Throughout the history of the United States, let alone the world, women have faced a lack of economic independence that caused them to become dependent on their fathers or husbands. According to sociologist and author Charlotte Perkins Gilman, active around the turn of the 20th century, this lack of economic independence amongst women has a direct relationship with gender inequality. As per her theory regarding this relationship, Gilman identifies three factors that help to cause gender inequality: gender socialization, sociobiology, and a Marxist emphasis. That is, girls are taught to be different from boys beginning at a young age, there biological differences between women and men, and women are prone to more submissive roles within families …show more content…
During my time in the program, I distinctly remember my two chefs adamantly encouraging the female students to go into baking and pastry arts if any of us decided to pursue a career in the food industry. Their reasoning for doing so was that culinary is a much more stressful and physically demanding field, implying that it is more suitable for men, while baking and pastry arts requires more precision and meticulous work. While this seems innocent enough, I would have run into a problem had I followed their suggestion due to the fact that baking and pastry receives much less prestige and promotional opportunities than culinary does. Ultimately, this drastic difference between levels of prestige and room for growth between the two fields results in unequal opportunities for greater economic stability, with the woman-dominated field of baking and pastry arts lacking compared to culinary arts. Had I trusted the wisdom of my instructors and pursued a career in baking and pastry arts, I would have unknowingly denied myself greater prestige and opportunities—and thus more money—by choosing the field that is more forgiving when it comes to my lack of bodily …show more content…
Within my own life, gender socialization has caused me not to pursue lucrative jobs in career fields that are “for men,” while sociobiology could have deterred me from entering the more physically demanding but rewarding field of culinary arts in favor of the less prestigious field of baking and pastry arts. As for Gilman’s Marxist emphasis, my co-worker has unfortunately lost her economic independence simply because she had to give up her job in order to give her son the attention he needs. Overall, while writing this essay, I was disheartened to discover that it was easy for me to identify the aforementioned examples, but I also realized that it is not as bad as it once was for women—it is a lot easier for women to rebel against gender inequality now. Despite these advances in freedom, however, I feel that Gilman’s theory is relevant when it comes to explaining the social world due to the fact that gender inequality still exists today, and it can still have an impact on a woman’s economic independence even though it is not as overt. With that being said, Gilman’s theory will continue to be useful because it helps to identify the roots of gender inequality that need to be eliminated if we ever want complete gender equality within our
Industrialization in the United States created increased employment opportunities in factories and metropolitan regions, liberating women from conventional homemaking responsibilities. Consequently, women sought independent lives, gaining financial independence and personal expression (Source 4). Women from various racial and cultural backgrounds, particularly those from working-class neighborhoods, entered the workforce, advocating for better working conditions and fair pay. These advancements shattered preconceived notions of gender roles, laying the groundwork for future women's rights
There are 3,418,059,380 women in the world (Geohive.com, 2015) and yet, women, in 2010, got paid a staggering 19% difference in wage on a universal standpoint (Economist, 2011). Such contributing factors as this (wage), has created an overwhelming notion of gender inequality leading to such things as segregation in the workforce across the globe. Ethos is universally known as the ethical appeal, convincing one of a person’s character (Courses.durhamtech.edu, 2015). The staggering numbers of economic contributions of women compared to men has however, highlighted that there are fewer women to men ratios in the workforce due to the where we live, maternal implications (pregnancies), upbringing and education.
These events would be the Industrial Revolution and Civil War, and both play crucial roles in changing gender roles as well as in increasing the status of women. With the innovation of technology, Industrial revolution was a milestone of the change of gender norms as well as women’s status since the occurrence of the industrial revolution had created and brought tremendous job opportunities to the U.S. societies. Being financially independent has become a key factor of gender
The 20th century saw a major increase in women’s rights, getting a step nearer to gender equality. It is defined as the act of treating men and women equally, having the same access to right and opportunities no matter the gender. Although it is not a reality in our world, we do have advanced in comparison to the last century. At the begging of the 20th century women still were considered the weak gender. Their education consisted on learning practical skills such as sewing, cooking, and using the new domestic inventions of the era; unfortunately, this “formal training offered women little advantage in the struggle for stable work at a liveable wage” (1).
Since the earliest times in history, women were treated inferior to men. From birth, she would face constraints on her economic independence, legal identity, and access to her property. These restraints would narrow her choice of marriage or spinsterhood. Her economic dependency was ensured by her father or husband, and women were not permitted to own land (Berkin 4-6). After she wedded, all of a woman’s rights and property became that of her husband's (Berkin 5-6).
I am WOMAN, hear me ROAR; the phrase women have been screaming since the beginning of time! The inequality of women is fundamentally out of sorts and despite improvements over the last 100 years, there’s far more work and acceptance that needs to be obtained before women have true equality in all aspects of their lives. In this paper, I will show how women incur inequalities in just about every aspect of their lives today, even after we have proven that we are more than equal to our counterparts. I will compare and contrast the inequalities of women in the Southern Baptist and Northern Baptist denominations of Christianity and then Liberal and Orthodox Jews. My initial conclusion is that women like other minorities will continually have
Gisel Mendoza March 4, 2018 Mr. Miller AP English The Outcome of Degrading a Woman Historically, women have been seen as less valuable to society. Their roles were to have children and serve their husband.
The Hamlin’s had no physical experience with this condition due to its rarity in western countries. After much literary research, correspondence with other doctors (pg.77) and help from the revolutionary fistula discoveries of Dr James Marion Sims, who completed the first successful fistula operation and opened the world’s first fistula hospital in New York, the Hamlin’s felt confident enough to begin fistula operations on the patients. (pg.80) Hamlin depicts the gender inequality ever-present in the Ethiopian community. This is evident as she explains that women who suffer from obstetric fistula will be shunned from their village, and as a result induces physical and psychological trauma.
The women were expected to create a happy home, guard the religion, and the morality of her family. The unmarried and married women who tried to seek work outside the home faced limited employment opportunities because of their gender. Women were expected to only focus on domestic duties and her role were limited to continue living in the man’s world. Women roles were expected to be in line with the culture and norms set by the society. The American culture perceived that women were not intellectually and emotionally stable to be involved in the complex world of work and, therefore, women did not take up leadership and political roles.
Moreover, she illuminated the imbalanced nature of the andocentric society and its disregard for the qualities of womanhood evident in citizenship. Accordingly, the existing male-dominated culture needed to be feminized; it needed to reevaluate social values and attitudes towards women and women's role within the economy and society at large. Education, for Gilman, was the most effective way to transform society, so the most effective way to feminize society was to feminize education. In comparing education for citizenship with education for motherhood, Gilman stressed social responsibility as central to
The gender wage gap can be explained by the statistic; the female-to-male wage ratio of 2010 was 77% (Ferris & Stein, 2014 pg 255). This means that in 2010, the average female made 23% less in yearly earnings compared to men. Ethnicity can also be included to explain the wage gap. This can be explained by the statistic; Asian males make the most money compared to all other racial groups (Median, 2012). The symbolic interactionism view on gender can be explained as “Gender is learned through the process of socialization; gender inequalities are reproduced through interactions with family, peers, schools, and the media” (Ferris & Stein, 2014 pg 247).
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).
Gender Inequality: A Woman’s Struggle in “The Yellow Wallpaper” In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman captures the lives of women in a society based on societal expectations during the late nineteenth century. She focuses on the issue of gender inequality where women were often discriminated against and expected to fulfill the role of a perfect wife and mother. The narrator is based on on Gilman’s personal experience of suffering from her treatment for postpartum depression due to the social restrictions on women which represents a reflection on women's social status in society. The narrator, who remains anonymous, is depicted as a depressed and isolated prisoner who is oppressed under her husband’s control and struggles to break free.
Liberal feminists argue that women have the same capacity as men for moral reasoning and work habits, but that patriarchy, particularly the sexist division of labor, has historically denied women the opportunity to express and practice this reasoning. These dynamics serve to shove women into the private sphere of the household and to exclude them from full participation in public life. Hence, gender inequality is a hazard not only to the highly capable, talented and deserving women but also to the economy as a whole. Both awareness of the existing gender inequality and implementation of policies that address gender inequities need to be strengthened. Reducing the amount of time women spend on unpaid work is also essential.
It is proven that gender does contribute to a difference in wages in society and there for another cause of wealth inequality. The U.N. has found that gender discrimination is still a significant factor in holding many women and children around the world in poverty. In many countries, there is a gender income gap in the labor market. For example, in America, statistics show that “The median full-time salary for women is 78 percent of that of men”; despite the fact women make up half the workforce. One of the reasons women earn less income/money in their lifetime is usually because they are single mums and/or have more people/family to support on their