Women and the Enlightenment vs. Patriarchal Society

Before the 19th century women suffered a great deal of abhorrence, relegation, discrimination and subjugation. The traditional women roles were limited to the categorical imperatives of society. Women lacked equality and humanistic significance based on these roles as a domesticated women. The types of jobs accessible were being a housewife, procreating children, being payless maids, a secretary, and anything else considered an inferior occupation subjected under the dominated males, particularly in the European and American society. The sheer scope of America social patterns and local policies separated men and women; but the ones that suffered the consequences of those outlooks were women. There was the recurrent mental and physical maltreatment and ill-willed abuse, which was complicated for women to oppose because society conditioned women to be vulnerable and numerous consequences, would have followed. For example: total isolation from male members of the family, possible religious punishment, and social shunning. Fortunately, there was a revolutionary movement that altered the benign traditional roles that brought much profit, which enabled women to step out of the traditional gender roles and into more androgynous role; that movement was worldly known as the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment was a cultural movement of reasoning and intellect which began in the late 17th century in Europe emphasizing individualism and reasoning rather than tradition. The purpose of this movement was to modify society and apply reasoning to challenge the ideals of faith and tradition and advance the traditional knowledge through the scientific method. This stimulated scientific reasoning and thought as well as human thought. This enabled inte...

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...ople to reconsider the limitations women had and allowed more people to think more rationally and focus on equality, freedom and popular sovereignty that broaden programs for women, which also influenced women outside of the European race to oppose of societal relegation.

Works Cited

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_Enlightenment

Calhoun, Bonnie. "Shaping the Public Sphere: English Coffeehouses and French Salons and the Age of the Enlightenment." Colgate Academic Review 3.1 (2012): 7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_Enlightenment Neville, H. A., & Hamer, J. F. (2006). Revolutionary Black Women's Activism: Experience and Transformation. Black Scholar, 36(1), 2-11.

McCammon, Holly J., et al. "How movements win: Gendered opportunity structures and US women's suffrage movements, 1866 to 1919." American Sociological Review (2001): 49-70.