The Role Of Women In There Is No Unmarked Woman?

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Within western culture, gender is assigned through sex assessment which dictates everything individuals should and should not do. Gendered interaction is enforced from birth. Messages of gender and its expectations guide children as they grow, drawing influences from the media, religion, and community. Failure to follow the expectations of an assigned designation can result in children being forced to play with toys and engage in occupations that they do not enjoy to avoid social ridicule and neglect. Some believe that gender is innate while others encourage reformation of gender in hope of a more accepting society. Despite the insistence of the necessity of gender roles for an efficiently run society, traditional gender roles are dangerous …show more content…

Deborah Tannen (2013) illustrates that everything a woman wears or says is a statement and thus defines who that woman is in her piece “There Is No Unmarked Woman.” These unfair demands are rooted in all forms in society: pronoun usage, such as ‘he’ referring to all, women’s surnames, and a fixed title of ‘Mr.’ for men and variants such as ‘Mrs.’ and ‘Ms.’ for women. Ralph Fasold, a professor of linguistics, stresses in his book The Sociolinguistics of Language that “language and culture are particularly unfair in treating women as the marked case because biologically it is the male that is marked” (As cited in Tannen, p. 555). Biologically, men could not exist without women. Two Y chromosomes are unable to produce a child, while two X chromosomes and an X and a Y chromosome can make offspring. Fasold further asserts that “girls are born with fully female bodies, while boys are born with modified female bodies” (As cited in Tannen, p. 555). If women, by nature, are the norm, then why is it that women are marked and men are treated as more superior? Tannen reflects on how all women feel being placed in a society pitted against them, stating that “some days you just want to get dressed and go about your business. But if you’re a woman, you can’t, because there is no unmarked woman” (p. 556). Unlike men, women are degraded and treated poorly in day-to-day life based on their gender. Everything a woman does is a statement in comparison to her male counterpart, leading to harsher judgement and

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