The Growth of a Woman’s Consciousness: Women´s Movement

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“To do something very common, in my own way” :
The Growth of a Woman’s Consciousness
The history of human civilization has taken centuries to form and it continues to evolve every instant. There has never been talk of a ‘man’s civilization’ or a ‘woman’s civilization’ which is evidence of the fact of both man and woman starting from the same platform. The difference, nevertheless, has been in the trajectory of the evolution of these sub-species. What, however, could have caused this distinction?
The divide between the public and the private spheres has much to do with the formation of the categories of ‘man’ and ‘woman’. It is these spheres that have long determined the status of both and it is no suspense that the public has been associated with man as the private with woman. But what is it that has raised the public-representative to such a high altar leaving the personal-representative down below?
Man and his machismo have attained a sense of permanence in the order of the world- as symbolized by patriarchy. Woman, on the other hand, has attained mere objectification within this all-pervading patriarchal force. The patriarchal logic is simple and effective- the public sustains the personal and the sustainer is more powerful than the sustained. Man belongs to the former category and woman to the latter. What is required, therefore, to return to the harmony with which it all started is an unsettling of the created demarcations of the public and the private. The onus of this task falls, by default, on woman. Why on woman? Well, because power is the ultimate human instinct and why would man want to give it up when he is at its zenith?
So this is, perhaps, what the women’s movement emerges from. There is clearly a need to bring ...

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... men. And that’s what I don’t want. (40)
It is important that we do not totally eliminate or view negatively the role of men in this subject of women’s growth. Men are as much victims of the socially constructed gender roles. Egotism, ambition, achievement are thrust upon men as docile, selfless love is expected of women. If women’s role as such is suffocating, it is but natural for men to feel burdened in their role as well. Therefore, “when women come to understand themselves better, men also will not be troubled when they find the woman who is very strongly creative, but they will let her go ahead in her own way without regarding her as a threat or a fearful tyrant” (Nin 94). “The awakening of dead or sleeping consciousness” of women, therefore, affects not only women but also “men, even those who deny its claims upon them” (Rich 189). It is liberating for both.

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