Paula Jackson
History 2010
John O’Keefe
2/22/16
The Struggles of Females in Society In the book Breadgivers there seems to be an issue on how women are looked upon in the society. It is very interesting how Reb Smolinsky, the father, viewed women and their roles in not only in the society but in the family. Sara Smolinsky, the main character, struggles as a female in her family and society on many different levels. Information from chapter 18 of Documents for America’s History and information in chapter 18 of Give Me Liberty will help support my claims. In Breadgivers, the Smolinsky family moves to America. They struggle to make ends meet. For the women in the house it is hard to find work, to keep food on the table. One of the sisters,
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Sara sold fish and made .25 cents a day sometimes .50 cents earning up to 3 dollars a week. “The Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire and its aftermath also highlighted how traditional gender roles were changing as women took on new responsibilities in the workplace.” 3 A lot of immigrant women had to start working so they could afford rent, food, and other necessities. If women had a lazy husband like Reb that could cause them to have to start working along with their children, “At the time more than 2 million children under the age of fifteen worked for wages.” 3 All of the children in the Smolinsky family worked. And this is when their education to a halt if you were in a poor family because you then had to help support your family. But someone like Fania, one of Reb’s daughters worked during the day and with to a night school in the …show more content…
The way they were introduced to the workforce and still were expected to do to the house work while the men were owners of stores or did nothing. Such a Reb, he expects to live like a king while his wife and own children are trying for work, paying rent, and figuring out where to get their next meal. He never earned to live the best in the house, and to think he was greedy enough to take from his daughters, their education, food, space in the home, and their futures is preposterous. The women of this time went through and lost so much to be treated the way they were after they went into the workforce, cooked, paid bills, and some even put their futures on hold just to make sure family was getting what they
The entire family worked and some had to work in worse or more dangerous working conditions than others. “‘ At the end of the week, he would carry home three dollars to his family, being his pay at the rate of five cents per hour just about his proper share of the total earnings of the million and three-quarters of children who are now engaged in earning their livings in the United States.’”(p.60). This quote shows how Stansislovas has to work in child labor to earn a living. Jurgis sprained his ankle during his job while he was working at the meat packing factory. Ona’s boss Phil Connor harassed and raped her against her own free will.
Women were, and arguably still are, oppressed due to misogyny, or the dislike, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women. An example of a misogynistic belief is the idea that women are inherently intellectually inferior to men, or that women shouldn’t have authority over their own bodies while men should. This is usually caused by sexist stereotypes and beliefs that are present in the media (“Shocking: What [female celebrity] Looks like with No Makeup On!” “New Covergirl Is a Man!?”) and in children’s upbringing (“boys are strong, girls are weak”, “boys go to
“Women as Bread Winners- The Error of the Age” was written by Edward O’Donnell in 1887 (Shi et al 28). I have no specific information about the area in which O’Donnell resided, but he was an American. He was a member of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which was founded in 1886 by Samuel Gompers and was one of the most influential labor unions of the time (“Samuel Gompers and the AFL”).
Have you ever thought about what a family goes through in Afghanistan? That’s what this book the Breadwinner is about this book is written by Deborah Ellis. This book is about a family in Afghanistan when the Taliban were taking over Kabul. “Take care of the others Malali father said to Parvana as he was getting carried down the steps by the Taliban” (Ellis 31). Teens in America have no idea what kid’s go through in Afghanistan.
Naden khaled Ms. Amanda 11C 22/2/2017 Women’s Education and Jobs in The Antebellum Era Although women in the antebellum era were far from seen as equal american citizens, many changes happened that affected the way that the community looks at women. From nothing to schools that helped them learn and help them get a bigger opportunity. Despite how great women are now, long ago they didn’t have the right to work or even to go to schools. Women were expected to sit at home take care of the kids and maybe take care of a farm if she had one. Before the civil war women had somewhat of an education.
Businessmen and factory owners could hire children because they could pay them less than women, which women got paid even less than men. On average, the children would be paid about a dime for a ten to fifteen hour long day. These children were working with heavy, steel machines, making their jobs so dangerous that they would lose fingers, toes, limbs, or even their lives. Also, little education is seen “In the urban tenement picture from Encarta Online Encyclopedia, where the children are not at school. This could mean it is a weekend, but the ration is slim.
Throughout the ages women have faced varying degrees of sexism and during the progressive era this was a very prominent issue, women had finally had enough of being treated as second class compared to white males and simply males in general. They weren’t allowed to vote, own property if married, they were extremely restricted in what types of jobs they could get and often encouraged to just stay home, not to mention the large wage gap between white males and white females ensuring that on their own women would be hard pressed to survive. In many of the divorce cases the women were still required to take care of the children even though the male technically had custody. Sexism all though not as prominent today is still a very big issue, ranging
Because of the poor pay wages workers received, families were forced to send their children. These children were forced to work in unsafe factory conditions. Kelley emphasizes that “... several thousand little girls will be working in textile mills… in the deafening noise of the spinales and the looms spinning and weaving.” She established herself as an equal.
Late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had started off all the waves, and giving women the rights they had deserved. The goal of the wave had been to “open up opportunities” (1). The way that they had planned on doing that was to focus on the women suffrage. During this time getting women the rights to vote were a big deal. Un-ladylike was used as a different term back then.
Throughout history discrimination has had a negative impact on people and has cause certain groups of people to suffer. Discrimination can be against people of different race, religion, gender and sexuality and in the late 1800’s women were one of the groups that were discriminated. Women had to fight hard to obtain the rights they now have in the 21st century and many of the women who fought for equal rights didn’t get to experience those rights since laws in their favor weren’t passed until years and years of fighting. In the late 1800’s American women were discriminated because they were not granted the same rights as men in the workforce, women had to be obedient to their husbands in their marriage and society had certain norms that women
“those who are dependent on daily labor for support.” (Johnson, 4) Children who worked on the mill would work 12 hours or more a day with only approximately 20
Boydston writes, “But if middle-class women were encased in the image of the nurturant (and non laboring) mother, working-class women found that their visible inability to replicate that model worked equally hard against them.” The standard during the Antebellum period was a woman that didn’t do any kind of laborious task other than housework which was thought as being an enriching and awarding process. However, wage-earning women visibly were unable to live up to these new standards because they were forced out of their own gender sphere of domesticity just to find work. During the Antebellum period, it was believed to be a men’s sphere to work and men masculinity was based on the fact of being the main “breadwinner” for the family. By a woman going into this sphere they went against the formation of the two gender spheres.
In Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska, Yezierska depicts an immigrant family living in poverty during the 1920s. The narrator Sara Smolinsky, the youngest daughter out of a family of six watches her family go through marriage, poverty, death, and the evolution of the family dynamic. Sara watches all three of her sisters being forced to marry to men that don’t love because of their status. In the end, Sara decides to move out of the house at 17 to escape the oppressive environment of her Orthodox Jewish father, so she could pursue her dream of becoming an educated teacher. The Bread Givers shows the disconnect between the first and second generation, the alternative gender roles in an immigrant household, and the importance of marriage.
“Women could not be doctors, priests, judges, or lawyers” (Hopkins 8). For several years there was these bias towards men and because of that women were not entitled to vote, did not receive an education unless you were of royalty, and they were forced to surrender any land inherited to them to their husbands or brother. Women were also only allowed to move to a new community by marrying a man from a different
Women. Women’s involvement in the working world have contributed to many items that would be missing from the world today; if they had not been allowed to work.. Women have struggled with sexism in the workplace since before they were even given the chance to try to work. They were taught from a young age that their job was to provide children, cook, and clean for their husbands, while the husband worked and provided the money. What men did not know however was that women were capable of so much more(Jewell, Hannah).