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Equality and justice for women
Equality and justice for women
Equality and justice for women
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Patriarchy is a system of society wherein the political, cultural, and social aspect of society is dominated and influenced by men. This does not state that all men have power and all women do not, Patriarchy simply means that majority of the leaders that has shaped the society have been men and that they are inclined to mould the community into being beneficial for themselves and not for others. For example, the women in the Philippines were given the right of suffrage only 30 years after the men have been allowed to vote, and this was only due to 447,725 of these women who voted for it during a special plebiscite (Jr., 2015). Although the patriarchal system of society had been beneficial in the past years, society should give global equal …show more content…
It sets roles in society that promotes order within its units, and prevent confusion towards the identification of an individual’s social role. For instance, in a family, the most basic unit of society, the father is expected to work to provide food on the table, while the mother is expected to stay home and take care of the family’s mandatory needs. This social set-up allows a family to have a certain set of ideas regarding the responsibilities of each role given or earned by and individual. According to Elusive Wapiti (2010), this keeps a woman in line, where she is prevented from becoming dysgenic and destructive for the social order existing. Along with this the patriarchy uplifts the feeling towards women and their value. In most cases, women were treated as precious as a stone, wherein they were pampered in earlier years, to the fullest extent of the guardian/s, until the best man came along to replace them in the role of taking care of their daughter, therefore surrounding the daughter around a blanket of love that makes her feel that she is of importance. Patriarchy is a system of domination that uses the forms of brutality to make a point (Christ, 2013). A patriarchy’s benefits revolved around meeting the expected roles of society itself, that it eventually resorted to the changing perception of people in the modern
Patriarchy describes the structuring of society on the basis of family units, in which fathers have primary responsibility for the welfare of these units. In some cultures slaves were included as part of such households. The concept of patriarchy is often used, by extension, to refer to the expectation that men take primary responsibility for the welfare of the community as a whole, acting as representatives via public office (in anthropology and feminism, for example).
Thesis Statement: Men and women were in different social classes, women were expected to be in charge of running the household, the hardships of motherhood. The roles that men and women were expected to live up to would be called oppressive and offensive by today’s standards, but it was a very different world than the one we have become accustomed to in our time. Men and women were seen to live in separate social class from the men where women were considered not only physically weaker, but morally superior to men. This meant that women were the best suited for the domestic role of keeping the house. Women were not allowed in the public circle and forbidden to be involved with politics and economic affairs as the men made all the
Women are living in a patriarchal society which contributes to gender inequality. It dominates most of the institutions of society like; religion, the family politics, and the work place. The International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences describes patriarchy as a social structural phenomenon in which males have the privilege of dominance over females, both visibly and subliminally. The value of women is often reduced to the role of Trophies, housekeepers and reproductive tools. “Because the subordination of women to men is a feature in the majority of all societies, patriarchy is often argued to be due to biology, such as women’s principal role in childbearing.”(Darity) Patriarchy is the cultural norm of many societies so it is seen as natural. “Bloodchild” challenges how natural the role is by reversing the roles and showing a parasitic male pregnancy.
Patricia Hill Collins outlines the existence of three different dimensions of gender oppression: institutional, symbolic, and individual. The institutional dimension consists of systemic relationship of domination structured through social institutions, such as government, the workplace or education institutions. In other words, this dimension explains “who has the power”. This is completely related to a patriarchal society. Patriarchy is the manifestation and institutionalism of male dominance. This means that men hold power in all institutions, while women are denied the access to this power. The symbolic dimension of oppression is based on widespread socially sanctioned ideologies used to justify relations of domination. It reflects inequality
‘Women and men are different. Equal treatment of men and women does not result in equal outcomes.’ (Corsten Report, 16: 2007) According to Covington and Bloom (2003) numerous feminist writers have demonstrated and documented the patriarchal nature of our society and the variety of ways in which the patriarchal values serve masculine needs. ‘Despite claims to the contrary, masculinist epistemologies are built upon values that promote masculine needs and desires, making all others invisible’ (Kaschak, 11: 1992).
Throughout Western history it was known to have this Patriarchal system in which the men are the head of the family, and community, during which these spheres between the male and female were divided, each having their own set of roles: the male in the public view and the women in the private view. The men worry about what is going on outside the home like politics, money, control over property while the women take care of what happens on the inside of the home doing things like taking care of the children and doing the house work. With these roles set in place the women have had a hard time being respected because of this Patriarchy.
Our culture has created a social system that allows the driving forces of patriarchy to flourish. Although many people may not be purposefully attempting to continue this system of patriarchy, we each play a role in its survival. For many the problem is not that they are promoting patriarchy but that they are not challenging the system. In Johnson’s article “Patriarchy”, he is not examining whether a patriarchal system exists in our culture but what factors are driving this system to continue. The articles analyzed demonstrate Johnson’s theory of patriarchy by exemplifying his three facets of the patriarchal system and by recognizing the notion of the path of least resistance.
explores not only the way in which patriarchal society, through its concepts of gender , its objectification of women in gender roles, and its institutionalization of marriage, constrains and oppresses women, but also the way in which it, ultimately, erases women and feminine desires. Because women are only secondary and other, they become the invisible counterparts to their husbands, with no desires, no voice, no identity. (Wohlpart 3).
All over the world, patriarchy controls and dictates the way society works. Every day stories are told of women in third-world countries who have fallen victim to said patriarchy. These women seem distant from people who live in the first-world, causing many to think that patriarchy is not present in more advanced cultures. However, they could not be more wrong. It encompasses almost every aspect of western life. Even in a country as developed as the United Kingdom, misogyny and gender inequality still exist in the workplace.
Before the beginning of the women's rights movements in the late 19th century patriarchy, or a society dominated by males, was the norm in America. Men used sex and marriage to objectify and suppress women in order to maintain a society controlled strictly by males. The foundation of patriarchy was rooted deeply in the marital roles of men and women, one dominant, and the other submissive. Sex and marriage served as a mechanisms to shape the images of men and women in society. The system of patriarchy fed into itself to keep it going generation after generation.
First of all, the patriarchy is thousands of years old, made by a philosopher named Aristotle. He studied under Plato. The idea of the Patriarchy was that God was above all, then men, then women/slaves/animals. They were all in the same category. From then on, women were treated like animals only used for sex, children, and food.
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.
Throughout history, there have been constant power struggles between men and women, placing the male population at a higher position than the female. Therefore, in this patriarchal system women have always been discriminated against simply due to the fact that they are women. Their rights to vote, to be educated and essentially being treated equally with men was taken away from them and they were viewed as weak members of society whose successes depend on men. However, this has not prevented them from fighting for what they believe in and the rights they are entitled to. On the contrary, it has motivated them to try even harder and gain these basic societal rights through determination and unity.
Gender inequality has always been connected with patriarchal societies. Since early city-states emerged, males have been the dominant sex of different cultures. Even near the beginning of the 20th Century, gender inequality was a large part of the modern world. A common characteristic of a patriarchal culture is the oppression of women and the common belief was that a woman belonged at home as a wife and mother, and a man belonged in the public sphere. Patriarchy is an example of stratified society, a society that has significant differences in the distribution of goods, services, rights and power. It is based on gender stratification (the unequal
Patriarchy is a social system in which families and societies are dominated by males as primary authority figures. Due to patriarchy, females have been disadvantaged in many aspects of life including employment, family life, crime, health, education and media. This has led sociologists to try and find out what causes gender inequality. Feminists would agree that patriarchy is the main cause of gender inequality, however, there are different strands of feminism and these different strands have different views. There are also other theorists, such as functionalists, Weberians and postmodernists who offer different views as to the causes of gender inequality.