The Telephone Accawi

In Anwar Accawi’s The Telephone, hidden underneath many themes, one can track hints of gender inequality during the course of the essay (P). The Telephone falls into the countryside with a revolutionary breakthrough or in the eyes of others like Accawi, suppression in the mid 1900’s. However Accawi details his former culture in the village of Magdalena rather than the abyss of technology his village was falling into, revealing vast differences in the lifestyle of the village men and women. Accawi describes his culture and these differences stick out throughout the whole essay than do all other changes in Magdaluna’s culture.

A scene that clearly shows the vast differences and the inequality between men and women is when Accawi remembers the unseen hardships that women of his village went through. “The village wives complained to each other about their man’s unfaithfulness, but they were secretly pleased. This was because Im Kaleem [the village whore]

According to New York Post’s article Nearly half of working women say they’ve experienced discrimination in the office, “More than four in 10 women in the work force say they’ve been discriminated against because of their gender. The number one reason was because 1 in every 4 working women says that they’ve earned less than a man doing the same job.” From this article we can clearly see how unjust men are towards women in the work force. Though today’s modern contemporary society has various differences and is more advance in technology, just like in Accawi’s past, the unfairness and discrimination towards the women of America’s modern 21 century contemporary society cause them stress. I believe that in both Accawi’s village and America’s modern 21 century contemporary society if women were treated with more respect and equality then not only would either community prosper but it would continue to prosper for a long time.