A Woman's Claim: Claiming An Education, By Adrienne Rich

1278 Words3 Pages

A Woman’s Claim

In earlier generations when you were born you were told to stay in school, go to college, get an education, and have a successful career. However, this was mostly told to the boys. Girls, on the other hand, were told to dress nice, be ladylike, and fix their hair so they can find a husband with a successful career and be a mother. Although more and more women are going to college and becoming very successful in a “man’s world,” they still are not being taken seriously. In the essay, “Claiming an Education,” written by Adrienne Rich, she talks about how women are not looked at in the same way educational wise or even fully respected academically. Rich’s essay applies to experiences in my life as a teenage girl in high school.

In school you cannot just show up to get an education, you have to want an education. Rich wrote in his essay, “The first thing I want to say to you who are students, is that you cannot afford to think of being here to receive an education; you will do much better to think of being here to claim one (608).” Rich is saying claiming an education is taking what you deserve and what’s rightfully yours. Claiming an education is doing it for yourself, as for receiving an education is doing it “just because”. He is saying education cannot be something you just …show more content…

For example, at my high school there are auto tech programs and a CISCO program. There are very few females who join these programs and sometimes no females at all. They get discouraged by the amount of males in the program and people asking them “Are you sure you want to do this program?” which makes them feel as though they do not belong. Society does not support women if women choose to take on a more “manly” career. When females do get accepted into these program everyone is in awe. This right here shows that women are perceived as not being equal to men in career

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