In Judith Bennett’s articles titled Confronting Continuity, she stressed the importance of long-term history and how it has formed the lives of women today. In her thesis she states “There has been much change in European women’s experiences as workers over the last millennium, but very little transformation in their work status in relation to that of men” (74). In other words, women’s overall work has changed throughout history and in fact, even improved, however their relation to men has always been lesser in comparison. She describes this inferiority by titling it a “patriarchal equilibrium.” Defined, this equilibrium gives men full dominance and are expected to make decisions for the common good based on their personal ideology, culture, and society. This is the structure …show more content…
that Bennett argues underlies an institution of social structure in which male is dominant and everyone has learned to accept. The growth of achievement of men and women are directly related and continue to develop in a parallel manner throughout history. As we know, women’s rights have made huge breakthroughs. We can now vote, join the military, and work in labor intensive jobs, but even through this transformation, we still have this unequal power share between men and women that is an ongoing continuity throughout history. Bennett makes a point by asking what we consider advancement. We hear about all of this change that happened through time but we need to ask ourselves if it really is benefiting women. Bennett used the example of a Brewster, someone who brews ale in the time of the 1300s to the 1600s.
This was a domestic process that women carried out in their everyday lives from their home similar to laundry and other household chores. By the time the 1600s hit, this job was taken away from women because the business became profitable and was quickly turned into an industry. It was now male dominated and was no longer looked at as women’s work because men found that they could actually make a living off of it and it became prestigious. The intention of men at this time wasn’t to make women’s lives substandard and take away their jobs. It is something that just gradually happened due to the patriarchal equilibrium that Bennett explains throughout this article. Women didn’t think of this as a bad thing. It was just simply change. Change is good but did this specific event benefit women or hurt them? Even today this patriarchy is present as a mindset in our modern world. We have a lot of bias that are already in place from the time we are born that developed from where we grew up, our social status, and who our parents were, which is why this lack of equal power share still exists
today. The evidence is clear after much research, that women make around 75 cents to every dollar a man makes in the same industry. The question I have in regard to this article is why didn’t Bennett include that statistic? I believe that her example as a Brewster aids her position on this topic however, due to a lack of evidence I’m not sold. She expresses repeatedly that from generation to generation women continuously are underpaid and work beneath men but she never gives any other concrete examples. There are a few other supporting statements of evidence mentioned, one being that women whom receive a college degree have the same earning as a man that graduated from high school (81). This is great evidence but due to a lack of footnotes we cannot conclude anything from this piece of information. I also found that Bennett did a great job of explain why we see change as transformative. She claims it’s a culture issue or it’s simply how we were taught. What I wish she would have done is incorporate more based off her point of view as to why it’s not transformative but rather a continuity of inequality. The points she addressed in this article were good and I think she is correct in many aspects however I cannot come to a conclusion because of a lack of information and specific examples.
Industrialization had a major impact on the lives of every American, including women. Before the era of industrialization, around the 1790's, a typical home scene depicted women carding and spinning while the man in the family weaves (Doc F). One statistic shows that men dominated women in the factory work, while women took over teaching and domestic services (Doc G). This information all relates to the changes in women because they were being discriminated against and given children's work while the men worked in factories all day. Women wanted to be given an equal chance, just as the men had been given.
... and men of the community would freely pick their jobs without being demanded. Both women and men received an evenly amount of hours. Most of the time the women would be taking care of household chores and the children while the men produced crops and did most of the farming. At one point a man named Lewis Ryckman, suggested a business of shoemaking which successful.
“The Pastoralization of Housework” by Jeanne Boydston is a publication that demonstrates women’s roles during the antebellum period. Women during this period began to embrace housework and believed their responsibilities were to maintain the home, and produce contented and healthy families. As things progressed, housework no longer held monetary value, and as a result, womanhood slowly shifted from worker to nurturer. The roles that women once held in the household were slowly diminishing as the economy became more industrialized. Despite the discomfort of men, when women realized they could find decent employment, still maintain their household and have extra income, women began exploring their option.
A huge part of the economical grow of the United States was the wealth being produced by the factories in New England. Women up until the factories started booming were seen as the child-bearer and were not allowed to have any kind of career. They were valued for factories because of their ability to do intricate work requiring dexterity and nimble fingers. "The Industrial Revolution has on the whole proved beneficial to women. It has resulted in greater leisure for women in the home and has relieved them from the drudgery and monotony that characterized much of the hand labour previously performed in connection with industrial work under the domestic system. For the woman workers outside the home it has resulted in better conditions, a greater variety of openings and an improved status" (Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850, pg.4) The women could now make their own money and they didn’t have to live completely off their husbands. This allowed women to start thinking more freely and become a little bit more independent.
Feminist theory, which occurred from feminist doings, marks to twig the kind of masculinity disproportion by scrutinizing women's mutual roles and lived participation; it has industrialized patterns in a range of self-controls in mandate to answer to problems such as the mutual making of femininity and masculinity. Some of the past whereabouts of feminism have been scorned for fascinating into report only antediluvian, conventional, experienced evaluations. This operated to the contraption of genealogically limited or multiculturalist treatments of feminism.
One of the most common expectations for women then is that they are responsible for doing the chore of cleaning whether it is cleaning the house, doing the laundry. The McGuffey Readers mentions the women’s duty to clean in a multiple places. In this handbook it gives clear directions to the woman on what she is to do when cleaning, “This ceremony completed, and the house thoroughly evacuated, the next operation is to smear the wall and ceilings with brushes dipped into a solution of lime… (Gorn 111).” The book explains how it is the women’s job to thoroughly clean the house once a year in a manner that sounds very laborious! It further states, “The misfortune is, that the sole object is to make things clean (Gorn 112).” In this part of the book it is very clear that it is saying that the woman’s duty is to clean. In Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey it illustrates this in a couple of passages. For example, one woman wrote in her diary, “Oh! Horrors how shall I express it; it is the dreaded washing day . . . but washing must be done and procrastination won’t do it for me (Schlissel 83).” Although this woman obviously did not like doing the washing she saw it as her job to do. In addition, the book describes this scene, “The banks of a river would be lined with women who carried their kettles, their washtubs, and piles of unwashed linen (Schlissel 82).” Again, it is the women who are doing the cleaning. The McGuffey Readers being the handbook that young girls would read in school taught them that it was their place to do the cleaning. It is apparent that they took that into consideration as shown by the Women’s Diaries and even today is seen as their role.
Society has long since considered women the lessor gender and one of the most highly debated topics in society through the years has been that of women’s equality. The debates began over the meaning between a man and woman’s morality and a woman’s rights and obligations in society. After the 19th Amendment was sanctioned around 1920, the ball started rolling on women’s suffrage. Modern times have brought about the union of these causes, but due to the differences between the genetic makeup and socio demographics, the battle over women’s equality issue still continues to exist. While men have always held the covenant role of the dominant sex, it was only since the end of the 19th century that the movement for women’s equality and the entitlement of women have become more prevalent. “The general consensus at the time was that men were more capable of dealing with the competitive work world they now found themselves thrust into. Women, it was assumed, were unable to handle the pressures outside of the home. They couldn’t vote, were discourages from working, and were excluded from politics. Their duty to society was raising moral children, passing on the values that were unjustly thrust upon them as society began to modernize” (America’s Job Exchange, 2013). Although there have been many improvements in the changes of women’s equality towards the lives of women’s freedom and rights in society, some liberals believe that women have a journey to go before they receive total equality. After WWII, women continued to progress in there crusade towards receiving equality in many areas such as pay and education, discrimination in employment, reproductive rights and later was followed by not only white women but women from other nationalities ...
“Father Knows Best”, a popular sitcom in the 1950s, was a program where the archetypal father’s wisdom was solomonic and his judgment was left unquestioned. A patriarchal social hierarchy was maintained in the idealized post-war family. The 1950s in the United States were the golden age of masculinity, as books like The Modern Woman: The Lost Sex, to decree motherhood as the duty and civic responsibility of women, became best sellers (Rhode, 1947). Luckily, the United States has unshackled themselves from the imposing views of the mid-20th century, now fully accepting female leaders and workers as contributors to the economy. Yet, there is still a struggle and the modern mindset remains gilded. Gender can act as a divider. Science lends itself to the study of the human body, of the mind, and of human habits. The distinctive tendencies of men and women, as well as the completely different biological makeup, establish the two sexes. Yet women have barriers, invisible to the naked eye, that discourage them from participating in various things, things that are seen as male dominant fields, such as engineering (a current issue in the United States) (only 17% to 19% of engineering degrees go to women) (Catalyst). The professional world of America is vying for more female presence in particular spheres of influence. Gender roles have been exuded and exhausted during history (as seen in shows like “Father Knows Best”), in turn creating mental blockades for the vast majority of women, ultimately limiting their social and economic capabilities. This is a global issue. In some nations, women have become the “lesser” of society, not able to overcome sexism that is sometimes violent and aggressive (Berg, 17). The spectrum of gender inequality ...
As claimed by the editors of our Anthology, “The forces of Urbanization and Industrialization that led to the decline of slavery also undermined traditional roles for women”. Men and women have been viewed as totally playing different roles in the society, women who are deemed to be the weakest of the two sexes and also more vulnerable should be relegated to the home where she’ll only play the roles of a wife,mother and reproductive item.
Throughout history, women have remained subordinate to men. Subjected to the patriarchal system that favored male perspectives, women struggled against having considerably less freedom, rights, and having the burdens society placed on them that had been so ingrained the culture. This is the standpoint the feminists took, and for almost 160 years they have been challenging the “unjust distribution of power in all human relations” starting with the struggle for equality between men and women, and linking that to “struggles for social, racial, political, environmental, and economic justice”(Besel 530 and 531). Feminism, as a complex movement with many different branches, has and will continue to be incredibly influential in changing lives.
Men have dominated the workforce for most of civilization up until their patriotic duties called away to war. All of a sudden, the women were responsible for providing for their family while the men were away. Women went to work all over America to earn an income to insure their family’s survival. Women took all sorts of jobs including assembly line positions, office jobs, and even playing professional baseball. When the men returned home from war, the women were expected to resume their place as housewives. The women who had gotten a taste of the professional life decided that they wanted to continue working. Thus, the introduction to women in a man’s working environment began. Women were not taken seriously at first, because they were stepping into a “man’s world”.
Gender stratification is the cuts across all aspects of social life and social classes. It refers to the inequality distribution of wealth, power and privilege between men and women at the basis of their sex. The world has been divided and organized by gender, which are the behavioural differences between men and women that are culturally learnt (Appelbaum & Chambliss, 1997:218). The society is in fact historically shaped by males and the issue regarding the fact has been publicly reverberating through society for decades and now is still a debatably hot topic. Men and women have different roles and these sex roles, defined to be the set of behaviour’s and characteristics that are standard for each gender in a society (Singleton, 1987) are deemed to be proper in the eyes of the society. They are as a matter of fact proper but as time move on, the mind-set of women changes as well, women also want to move on. However the institutional stratification by the society has become more insidious that the stereotypical roles have created a huge barrier between men and women. These barriers has affected women in many aspects such as minimizing their access on a more superior position in workforce organization, limits their ownership of property and discriminates them from receiving better attention and care.
It is, therefore, natural for most companies to think that women cannot be as capable as men in terms of assuming strenuous or challenging positions because women, by default, become less participatory and more vulnerable when they start to have family and children. Apparently, this situation has led to various gender discriminations in the labor market. In conclusion, although the roles of men and women have radically changed over the turn of the century, it is still inevitable to have various gender-related occupational differences because the social and biological roles of women and men do not really change. Society still perceives women as the home makers and men as the earners, and this perception alone defines the differing roles of men and women in the labor market.
Society has gender specific roles expected for women and men. Women are limited to the traditional roles of cleaning, cooking, and taking care of children. Patriarchal society, in which men rule, imposes these roles on women (Harrison, 302). Men run institutions and make the laws. In fact, social institutions have an impact on the relationship between labor and gender. Different types of jobs are associated with both genders. Society sees women as caring and emotional. Therefore, expects that women will choose careers such as nurses, teachers, or flight attendants. When it comes to men, society sees them as powerful and without emotion, associates them with power and authority, and expects them to be lawyers, doctors, or chief executive officers. This is a source of inequality because these different associations to jobs generate income differences. Men produce more money than women do because there are fewer women engaging in politics or business careers. Women are not socially expected to perform these jobs: “While women represent 50 per cent of the world population, they perform nearly two thirds of all working hours, receive one-tenth of world income and own less than 1 per cent of world property” (Harrison, 296). Women are as smart as men are, yet they do not have the opportunities to prove that. From a radical theory
Women’s subordination within the labour market is seen by Marxist feminists as suiting the needs of capitalism as women are considered a ‘reserve army of labour’ as they are a more disposable part of the workforce. According to Beechey (1986) women are a cheap ‘reserve army of labour’ that are brought in during economic booms but then thrown out during slumps. Women are often not members of trade unions and are prepared to work for less money as their wage could be a second income. This benefits capitalism as a group of unemployed people looking for work creates competition and exploitation. Employers are given an advantage which allows them to reduce wages and increase the rate of exploitation. Benston (1972) supports this as women are used to benefitting the operation of the capitalist economy by carrying out unprepared work in the home. This proves that patriarchy dominates women which leads to women’s subordination. Hartmann (1981) believes that patriarchy and the economy both play a crucial role in explaining and understanding gender inequality. Historically, men have controlled women especially by control of labour power. This can come through legislation that operates economically to the benefit of men, for example Maternity and Paternity Rights. This proves that patriarchy and economics together explains gender inequality. However, Walby (1986) argues that women staying at home can actually harm capitalism because if women were to compete for jobs with men this would lower wages and increase profits. Women who earn also have superior spending power which would boost the economy and benefit