For years there has been the continued debate of whether women, and in some cases men, can have it all; that is defined as the general assumption is based on the Western model of what and how having it all is defined. For some, the idea of having it all can be defined in the simplest of measures, family, health, and wellness to the American model that is defined so often towards women which would include family, career, health, wealth, and sometimes many more variables. The article, “Can’t Have It All? Blame Our Extreme Work Culture” by Rana Foroohar specifically addresses the challenges that working American women and men face in determining whether or not to attempt to break the glass ceiling, or to “settle” for compromises and balance within their daily lives of family, work and culture. There are many parameters in which the dilemmas outlined in the article can be addressed. Specific focus will be emphasized in how Marx’s theory of the “dynamics of capitalism” and how it relates to our extreme work culture, gender inequality and the invisible labor of women in the home, and Gilman’s method’s of incorporating evolutionary theory to the roles of women; reproduction, economics, and the divided self.
Marx
Society has seen the male dynamic of superiority, designation as the “bread winner”, or head of household for centuries. Women were specifically assigned to the roles of wife, mother, and nurturer through the process of the sexual or gendered division of labor. However, that has not always been the case. Over centuries of change and shifts in economic development, the roles of women have changed to adapt to their specific roles in society. The status of the individuals in society was defined by sex, age, physical trai...
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...dult males. There is also a direction that children would benefit if there were more of an equal or egalitarian participation between both parents, allowing the child to develop and benefit from interaction by both parents. This could have transcended into the government environment by emphasizing the roles of women whose abilities were more directed towards professional and public life. She arduously agreed that women were more suited to raise children, however that they should not be confined as their drive was at risk of being stifled as the result of not being able to publically express their creativity and intelligence. In applying these ideas today, and to the desire to “have it all”, Gilman would most likely see a necessity of change on the part of the male hegemony that is still present in modern society regarding the roles of the women in the labor force.
This source provided the unique perspective of what was thought to be the perfect household, with a man who worked and a wife who cooked and cleaned. However, it also showed how a woman could also do what a man can do, and in some cases they could do it even better. This work is appropriate to use in this essay because it shows how men talked down to their wives as if they were children. This work shows the gradual progression of woman equality and how a woman is able to make her own decisions without her husband’s input.
At what point does work life start interfering with family life to an extent that it becomes unacceptable? Is it when you don’t get to spend as much time with your family as you would like, or is it the point where you barely get to see your family due to long hours at work? Is it even possible to balance work with family life? Anne-Marie Slaughter, the author of “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All”, believes this balance is impossible to achieve in this day and age. In contrast, Richard Dorment, the author of “Why Men Still Can’t Have It All”, believes that there will never be a day when someone will have it all, certain sacrifices will always have to be made. Both of these articles are similar in the respect that they both examine balancing a demanding career with raising children. The two authors’ views on the subject differ greatly, especially regarding how gender roles have a significant impact on our society.
Slaughter claimed that young men in this time have not yet had to decide between accepting a promotion or other professional opportunities in delaying their goals to spend more time with their children and to support their partner’s career goals. While it is no longer unthinkable for ladies to work outside the home, society still anticipates that men will be providers. The way of life must change to bolster caregiving as an esteemed alternative for guys. Slaughter believes that we’ll create a better society in the process, for all women. The women's activist upset needs to advance into a humanist revolution. Male or female, parting decisions inside families must be free from social defamation. The unrest for human fairness can happen. It is going on. It will happen. How far and how quick is dependent upon
desire to free this narrator from her husband and the rest of the males in her life. She wanted company, activity and stimulation. Which woman of that time or this time should be freely allowed to have. Gilman did an outstanding job of illustrating the position of women of that time, and to an extent, of this time as well, held in their society.
Gilman’s “whole argument” in her book is fairly straightforward. She began by exploring women’s economic dependence on men, forcing women to become more feminine but less human. These women roles would only serve detrimental in their social and economic potential. However, she believed this process or lifestyle would only reverse itself once women learn to stand on their own two feet and fulfill their human potential. Economic independence for women could only benefit the society as a whole and bring true freedom.
Women’s function within society has evolved from a rigid domestic role, towards a more flexible one. There has been a strong push in the last two centuries for women’s rights and the ability for women to stretch out of the domestic sphere into the public sphere. In Western society, concepts of liberalism and the encouragement of autonomy and personal freedom has been used to fuel feminist movements and push forth to give women equal rights. However, not all cultures have moved in this direction, preferring a role-driven society for a variety of reasons such as religion, economic efficiency or tradition. Yet, despite these differences, sources show that there are strong similarities about the ways in which women have maintained their strength
Throughout most of recorded history, women generally have endured significantly fewer career opportunities and choices, and even less legal rights, than that of men. The “weaker sex,” women were long considered naturally, both physically and mentally, inferior to men. Delicate and feeble minded, women were unable to perform any task that required muscular or intellectual development. This idea of women being inherently weaker, coupled with their natural biological role of the child bearer, resulted in the stereotype that “a woman’s place is in the home.” Therefore, wife and mother were the major social roles and significant professions assigned to women, and were the ways in which women identified and expressed themselves. However, women’s history has also seen many instances in which these ideas were challenged-where women (and some men) fought for, and to a large degree accomplished, a re-evaluation of traditional views of their role in society.
...ble to see that it actually incorporates themes of women’s rights. Gilman mainly used the setting to support her themes. This short story was written in 1892, at that time, there was only one women's suffrage law. Now, because of many determinant feminists, speakers, teachers, and writers, the women’s rights movement has grown increasing large and is still in progress today. This quite recent movement took over more then a century to grant women the rights they deserve to allow them to be seen as equals to men. This story was a creative and moving way to really show how life may have been as a woman in the nineteenth century.
Achieving the American Dream is harder for women. The American Dream is becoming harder to achieve for men and women. Companies want men because they do not need maternity leave and there are less complications. Usually, when most people think of the American Dream they think of a house with a white picket fence, two kids, a husband and wife and the husband has a career and the wife stays home. Now more women want to achieve the American Dream, but they want to have the career. It is harder for some of them because of pay, harassment and inequality.
Most Americans would say women are still being oppressed, even if inadvertently, by society’s current structure. Women are typically paid less, put under more pressure to have a career and a family, and are often underrepresented in high profile career fields. Anne-Marie Slaughter would agree. In her essay, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All”, she outlines the ways women are still unable to have a career and family life successfully. She especially focuses on the ways women are constantly being pressure to choose one over the other, or to try to accomplish both, and how much damage this pressure can cause. She writes, “I had been the one telling young women at my lectures that you can have it all, and do it all, regardless of what field you’re in. Which means, I had been in part, albeit unwillingly, of making millions of women feel they are to blame if they cannot manage to rise up the ladder as fast as men and, also have a family and an active home life.” (679). This passage captures the amount of pressure put on young women to commit 100% to their families and their careers simultaneously. Unfortunately, as she also points out, there will be criticism for choosing one over the other as well. Ellen Ullman also understands the pressure on women in their career fields. Her essay, How To Be A Woman Programmer, explores the difficulties for women in a male dominated field.
Recently the concerns of women around their equality in society has become a hotly debated topic in the public spot light. Much of the debate concerns women and the ingrained sexism that permeates most cultures. Many women's activists feel that this ingrained sexism has widened the gap between men and women in a political, social, and economic sense. And for the most part they do have strong evidence to support these claims. Women have suffered through millennia of male dominated societies where treatment of women has been, and in some cases still is, inhuman. Women are treated like subhuman creatures that have only exist to be used for procreate and to be subjugated by men for household use. It has only been very recently that women have become recognized as equals in the eyes of men. Equals in the sense that they have the same political and social rights as males. While the situation has improved, women still have to deal with a male oriented world. Often women in the workplace are thought of as inferior and as a liability. This can be due to concerns about maternity leave, or women with poor leadership skills. But also in part it is due because of the patriarchy that controls all aspects and dynamics of the culture, family, politics, and economy. Even developed countries like The United Kingdom, United States, Germany, and France, could be classified as a patriarchies. These countries may not agree with this notion because of expansive, but not complete changes, that have gradually equalized women in society. However, there are developed countries that openly express a patriarchy and have enacted little societal changes to bring equality to women. Japan is one such country, and t...
Even Though women have revolutionized themselves in relation to the world many other aspects of society have not. This phenomenon, originally coined by Arielle Hochschild in her book The Second Shift, is known as the stalled revolution. In essence while female culture has shifted male culture has not. This has created an unequal, unfair and oppressive atmosphere for women across the nation. The title of Hochschild's book tells it all. The second shift refers to the second shift of work women are and have been burdened with at home. Although they have made enormous leaps within the economy and workforce their gender roles at home and within society remain the same. Male culture and their ideas of female gender roles have not progressed. As a result needs of females have not been met. Working mothers today work more than any other demographic, a rough estimate of this comes out to be a whole extra month of work consisting of twenty four hour work days.
One scholar writes, “Gilman was ahead of her own time… she defied cultural stereotypes… and planted her feminist ideas in her own writings to enlarge the woman’s sense of what was possible” (Quawas 2-3). In this story, which contains the feministic values Petry proclaimed, the story of a woman yearning from freedom from her suffocating nineteenth century role as a wife and mother. She struggles against traditional male values of power, eventually reaching emotional liberation in the end. This story provides a crucial insight into the disastrous results of a woman who has crumbled mentally and physically because of her lack of
She states that human being are the only species to demanded on a man to make change. She should how women are not given the opportunities to be free, and are bond to stay in the shadow of man. Women are warm, care, and should take on their rightful responsibility of bearing a child and keeping the house in order. Gilmans states there is an “… increasing desire of young girls to be independent, to have a career of their own.” Gilmans show how that women are robbed from the intellectual, my being forced to change their though of process of thought my seeing the only jobs as a mother, and a housewife. Women are give a definite allowance, by working the household for a paying the unrightfully debt they own to their father, or husband. Gilmans believed that women needed to be freed from their position in society. Women did to work the part in society, and stop being reprimanded to work only in a home. Gilmans vision was shaped by main intellectual of the 19th century such as utilitarianism, socialism and Darwinism. Women social class depended on the men around her, she was not allowed to work on society class. Women were bound to their husbands and was force to live the life he seen as right. Women wanted to be free from the confining structure of their assigned roles in a
In the past, many people believed that women’s exclusive responsibilities were to serve their husband, to be great mothers and to be the perfect wives. Those people considered women to be more appropriate for homemaking rather than to be involved in business or politics. This meant that women were not allowed to have a job, to own property or to enjoy the same major rights as men. The world is changing and so is the role of women in society. In today’s society, women have rights that they never had before and higher opportunities to succeed.