The Oppression Of Women

The inherent belief that women are inferior to men and using this inferiority to further implement male privilege in our society today is oppression. The oppression of females falls under the genre of feminist anthropology, as stated in di Leonardo’s article, focus on “gender relations” and these relations is the foundation for which oppression over females began (1). Oppression can occur to a variety of humans but in this paper I will focus on the oppression of women. Women’s oppression corresponds with opinions that men are more physical while women are nurturing, men are aggressive while women are submissive and simply the belief that men are stronger then women. This oppression has been ongoing since early in history and the theme of universal

In Engels and Leacock’s article they claimed the turning point of female and male equality deteriorated during the classical times when marriage was monogamous (17). When a man and at women were married and had children it was understood that the males responsibility was to have a job and support the family. The females job was to raise children and take care of the household, therefore, the women was left financially disabled and became dependant on her husband. During the prehistoric times the portion of hunter was held by the males and gather was assigned to females. Today we may look at that society and see it as oppressive but during the hunter gatherer time period both positions were held to the same standard and one was not valued over the

Change comes with numbers and women can not do it alone. If education is abundant about the oppression that is both blatantly obvious as well as hidden in the world today then larger corporations and the government loose the power they originally had over people who were naive. If the opportunity of education is available to women world wide, it provides a platform for which these women can feel empowered and stand up for their rights. For example, the In a smaller scale men, like myself, can dedicate their time to become allies to women and help disrupt the oppressive culture we currently live in. Today, International Women’s day is a perfect example of all types of people, including men, coming together to support women’s rights in a peaceful march. Lorber’s article speaks of the nineteenth century as a time when women would transition to a male in order to qualify to do mens work, even some women passed as men so they could fight wars as a solider (3). It can be seen even in third world countries, such as Saudi Arabia, that women are receiving basic rights as simple as being able to receive a drivers license. Change agains the oppression of women is slow but I believe it is becoming