Simone de Beauvoir, in her 1949 text The Second Sex, examines the problems faced by women in Western society. She argues that women are subjugated, oppressed, and made to be inferior to males – simply by virtue of the fact that they are women. She notes that men define their own world, and women are merely meant to live in it. She sees women as unable to change the world like men can, unable to live their lives freely as men can, and, tragically, mostly unaware of their own oppression. In The Second Sex, de Beauvoir describes the subjugation of woman, defines a method for her liberation, and recommends strategies for this liberation that still have not been implemented today.
De Beauvoir, in attempting to define the subjugation experienced by woman, notes that women lag behind other oppressed groups of her epoch, like Jews and blacks. She argues that women are behind in terms of civil rights mainly because they have not identified that they are indeed being oppressed, despite their lack of social and professional status. De Beauvoir writes that “the epithet of female has the sound of an insult,” (1) meaning that women experience discrimination and social inequity. Further, she asserts that man is responsible for the construction of a world based upon his values, his norms, and his capabilities. She is unsurprised by the fact that woman has achieved comparatively less – in a male-oriented culture, how could anyone possibly expect woman to accomplish as much as man?
This societal commentary transcends legal status. The acquisition of civil rights will not be enough to right the wrongs perpetrated upon woman as a whole, according to de Beauvoir. Liberalism, therefore, is also insufficient to address the problems wom...
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...ated socialism as a method of societal structure based on reciprocity, but our current system of capitalism fosters aggression and competition instead. The quest for material possessions and wealth as signs of power and success leads to endless competition. This runs counter to the induction of reciprocity into our society and therefore means that reciprocal relationships, defined by de Beauvoir as requisite to the emancipation of woman, are not the culturally accepted norm. To truly state that de Beauvoir’s vision has been realized, Western society would need to entirely scrap its capitalist system and redefine itself in terms of community, reciprocity, and sharing. This has definitely not happened yet, and until it does the world will continue to be defined on male terms.
Works Cited
Beauvoir, Simone De. The Second Sex;. New York: Knopf, 1953. Print.
Throughout history, women were challenged with inequality and discrimination within a patriarchal society such voting in presidential elections, owning property and having job opportunities. During the last century, there have been many achievements that guarantee women rights and equality. For example, the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote in 1920 and the Equal Employment Opportunities Law prohibited employers from discriminating against gender in 1988.1 In her essay, “Pink Think”, Lynn Peril argues about the pressure on women that follow the rules of femininity.2 She describes the word “Pink Think”, as ideas and attitudes of proper women behavior.2 Although there are still some aspects of “Pink Think” culture that is still recognized today, the shifts in cultural and political events in recent centuries have increased attention to women’s issues against social injustice. Nevertheless, Peril neglects the fact that women today are living in a totally different time than how she pictures it because of the newly evolved cultural attitudes of gender roles and identity, labor, and living the American Dream.
Today, women and men have equal rights, however, not long ago men believed women were lower than them. During the late eighteenth century, men expected women to stay at home and raise children. Women were given very few opportunities to expand their education past high school because colleges and universities would not accept females. This was a loss for women everywhere because it took away positions of power for them. It was even frowned upon if a woman showed interest in medicine or law because that was a man’s place, not a woman’s, just like it was a man’s duty to vote and not a woman’s.
Gender has played specific roles in societies all over the place. Men are usually seen as the dominant gender and therefore appear to be more important to society but women still have an important role. It was not that long ago that women did not have many rights or play an important role at all. In America, laws were put in place to make men and women equal and today many women have filled jobs thought of as a man’s job but there is still a common thought of women being less important in society than men. Before deciding if a woman’s role in society is complimentary or not, the role of all humans must be examined. A woman could appear to have a terrible role but maybe that’s because everybody has a terrible role in that type of society. Same
In her article, Fuller explains how the current society constricts women’s rights in an effort to show the inequalities between the men and women. For instance, she feels that “such woman as these, rich in genius, of most tender sympathies, and capable of high virtue, and a chastened harmony, ought not find themselves in a place so narrow” (Fuller 741). Margaret Fuller explains that all women, even those with “rich genius,” find themselves at a disadvantage because of the society’s inequality. She also feels that the woman are just as “capable of high virtue” as the men, and do not deserve to be in “a place so narrow.” In addition, Fuller is aware that the women can “find their way to purer air, but the world will not take off the brand it has set upon them” (741). Margaret Fuller uses this passage to explain that it possible for women to have their ideas become public, but it would b...
...present powerful characters, while females represent unimportant characters. Unaware of the influence of society’s perception of the importance of sexes, literature and culture go unchanged. Although fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty produce charming entertainment for children, their remains a didactic message that lays hidden beneath the surface; teaching future generations to be submissive to the inequalities of their gender. Feminist critic the works of former literature, highlighting sexual discriminations, and broadcasting their own versions of former works, that paints a composite image of women’s oppression (Feminist Theory and Criticism). Women of the twenty-first century serge forward investigating, and highlighting the inequalities of their race in effort to organize a better social life for women of the future (Feminist Theory and Criticism).
As the realization of women as an exploited group increases, the similarity of their position to that of racial and ethnic groups becomes more apparent. Women are born into their sexual identity and are easily distinguished by physical and cultural characteristics. In addition, women now identify that they are all sufferers of an ideology (sexism) that tries to justify their inferior treatment.
Gloria Steinem, a renowned feminist activist and co-founder of the women’s rights publication Ms. Magazine, gives a commencement speech at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, on May 31, 1970. Steinem’s speech “Living The Revolution” is delivered to the graduating class of Vassar College, founded in 1865 as a liberal arts college for women and then became coeducational a year before the speech was delivered in 1969. The intent of this speech is to inform the listeners and to shed light on the fact that women are not treated equally to their white male counterparts, though society has been convinced otherwise and to argue that it is crucial for all minorities, and even white males, to be relieved of their “stereotypical” duties in order for balance to exist. Steinem executes her speech’s purpose by dividing it up into four parts to explain the four different “myths” put against women while using a few rhetorical strategies and logical, ethical, and emotional appeals.
In the analysis of the issue in question, I have considered Mary Wollstonecraft’s Text, Vindication of the Rights of Woman. As an equivocal for liberties for humanity, Wollstonecraft was a feminist who championed for women rights of her time. Having witnessed devastating results or men’s improvidence, Wollstonecraft embraced an independent life, educated herself, and ultimately earned a living as a writer, teacher, and governess. In her book, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” she created a scandal perhaps to her unconventional lifestyle. The book is a manifesto of women rights arguing passionately for educating women. Sensualist and tyrants appear right in their endeavor to hold women in darkness to serve as slaves and their plaything. Anyone with a keen interest in women rights movement will surely welcome her inexpensive edition, a landmark documen...
Women embedded with the Sisterhood wave revolted against their once confined roles to embrace themselves as intelligent, sexual, and powerful creatures of God. These were the warriors of femininity: the ones willing to lay it all on the line to feel a sense of liberation as a female community. Theses women become so frustrating with the conditioning of their bodies to be docile they ended up dooming themselves to their own inwardness. Third wave feminism is rooted in the variety of women as equals to all genders. I identify this as the Coequal wave. Woman are not placing themselves on a higher elevated scale than men but to simply be accepted as equals no matter what race, nationality, or gender differences (149-150). These three waves are still alive and thriving in our world today, however, they are far from working in a cohesive manner in a patriarchal society. Theorist Simone De Beauvoir writes in her manifesto “The Second Sex”, “Men need not bother themselves with alleviating the pains and the burdens that physiologically are women’s lot, since these are “intended by Nature”
Since the beginning of time, women have strived to achieve an equal status in society. The vast majority of women have rebelled against the norm for equal status. As if washing the dirt off one’s hands, women are forgotten for all of their achievements. The identity of women in the Western world has evolved from domesticity and servility, and moved toward their valuation as individuals of intellect, talent, and independence. The culture about women’s empowerment has been reflected in literature and history throughout many ages.
There has been a long and on going discourse on the battle of the sexes, and Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex reconfigures the social relation that defines man and women, and how far women has evolved from the second position given to them. In order for us to define what a woman is, we first need to clarify what a man is, for this is said to be the point of derivation (De Beauvoir). And this notion presents to us the concept of duality, which states that women will always be treated as the second sex, the dominated and lacking one. Woman as the sexed being that differs from men, in which they are simply placed in the others category. As men treat their bodies as a concrete connection to the world that they inhabit; women are simply treated as bodies to be objectified and used for pleasure, pleasure that arise from the beauty that the bodies behold. This draws us to form the statement that beauty is a powerful means of objectification that every woman aims to attain in order to consequently attain acceptance and approval from the patriarchal society. The society that set up the vague standard of beauty based on satisfaction of sexual drives. Here, women constantly seek to be the center of attention and inevitably the medium of erection.
In Simone De Beauvoir’s book, The Second Sex, the term the other is used in reference to women. Women are regarded as the inessential and the dependent sex who needs the one in order to exist (De Beauvoir, 1989). The one is referred to as man who is the norm that we need to conform to or else we will be marginalized if we fail to do so. This ideal norm has been present in society since the very beginning of time. Maybe it is because man was created first before woman in the creation story of Genesis and how the religion, Christianity, has a man as their Savior. This is why women are regarded as the weak ones as they are incapable to comply with the norm and are alienated in society. In addition, those men who fail to prove their manliness and do not meet the standards of what it means to be a man are often referred ...
de Beauvoir, Simone. "The Woman in Love." The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. . Print.
...action with others… especially men. This supplies final substantiation of the authors' argument, that women continue to be oppressed by their male-dominated societies. It is a bold undertaking for women to ally and promote a world movement to abandon sexist traditions. Although I have never lived in a third world or non-Westernized country, I have studied the conditions women suffer as "inferior" to men. In National Geographic and various courses I have taken, these terrible conditions are depicted in full color. Gender inequality is a terrible trait of our global society, and unfortunately, a trait that might not be ready to change. In America we see gender bias towards women in voters' unwillingness to elect more females into high office, and while this is not nearly as severe as the rest of the world, it indicates the lingering practice of gender inequality.
Women have always been essential to society. Fifty to seventy years ago, a woman was no more than a house wife, caregiver, and at their husbands beck and call. Women had no personal opinion, no voice, and no freedom. They were suppressed by the sociable beliefs of man. A woman’s respectable place was always behind the masculine frame of a man. In the past a woman’s inferiority was not voluntary but instilled by elder women, and/or force. Many, would like to know why? Why was a woman such a threat to a man? Was it just about man’s ability to control, and overpower a woman, or was there a serious threat? Well, everyone has there own opinion about the cause of the past oppression of woman, it is currently still a popular argument today.