For example, cultural feminists look to the different values associated with womanhood and femininity as a reason why men and women experience the social world differently. Other feminist theorists believe that the different roles assigned to women and men within institutions better explain gender difference, including the sexual division of labor in the household. Existential and phenomenological feminists focus on how women have been marginalized and defined as the “other” in patriarchal societies. Women are thus seen as objects and are denied the opportunity for self-realization. Gender Inequality: Gender-inequality theories recognize that women's location in, and experience of, social situations are not only different but also unequal to men's.
Discrimination: Still Present Today In today’s society discrimination is a particularly controversial issue. From the end of the 19th century, women’s growth of education, and demands for greater equality of opportunity has increased. [1] The Gender Discrimination Act in 1975 prohibits discrimination against a certain gender in areas of employment. [2] Another highly debatable topic is amount of ethnic minority in the media and its visible under representation as well as stereotypes in news. Minorities use to be slaves, and had very little status in society, but that status was built up to the point where there now suppose to be equals.
It is unclear and has been long debated over when the view of women changed. In Helen Zenna Smith’s novel Not So Quiet… she would debate that The Great War was when women’s roles and gender ideologies transformed because she portrays women as more masculine, has women doing men’s jobs, and the questioning of Nationalism. This brings about a new way for men and women to co-exist more equally in European society. Before the First World War gender roles for women were viewed as the house wife and nurture the children to be civilized beings in society. It was expected that they would rear their young.
Karen Anderson’s Wartime Women: “Sex Roles, Family Relations and the Status of Women during World War II” reexamines the various roles women occupied in wartime America. Anderson argues that though some historians they attribute women’s postwar employment changes simply to economics. Anderson implies that the 1940’s period played a more prominent role in developments, helping to accelerate the economic changes that would come after WWII. Moreover, though such studies exist in abundance today, in 1981 few historians explored the effects of living in a society with severe sex ratios. Anderson points out that despite continuing occupational sex segregation, a lack of appropriate child care, and the lingering negative attitudes regarding female employment, women persisted in gaining employment and opening doors for themselves and later generations.
Women went back to working at home and jobs were taken over by men again. They say that World War One did very little to change the position of women in Britain. The truth is that World War One did change the lives of women but the extent was limited and their role in society was never the same as it had been before 1914. It is important to remember that if it wasn’t for their protest and demonstration before, women’s rights wouldn’t have been on the agenda of the government and change would have taken much longer. With so many young men enlisted in the army, the role women played was crucial, not only to the war
This imbalance in the research is due to the stereotyping of women in years past. Now as more women become better educated and hold prestigious positions among the workforce. This will only make the birth
Women’s Suffrage in America Since the beginning of time women have had a different, sometimes unequal role than men. All over the world women have struggled and still struggle for equality. More specifically, in the United States of America women have really made efforts to justify their human rights. Since the first colonies women have expressed the right to vote and been denied or ignored by men. The Declaration of Independence’s wording specifies “All men are created equal.” Ever since then women have been determined to rewrite those words.
Without the changing role of women, things that we have in everyday life as American’s could possibly not exist. Women not only were more help to the family, but they were helping rebuild the nation. As a whole, women helped clean up the process of urbanization and immigration, helped literature grow, and helped change the ongoing problem of women’s suffrage. After the Civil War, many people from other countries started immigrating to America. As a result, urbanization quickly started going out of control due to lack of communication, too many people being forced into slums, and many other reasons.
They have fought against the traditional stereotype of women as housewife. Athough it is argued that women are still not completely equal, it has broadly widen womens expectations and self esteem. McRobbie highlights how the representation of women has changed through the comparring girls magazines from the 1970's to 1990's. McRobbie's emphasises the shift from representing the importance of getting married and secure, to now, where images show independant, 'stand alone'
Feminists point out that, womens expectations of marriage and life have risen during the last century and are not willing to accept the traditional housewife role. Women have become more successful than men in education and many of them are in paid employment, some of them in managerial positions. This has reduced the economic dependency women have on men, reducing their reasons for marriage therefore changing the patterns of marriage. Women nowadays are more likely to marry because of love and affection. There has been a dramatic increase in the divorce rate in the past 40 years due to changes in the law making it affordable and easier and changes in society making it more acceptable.