Barbara Ehrenreich's The Real Truth About The Female '

Judith Sargent Murray’s On the Equality of the Sexes reveals the struggles women had in the 17th-18th centuries when it came to equal education opportunities. Women were expected to become people of domestication while men had many opportunities to expand their minds and be ambitious, and be leaders. Women were expected to focus on taking care of their family, not to have minds of their own. They wanted change.

History has presented hunting as a job and pastime for men for thousands of years. Ancient civilization’s livelihoods rested on the hunting and gathering that men performed for a tribe while the women stayed back to care for the young and cook. It truly is a tale as old as time; however, over time, a very long time, women have found their way into this historically male dominated arena. Women have begun partaking in the “sport” of pursuing animals more frequently than ever before. Despite this, though, females can still find themselves receiving criticism and wayward glances for stepping outside the traditional views of gender roles. In H. William Rice’s collection of short stories, The Lost Woods, the tale “Gobble, Gobble” offers a firsthand account from a young lady who seems to have decided to turn her back on society’s view of femininity to take on her own idea of what her role should be in her family.

The article, The Cult of Womanhood: 1820 - 1860 written by Barbara Welter discusses the philosophy towards women in America during the mid 19th century. A set of demands and expectations based upon four principles: piety, purity, submission and domesticity were placed on women as well as certain behavioral expectations left 19th century women feeling guilty. It also left women feeling this way during the industrialization period as well as having a huge presence of incompatibility with society. Welter shares her viewpoint that the Cult of Womanhood was an attempt to preserve pre modern values in the industrial age. Men held a dominant place in society and continued to prevent new opportunities for women to explore. Narrow minded

Women were traditionally seen as the weaker sex – second-class citizens with a lower social status than men. A woman’s place was in the home. Men did the “heavier” labor, like plowing and hunting.

The author Wiesner- Hanks claims in the third chapter ‘Economic Life’ that in different parts of the world and though different time periods, the family structure and genders were influenced by changes in economic structure such as means of production, pattern of work, and ownership practices. In case of pre-historic humans, author explains that the most important element of early human success was flexibility and adaptability (Wiesner- Hanks 12). This point is logical because early humans did not have means of mass crops or animal production and therefore their survival depended upon everyone working together daily for food and for protection. the example of Agta in Philippines, tells us that women did big game hunting, which in turn proves that hunting and gathering activities depended upon environmental factors and decisions of the group and not so much on gender role (Wiesner- Hanks 57).

Another problem with this myth is that it gives man the primary role of food provider, without acknowledging the role that early woman had on finding food. Because of this, the idea that only

Amy, I agree with you that the division of labor between men and women in the Neolithic is based on the differences of their body types, not on cultural differences as it is based today. I also liked how you mentioned that women were the caretakers of the children and women tend to be better multitaskers then men, probably due to practice not an innate ability. Therefore, they would be better suited to watch the children while grinding grain then the men. In addition, they would have to breast feed the children and that is something that only women could do, although in today times men are trying to lactate, so even that is changing in our society.

Feminist approaches to family studies allows us to question the biological, emotional and legal notions of the family that has been so embedded in us that we often take those beliefs for granted. Challenging the biological assumption that women are the provided for since early human history, Shehan (2009) mentions that feminist scholars are confronting the dominant ideologies that see men as the primary provider for the family by their claim in “that the plant materials women gathered constituted at least 70% of the diet consumed by the earliest human groups. This suggests that ‘woman the gatherer’ rather than ‘man the hunter’ was the major provider” (p.5). Disputing against the emotional notions of hegemonic groups that parents only show affection towards their own child, Leacock (2014) argues that the Montagnais-Naskapi people’s feelings toward every child of their own tribe is equal as

Upon reading the 1998 short story “Parties Unknown by the Jury; or, The Valour of My Tongue” by Patricia McEvoy Carlson, I found myself engrossed in the mystery surrounding the protagonist Bridget Mooney and her stop in Memphis. With each unexpected turn, history was unraveled and familiar figures such as feminist and Civil Rights Activist Ida B. Wells came to life. Carlson was able to capture true American history in an entertaining fashion with this fictional short story that made myself as a reader question the New Woman, issues regarding gender, race and class in 1892 Memphis as well as get a glimpse into what life really consisted of for the ever so desired proper lady. I felt as if I was brought back in time, traveling along side Bridget Mooney on a journey she did not sign up for.

In the early 1950s, women were accepted to fulfill the role of a wife and a mother. They were treated as a second-class citizens. Society expected the women to find happiness through taking care of their children and husbands. They were expected to stay home, while the men worked outside and had a career. For some women, accepting the roles that society created for them was difficult after World War II. During World War II, men had to go to war. As a result, some women had to join the workforce to fill the men’s place. After this many women wanted to pursue their careers outside home because they felt the satisfaction of having a job of their own. However, many women stayed silent. They did not stand for their rights because of the expectations

To begin, what is feminism? Feminism has many meanings. Author Kenneth Allan believes that feminism is idea based that is an intrinsic to mankind, especially women, in that they want to feel a part of society and the social structure as well as contribute to social issues or political matters. Allan goes on to state that feminism is the “idea about equal rights of women that began around the enlightenment around 1792” (Allan, 2013). In that time Mary Wollstonecraft was a pioneer of the subject. She sought to shed light on the inequality of women and ways to remedy this injustice. Wollstonecraft also wrote a book about feminism called: “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792. This book clearly detailed and showed a link between gender and the discourse of human nature found in the Enlightenment period and brought the issue of women’s rights to the surface for a general debate” (Allen, 2013). Feminism and women’s rights are not a new concept and has at least been a debate for 223 years. Wollstonecraft was not the only women to breach this subject. There have been many early pioneers of feminism such as: Harriet Martineau, Charlotte Gilman Perkins and many more. They all had one goal, in one way or another. That goal was and still is today to achieve economic equality along with sexual equality. Equality has no boundaries in the pure sense of the word. Women simply have asked, marched and protested for their interests to be heard and their

While walking down the street we notice several different faces that pass us by. Typically, we

From the very beginning women have always played the role of the forager or in some way have been involved with plants and horticulture while the men are either off hunting or providing care to large groups of herd animals. As Ehrenberg points out, “Women are mainly concerned with gathering plant food, which provides the bulk of the diet of nearly all foragers, while men spend

Once married, sexual division of labor in X’s and her husband’s home were not actively decided upon. All human societies have some sexual division of labor, even in modern day. Traditionally, men were responsible for collecting food that involved higher risk to gather: animals and honey. Women, meanwhile, were responsible for the staple diet, collecting fruits and smaller animals closer to home base. Gathering is the primary human foraging adaptation, yet with the ability to collect and maintain food supplies, as well as cook thereby saving time, men in societies of food abundance can engage in higher risk activities, knowing that there will be food despite their success. These sexual divisions of labor are further preserved by human’s tendency to form pair bonds. Women, by gathering the staple diet, can attract and keep a partner that will not only bring home more caloric items, but offer protection for themselves and their offspring (Knott, Lecture 15). X and X’s husband shared responsibilities such as cooking, cleaning, and laundry, performing tasks when available rather than by designation.

In the patriarchal factory, female bodies enter and docile, obedient, feminine women exit. Since “we are born male or female but not masculine or feminine,” the patriarchal factory enacts different kinds of norms on male or female bodies (Bartky 27). But this factory is not a metaphor for one institution in society today; the factory that reduces individuals to docile and subjected bodies is omnipresent. In this paper, Sandra Lee Bartky successfully uses Foucault’s description of ‘docile bodies’ to explain women’s involvement with the patriarchal standards of femininity. She criticizes Foucault for not readily discussing the engendered way in which bodies are made docile. Her argument centers around the discussion that patriarchal power whispers its way into the minds of its subjects, borrowing so deep that it is difficult to image how they (and by extension, we) might escape its control. However, throughout my reading of her paper, I was plagued with the question of: how? How can we resist this insidious whispering? If it is omnipresent, should it be up to feminists to create a space without it? While Bartky effectively critiques Foucault, the lack of a solution to the problem Bartky poses left me with more questions than answers.