Throughout the years, rights between both genders has changed and provided women more equally rights similar to men. It took women hundreds of years to gain the same or similar equality as men, and even now there is still inequality in the workplace. Men originally treated women like objects and extremely poorly. It is known that during the Renaissance time period, society was a patriarchal society, in which men were the primary authority. Women were forced to live by rules and standards that were unfair and unreasonable in both the household and in the workplace. Women should have had the same rights as men instead of being treated as a minority and known as incapable for being independent because they did extreme amounts of work that were unrecognized.
In the Renaissance era, freedom of speech was not identified throughout the people and society. This gave men the authority to be superior to women, which was unjust. “ The ideal women was rarely seen and never heard in public: women were expected to be housewives and take care of everything to do with the house.” (Cloud). Women had no opinion or say in absolutely anything. It was uncommon to see women talk or gossip with each other because men did not tolerate it. Women had no right to speak freely or express how they felt. Women had no say or opinion; the masculine sex had power over everything and anything. Most men treated women extremely awful, in other words, they were treated as slaves in their society and relationships. During the Renaissance women wished for equality between genders but the church and society furiously disagreed because they insisted on viewing women as the lower sex. Women did not agree with that because they felt it was unreasonable but there was nothin...
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...but in the work place. Today, man and woman have the same right, can have the same jobs and allowed to live and follow their dreams and goals. Women rights have evolved for the good of society and mankind.
Works Cited
Cloud, Amanda. Gender Roles of Women in the Renaissance. n.d. Web. 7 Nov. 2009. < http://www2.cedarcrest.edu/academic/eng/lfletcher/shrew/acloud.htm >.
Miller, Rowland S. Intimate Relationships. 6th Ed. New York; The McGraw- Hill Companies, 2012. Print.
Sutherland Harris, Anna. Daily Life. Think Quest, 23 Sep. 2010. Web. 7 Nov. 2013. < http://library.thinkquest.org/C006522/life/women.php >.
The Education of Medieval Women. Csupomona.edu, n.d. Web. 7 Nov. 2013. < http://www.csupomona.edu/~plin/ls201/medieval3.html >.
Women And Family. Sunburst.usd.edu, n.d. Web. 7 Nov. 2013. < http://sunburst.usd.edu/~clehmann/HWB/hwb_r/Womenfamily.html >.
The Renaissance gave more light to philosophy, and philosophers thought everyone is equal. There was a female ruler, and art put women in the public eye. Yet, women weren't allowed to take part as much as men, and upper class women had even less rights than peasant women. Queen Elizabeth affected the West in many ways. She refused to marry until the day she died, and she defeated the Spanish Armada. Her supporting the arts also helped plays and paintings bring women more into the public eye. Still, women still had less rights than men at the time. Most philosophers were men and many of them preached of how men were more powerful than women. And in contrast to popular belief, upper class women had even less rights than peasant women at the time. Upper class women were treated as mere housewives, which limited the rights of women because the most powerful women at the time were illiterate. Giving them little power compared to
Women in society were always put as not being equal to men. During the Renaissance, women were inferior to men; women in different classes had different roles. Low class women were expected to be housewives and take care of everything to do with the house. Working class women were expected to work for their husbands and help them run their business. They would work along side with their husbands and then go home and take care of the household. Upper class women may have had servants and workers working for them but the women were still expected to take care of the house hold.
In the traditional political history of Italy the people outside of the ruling class of the society were rarely studied. Only with the use of social history did the issues of class and gender begin to be debated by scholars. Numerous recent articles have done a great job of analysing particularly men of high status. In this paper I will look at the lower classes of Renaissance Florence. More specifically, I will center my focus on the lives of women during this era, how they were treated and viewed by people of other classes and how women were viewed and treated by men.
Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. "Do Women Need The Renaissance?" Gender & History 20.3 (2008): 539-557. Academic Search Complete. Web. 13 Mar. 2014.
Historians and scholars often overlook the part that women played in the Renaissance. Did women have a Renaissance? The period did not occur in a male only vacuum; women played an important part in the changes taking place across Europe. No matter a woman’s station in the class system, women, were still considered the sinful daughter of Eve, the downfall of man. Into this world stepped Isabella d’Este, one of the great women of the Renaissance.
Her chief arguing points and evidence relate to the constriction of female sexuality in comparison to male sexuality; women’s economic and political roles; women’s access to power, agency, and land; the cultural roles of women in shaping their society; and, finally, contemporary ideology about women. For her, the change in privacy and public life in the Renaissance escalated the modern division of the sexes, thus firmly making the woman into a beautiful
As far back as the Paleolithic era, women had different rights then men. Some of the injustices women faced include, not having a right to vote, a voice in law, and women could not enter most occupations. Women were not even allowed to get a college education. Once a women was married she had no rights, or in the case that the women got divorced she had no legally could not have custody of her children. Many religious believed God created women to be inferior. It was considered a natural law that men were above women. When women started the fight for more rights, it started out as a political and legal fight and eventually turned into a social and economic fight as well. Many women who started the fight, died before they could see there work pay off, including Susan Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucy Stone. In the U.S, Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren fought for the addition of women’s emancipation in the constitution. During the late 18th century, in the United States men had many rights while women had very few. Women also could not keep their own wages. One right woman maintained was the right to own property if their husband died.
As women started working, patriarchal control of the family was upset (Faragher 400). Women were now bringing in income just like the men were and to them this was empowering. They now longer depended on a man to survive. Now that women were working many also wanted an education beyond high school. Women started going to college and with a better education were able to further increase the interest of the women 's rights movements (Knight 361). Despite these advances women still were not close to gaining equality to their male counterparts. However they did gain more control of the family’s well being.
They thought this was the way of life they learned it through their parents and social pressures of what a women should or might be. They only aspired to be homemakers, mothers, grandmothers, and aunts, never being labeled as anything else. Their futures during this times wasn't seen as very bright, they were not allowed to enter any professions, or let alone gain a decent education for themselves. Society knew one thing and pushed for it well, a women's entire being solely dependent on a man alone. This all gradually changed, very small steps of women leading the way such as, Josephine Shaw, Jane Addams, and Susan B. Anthony and many other woman thriving for change have inspired a difference.
Since the nineteen twenties women of America have been considered equal citizens of our country, and had to work hard in order to obtain that equality in the workplace. One may reconsider the success rate of females in America, and if they really have made it as far as popular belief may have it. Of course, American women can vote, can hold office, and they can work, which is more than can be said for some countries. But do both sexes really hold equal in the workplace regarding manners of salary and respect? Does the corporate executive world really take women seriously? These are some of the arguments made by women today that do not feel that they are being treated equal in the workplace. On the other hand, those who believe women are treated equally usually reason that differences balance out in statistics, things such as majority of teachers are women, and women also have a hold on the entrepreneur side of businesses. The voices that are still screaming come from an audience who feel that women still have a long way to go before achieving a status of total equality.
The Renaissance was simply “the green end of one of civilization's hardest winters” (Robert 10). In other words, catastrophic events swept through Europe such as the black plague, warfare, and starvation causing a high population of death rates. After an era of destitution, the Renaissance was a period of “rebirth” where individuals could express their intellectual thought through art, science, literature, and education. It’s true that people during that time express humanist ideals of individual achievement, but does the word “individual” contribute to both men and women (Ramirez 439)? As a result, in what ways did the Renaissance world view influence or impact social issues such as gender equality? The Renaissance highly influenced gender equality especially in terms of marriage, wealth ownership, and freedom of expression. With this is mind one should question, “did women have a Renaissance” (Kelly 1) or exhibit the same privileges as men?
For hundreds of years women have been fighting for equality and the same rights as
Women roles have changed drastically in the last 50 to 80 years, women no longer have to completely conform to society’s gender roles and now enjoy the idea of being individuals. Along with the evolution of women roles in society, women presence and acceptance have drastically grown in modern literature. In early literature it was common to see women roles as simply caretakers, wives or as background; women roles and ideas were nearly non-existent and was rather seen than heard. The belief that women were more involved in the raising of children and taking care of the household was a great theme in many early literatures; women did not get much credit for being apart of the frontier and expansion of many of the nations success until much later.
I was surprised at some of the facts I discovered while researching this paper topic. It is not a “black and white” simple answer topic; explaining the role of women is more complicated than that. During the early years of Rome, the role of the woman was minimal; however as Rome evolved so too did the place of women in Roman society. Rome, and its men, eventually grew to understand that women could be helpful, indeed, more than that, they could be a working partner in a su...
In the workplace, women do not receive the same benefits that men do. Some women do the same job, for the same amount of hours, and still do not receive the same pay for their work. Is there a specific reason behind this? No, it is just one of the many inequalities that goes on on the job. As pointed out in the essay by Susan Faludi, Blame it on Feminism, women earn less. The average women’s paycheck is twenty percent less than their male counterparts. Men with only high school education’s make more than some women who have graduated college. Most women are still working the traditional “female” jobs: secretaries, teachers, and nurses for example. Construction work, engineering, and doctor’s, are considered “out of our reach” and men’s jobs. Women are very capable of doing these jobs, but most times when applying for a “man’s job” are not taken seriously. American women are more likely not to receive health insurance and twice as likely not to draw pension then American men. They face the biggest gender-biased pay gap in the world.