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Studying gender roles in literature and life
Studying gender roles in literature and life
Gender in literature
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Today's world, as much as we pride ourselves to live in the 21st century, is still a world where gender inequality is very much present. It has taken mankind many thousands of years to reach the point where we are today, when women are almost on equal foot with man, regarding education, choice of profession, rights and privileges. It was uncommon not many decades ago for women to pursue any academic path, women in science were very rare, and those who did manage to put their foot in the door had to deal constantly with men who were telling them that they were in the wrong place, and that they should conform themselves with the gender role that society has cut out for them. No wonder that women were given almost no credit for the inventions and discoveries of importance in history, even less when it comes to prehistoric times, where we all know, it was a man's world, of “the man the hunter.” But was it really? In recent decades, starting with the 1970's feminist anthropologists started to question the concept of “man the hunter” that dominated social anthropology and archeology for more than 40 years. In their opinion it was highly unlikely that this theory was accurate since it “leaves out half of the human species.”(Slocum, “Toward an Anthropology of Women”, p. 38).
Prehistory refers to the time span before written records existed and encompasses a long period of time that spans over 2.5 million years and includes the Paleolithic, the Mesolithic and Neolithic ages together with the Bronze age and the Iron age when writing became widespread. During this long span of time humankind evolved from the Homo habilis to the Homo erectus to the Homo neandethalensis to the Homo sapiens of today and discovered tools, fire ( as ear...
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...y 35.2 (2010): 503-31.EBCOHOST. Web. 26 Feb. 2014.
Peterson, Jane. "Domesticating Gender: Neolithic Patterns from the Southern Levant." Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 29.3 (2010): 249-64. ScienceDirect. Web. 26 Feb. 2014.
Adovasio, J. M., Olga Soffer, and Jake Page. The Invisible Sex: Uncovering the True Roles of Women in Prehistory. New York: Smithsonian, 2007. Print.
Woollaston, Victoria. "Could This Be the World's Oldest Pocket Calendar? Engraved Tusk Would Have Told Farmers When to Harvest Crops up to 8,000 Years Ago."Dailymail.co.uk. N.p., 22 Nov. 2013. Web. 26 Feb. 2014.
Whitefield, Paul. "Women Did Most Prehistoric Cave Paintings: Religion, or Just Lazy Men?"Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 15 Oct. 2013. Web. 26 Feb. 2014.
Conner, Clifford D. A People's History of Science: Miners, Midwives, and "low Mechanicks" New York: Nation, 2005. Print.
Whitney Battle-Baptiste, the author of Black Feminist Archaeology creates the framework of this book because as a Black woman who is interested in race, gender, and cultural views, believes that too often in mainstream archaeological theory, Black culture and the experiences of Black women and our families are overlooked and dismissed. Dr. Baptiste states her explanation on how joining Black Feminist Theory and archaeology in her projects provides a way to open a discussion between archaeologists, which is her intent. It also shows that “when archaeologists critically engage with a dialogue about the intersectionality of race and gender, we begin to see the deeper forms of oppression and how they affect the lives of marginalized populations.”.
During the American Industrial Revolution, women began to work in factories, leading to conflicts in 19th century society that would eventually result in the Cult of Domesticity—the belief that women’s only responsibilities existed at home. This aimed to establish the subservient woman and the husband as the master of the house as the social norm. Kate Chopin's bleak but realistic depiction in her work, The Awakening, reveals her reasonable attitude during the Second Great Awakening in American history. Men coveted control and achieved it by undermining women and being their superior. Society followed a mob mentality and accepted gender inequality as a social norm. Subjugation of women lead to panic and mania in men and the oppression made
Gender history would not be possible without the rise of women and their headstrong goal of gaining a place in the history books. Early historians developed a more simple outlook, which simply classified every women be similar in class. As historian developed a more critical analysis, they included many social factors to explain women’s status change. Women created gender history, and now doors are open for other gender issues to be researched.
Scarre, Christopher. The Human Past: World Prehistory & the Development of Human Societies. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2013.
Meyers, Carol. "The Genesis Paradigms for Female Roles, Part I: Genesis 2-3 and Part II: Genesis 3:16" in Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context. Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 72-121.
We are all familiar with the creation story in Genesis of the Bible—a rib was taken from Adam (man) in order to create Eve (woman). Did this set the tone for women’s submissive role in society? History shows us that this is not true, since women dating as far back as the 6th century had power and were taken seriously. Strong women, such as Perpetua of Carthage, used their faith as a means of helping others and asserting their power in a male-dominated culture. As the years went on, though, women experienced a loss of power and control. A woman’s worth was directly associated with h...
Many ancient laws and beliefs show that women from all around the world have always been considered inferior to men. However, as time went on, ideas of equality circulated around and women started to demand equality. Many women fought for equality and succeeded in bringing some rights. However, full equality for women has yet to be fulfilled. This issue is important because many women believe that the rights of a person should not be infringed no matter what their gender is, and by not giving them equality, their rights are being limited. During the periods 1840 to 1968, total equality for women did not become a reality due to inadequate political representation, economic discrepancy, and commercial objectification.
Prior to the use of agriculture, life was extremely different for women. The information that historians have obtained is limited, but there are certain aspects of Paleolithic society that have been discovered and point towards a more liberal lifestyle for women. Generally, a woman’s job was to gather food and tend to her children while her male counterpart hunted. These simple divisions allowed both men and women to play significant roles in hunter-gatherer society, which further allowed women to be held in equal if not greater esteem then men. According to Elisabeth Gaynor Ellis and Anthony Elser, authors of World History: Connections to Today, women also held...
The gender binary of Western culture dichotomizes disgendered females and males, categorizing women and men as opposing beings and excluding all other people. Former professor of Gender Studies Walter Lee Williams argues that gender binarism “ignores the great diversity of human existence,” (191) and is “an artifact of our society’s rigid sex-roles” (197). This social structure has proved detrimental to a plethora of people who fall outside the Western gender dichotomy. And while this gender-exclusive system is an unyielding element of present day North American culture, it only came to be upon European arrival to the Americas. As explained by Judith Lorber in her essay “Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender”, “gender is so pervasive in our society we assume it is bred into our genes” (356). Lorber goes on to explain that gender, like culture, is a human production that requires constant participation (358).
This emphasis is notably unique from the portrayal of couples among contemporary societies such as the Greeks and Romans. This depiction of couples reflects the essential role woman clearly held in Etruscan society. “Women in Etruria participated more fully in the public life of than Greek and Roman women. They had their own names, and passed rank on to their children (Bonfante xx-xx).” Etruscan women enjoyed the same equalities as men such as hereditary possession and having their own identity not solely confined to traditional roles of women in surrounding areas. Etruscan women could afford to provide financially for any children born to them, due to the Etruscan cultural setup. The independence that Etruscan women relished did not take away their nurturing nature as many other societies including the Romans believed.
Elizabeth A. Johnson draws attention to how, despite being considered equal in Genesis, women had their worth ignored “Consistently subordinated and demeaned in the theories, symbols, rituals,
When Archaeology was just beginning scholars found evidence of societies where men were not superior to women, therefor they assumed that men had been inferior to the woman. This opinion was not based on evidence, but what Eisler called ‘the dominator society world view'.
Since feminist archaeology and gender archaeology have been adopted as theories for archaeological work, the lenses through which archaeologists pose questions and examine gender-based inequalities have shifted significantly. When studying archaeological sites, many current archaeologists are expected to address how gender structures affected their site in some way, and receive serious criticism if it is not a partial aspect of their research. And, while these subfields have lent themselves to the work of many, a large number of archaeologists do not place their sites in context of a larger picture. In 2003, Margaret Conkey wrote a book titled Has Feminism Changed Archaeology? Seeing as she was one of the two writers of the previously mentioned 1984 paper, this publication offers an interesting account of how she has seen progress in the discipline. On the positive side, she writes that a shift in archaeology to illuminate the stories of women in the past has “has enormous success,” and that archaeologists have “come to see the highly androcentric accounts of the human past that prevail,” referencing her famous 1984 as a catalyst for this change.
Through investigations of writers as diverse as Silvia Federici, and Angela Davis, Maria Mies, and Sharon Hays, Judith Butler, and Steven Gregory we have come to understand that confronting the categorization of gender differences is a complex and nuanced project. Whether one is an ontologist, exploring the metaphysical nature of gender differences (that may or may not lead down the road of essentialism) or a phenomenologist exploring how exactly it is that one “does” gender—to the extent that there even exists a concept called gender—one must employ a varied and multipartite approach. Writers such as Federici, Mies, and Davis sketched out a framework of the history of gender roles for us. From what Federici calls a time of primitive consumption through feudalism, to the time of slavery and rapid industrialization and, indeed, through our current technological revolution, we have seen the basic gender differences between the sexes evolve over time. To be sure, our notions of what is expected from both women and men have changed since prehistoric times, and they continue to evolve. Sharon Hays in the chapter “Pyramids of Innequality” of her book Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform shows us how, in the United States, poverty and access to the social safety net have been raced and gendered. She provides a springboard for further investigation.
Traditionally, women have been subservient to men; they are still often subjugated, treated as objects, and are valued for their ability to reproduce. Since the beginning of society dating back to the Paleolithic age, in the hunter-gatherer societal system, men generally hunted and provided for the family, while the women gathered fruit and raised children at home. This brand of society has in a way persisted even until today; often women will stay at home and raise children while the man would be the one to “hunt,” or in today’s context, work and provide for the family. This puts the woman in a subordinate position as they are dependent on the man, often leading to women being treated as objects. These stereotypes contribute to the development of Lispector’s works.