Jean Elshtain and Susan Okin

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Recommended: Traditional values and gender roles

In the article Antigone’s Daughters, by Jean Elshtain, she identifies to two realms created by modern society, which is public and private. Traditionally society holds women restricted to the private life, additionally accepting little improvements into areas which have been formerly limited to men. Elshtain emphasizes that women need to be incorporated into the public life as equivalent to men. Elshtain states “armies, must be fully integrated as well as our national guard, our state troopers, our local sheriffs’ offices, our district attorneys’ offices, our state prosecuting attorneys’ offices, in short the nation’s entire lawful power structure” (p. 36, ¶1).
A common traditional presumption was that the conventional identities were entirely pressured upon women, where “women have been the unwitting victims of deliberate exclusion from public life and forced imprisonment in private life” (p. 366, ¶2). Because a woman's identities were wives, mothers, and grandmothers, which presented an essential function in the community in promoting the private field. The vital decisions were m...

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