The Evolving Nature of Female Roles

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Throughout much of history, Females have played a role that can be considered akin to being on the back burner of society. While this role maintains a level of arguable importance, especially when it comes to the raising of children, when it comes to the affairs of politics, government, and world progress, women haven’t had much, if any, say. While things have changed for the better in different ways in modern times, when one looks back just fifty years, or more, you can see how that change came about. The purpose of this essay soon will be to explore and understand the impact that the industrial revolution had on this process, and just how much of a change it actually did bring about. Even though things could often be slow to change in the way of women’s rights, change they did. Women’s roles had been evolving from one of a simple “reproducer” to one of an actual “producer”. While in today’s standards this may not seem significant, for the women of the time, it turned out to be a change of a large magnitude. The argument that this paper will portray to the reader, will be one based around the understanding of how gender rolls have changed for the better, in the past few hundred years. Have women really gotten more of an equal place in society as time as gone on? The opinion present in this paper, states yes. To back this argument up, several quotes will be present which provide supporting information.
Within the pages of the Murder of Mary Bean, many mentions are made about the new shift in gender rolls by Elizabeth A. De Wolfe. While things may have been the same in many ways as before, what would later be seen as somewhat of a revolution, started to take place. Women had been no longer trapped within the confines of home life...

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... centric lifestyle that had preceded in most places for a long time. This new found freedom had been brought about in some part by the life of the mill girls. As they advanced from living in a household, to working long hours to earn a personal wage, they began to fight more and more for their own rights as human beings, eventually leading to a breakdown that would in the future, bring them to near equality with the rest. What we have today may not be perfect, but by examining the past, we can see just what an impact certain factory based revolutions have left with us. Further more, this helps support the argument that the gender rolls of females have changed for the better, specifically through the years of mill work. All in all, mill work, and the new age industry that the industrial revolution brought about, caused a major shift for the better of women all around.

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