their childhood and adolescents, women are to be dependent of the men around them. For example, in earlier times, women are taught to be subordinate to their husbands. They are not allowed to work but to stay home and take care of the family. Similarly, women today are expected to raise their family more than men.
Maybe problems occurred and the negative attention is being focused on a certain person, and then they might use a scapegoat to try and escape the the tension and blame. Most people don’t want to face what they did wrong, so they go to scapegoats to relieve their pressure. Jeffrey Sherman of the University of California, Davis, who co-wrote the study, Why We Kick Others When We’re Down, says, "This is one of the oldest accounts of why people stereotype and have prejudice: It makes us feel better about ourselves, when we feel bad about ourselves, we can denigrate other people, and that makes us feel better about ourselves." Frequently, they use scapegoats as an aggression outlet. A person could bash the scapegoat down repeatedly because they know that the scapegoat cannot fight back, resembling a bully.
The only things women were “good for” was taking care of their children and husband. Women has many obligations and very few choices, it was a women’s obligation to take care of her family as well as, clean, cook, sew, knit, and basically do anything and everything her husband asked or demanded. Women were more salves than actual wives. They were owned by men, whether it was her father, brothers, cousins, and/or husbands, they were viewed more as property than actual humans. Girls had to learn this life style at a very early age, if their mothers were busy gathering food; the daughter was to maintain the household.
I also hink it’s our duty to be the nurturer in the house hold and the husband to be the “bread-winner.” Women wouldnt feel the need to go to work if the men didn’t put us down, or doubt our abilites. I think that women have the right to work just as much as men. I also disagree because we should give jobs to men because women have a job nuturing the family and taking care of the
Not only are they expected to bring in an income along with their husband, they have to assume all housework without the help of their husband. So because their caste system women are encouraged to follow their gender roles. Those in high caste are encouraged to stay stay dependent on their husbands and not seek work outside of the house while those in low and lowest caste double up on responsibilities of home responsibilities as well as contributing to their income through work outside of the home. India’s dowry system keep women constricted to these roles and reiterate the importance of males in their