Intellectual Developments Pertaining to Gender in Japan and Europe

Throughout time, the role that Women had in the early twentieth century to the present has changed drastically and it has changed for the better. Japanese American Women residing in the United States, has experienced the evolution of their culture, tradition, values and their role in society. However though it seems as if there is no time in this ever so rapid society, they still continue to pass down culture and tradition through each generation. Some key terms that are crucial in order to understand the essay are, Issei, or the first generation, Nisei, the second generation ,and Sansei, known as the third generation.Over time the Women slowly moved away form being the average Homemaker and transforming into a respected and valued member of society.

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.

Jean Jacques Rousseau was a French philosopher in 1712-1778. He believed that all humans are born innocent and what corrupt them and makes evil is society. He believes that if there was no society it would not make human beings feel so judged, shy or depended on others. Without society people would feel more equal they would not want to compare themselves Humans would feel freer. Rousseau thought that society weakens humans that if someone were to grow up in a natural place and place far from society they would be stronger. Compared o the people that grow up in a society they weaken.

During the Middle Ages, except for those in religious positions, women were only seen as three things, which were daughter, wife, and mother. But in the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries, new opportunities in learning humanism arose for only those in the higher class families. Even though they started to educate themselves, the majority had no rights whatsoever in money matters as well as estate. From the 17th century and up to the scientific revolution, women’s rights had consistently been improving. However, during the revolution, the study of the human body brought to attention that the male brain is quite larger than that of a female. This revelation set back the female race back to a limited role, but this time this setback was

In the sixteenth century the role of women in society was very limited. Women were generally stereotyped as housewives and mothers. They were to be married, living their life providing for her husband and children. The patriarchal values of the Elizabethan times regarded women as the weaker sex.’ Men were considered the dominant gender and were treated with the utmost respect by females. Women were mainly restricted within the confines of their homes and were not allowed to go school or to university, but they could be educated at home by private tutors. Men were said to be the ones to provide for their families financially. Women were often seen as not intelligent. Property could not be titled in the name of a female within the family. Legally everything the female had belonged to her husband. Poor and middle class wives were kept very busy but rich women were not idle either. In a big house they had to organize and supervise the servants.

Rousseau sees the first step of exiting the state of nature and getting closer to origin of tyranny is when man decides to leave the lifestyle of being alone and always wandering to settling down and making a house and trying to provide for his basic needs and the ones that are not as necessary as: nourishment, rest, shelter and self-preservation. This is the stage where you see the element playing a part in man’s life and in the way civil society came to be. Man is no longer just worried about himself he has to provide not only for himself but for his entire family which he is searching for. Natural man or savage man lives within himself whereas Rousseau argues that civil man lives in the judgement of others. This is one of the big reasons has to how inequality fomed. All the inequalities Rousseau does take about or basically economic things that happen in nature. This type of economic ineuality is among the many other inequalities but is one of many that inequality originated from. If man had stayed restricted to working by themselves they would have remained free, healthy, good and happy as

Rousseau’s assumptions and beliefs of his era are society and the growth of social interdependence. He was from 1700, (1712-78) it was very different compared to our beliefs.

In Rousseau’s essay he starts off with an extremely powerful quote that stays, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains” (59). Rousseau is referring to the slaves that are being held captive. Everyone is born free in this country, but he is not in this. He is considered a slave from day one. He compares this first section of his essay to family and how they interact and bond. I thought that when Rousseau says, “The oldest form of society- and the only natural one- is the family. Children remain bound to their fathers for only just so long as they feel the need of him for their self- preservation. Once that need ceases the natural bonds is dissolved” (59). We eventually grow apart from our families naturally whether or not we actually realize it, but if we decided to be bonded with them and stay it’s a choice. The ruler is your father and he is your master. One of Jefferson’s famous sayings in the Declaration of Independence is “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with

In Ihara Saikaku’s story, Life of a Sensuous Woman, and Mary Wollstonecraft’s work, “Vindication of the Rights of Woman”, the issue of double standards in gender are examined. Both pieces offer a perspective into the lives of women during their respective times and show how some standards that are considered favorable for men, are looked down upon for women. In particular, the two works examine how women were treated differently based on their education, their social status and even their sexual history. Saikaku looks at these issues in a different lens from Wollstonecraft, based on his experiences as a man living in Japan in the 17th century. Their experiences shape their works and show how the issue of double standards of gender span culture, time and geography.

Tsurumi says that only three options were given to most young women in Japan in the Meiji period: work at a textile mill, weaving house, or a house of prostitution. Tsurumi says that women in all three cases had effectively been “sold” by their parents into the workforce, and were without the ability to choose where they wished to work (Tsurumi, 187). To detail even further, Tsurumi says that girls working in any of these fields were effectively “purchased commodities” to their employers, and were treated as objects (Tsurumi, 188). This continues to support the idea that these women were victims of a society determined to society’s vulnerable populations for their labor and ignore their humanity. Despite this, the women of Japan’s textile mills worked tirelessly in harsh circumstances in an effort to support their families, and, as a result, also supported the larger local and national communities of which they were a part. In conclusion, Tsurimi says that a woman working in Japan’s textile mills “made [her contributions to the industrialized economy] for her family and herself, and not for the country or company” (Tsurumi, 198). Even if their contribution was not intentional, however, the impact the factory girls of Meiji Era Japan had on the industrialization of Japan’s economy is irrefutable, and showcases

During the long nineteenth century, political revolutions, industrialization, and European imperialism resulted in dramatic changes in the role of women in Western Europe and Eastern Asia. As industrialization spread in Western Europe, women were no longer able to fulfill their dual role as a mother and a worker. After the introduction of industrialization, laborious tasks were moved from the household to factories and women were forced to choose either the life of a mother or the life of a worker. Women who chose to leave their households were subjected to harsh conditions, low wages, and long hours. The majority of married and middle-class women were confined to the home, and deprived of an education and civil rights. Unlike the

Rousseau’s state of nature differs greatly from Locke’s. The human in Rousseau’s state of nature exists purely as an instinctual and solitary creature, not as a Lockean rational individual. Accordingly, Rousseau’s human has very few needs, and besides sex, is able to satisfy them all independently. This human does not contemplate appropriating property, and certainly does not deliberate rationally as to the best method for securing it. For Rousseau, this simplicity characterizes the human as perfectly free, and because it does not socialize with others, it does not have any notion of inequality; thus, all humans are perfectly equal in the state of nature. Nonetheless, Rousseau accounts for humanity’s contemporary condition in civil society speculating that a series of coincidences and discoveries, such as the development of the family and the advent of agriculture, gradually propelled the human away from a solitary, instinctual life towards a social and rationally contemplative

On one occasion Rousseau claims that women were only made to please man, and that this is natural law by saying “…woman was specifically made to please man. If man ought to please her in turn, the necessity is less direct. His merit lies in his power; he pleases simply because he is strong. I grant you this is not the law of love; but it is the law of nature, which is older than love itself.” Rousseau is trying to convey that sexual distinction certainly exists and that it was meant to be this way.

“ The more women are like men, the less influence they will have over men, and then men will be masters indeed.(Rousseau, 574)This quote from Jean-Jaques Rousseau shows how men gave credit to women and the define separation and desire for a social normal. The quote also expresses the way women were expected to fit these perimeters, in order to be like men they had to be educated; women had to prove that they deserved to be educated like me.Women were fighting an uphill battle against a ridged system that had been in place for centuries and had more to prove and had to find a reason for men to believe in their ability to think and be a part of this new way of revolutionary thinking. Men of this time had something to lose if women were to

Though both authors agree that moral love is detrimental for society, Marie de France and Rousseau disagree on who is benefited or incapacitated by it. They both agree that moral love is created by social, however, France argues that it inhibits women from being themselves which prevents them from fully contribute to society, whereas Rousseau argues that women uses it to control men. France explores, through her stories, how society agree on certain standards that advantages men at expense on women’s happiness and sense of fulfillment. To France, moral love is an unspoken social contract that benefits men. Being moral love social in nature, France argues is can affect society in general: family, friends, children, relatives, etc. Furthermore, according to Marie de France, moral love may reveal ugly and wretched feelings; it may produce grief, jealously, fear, even turn someone into a murderer. Rousseau, on the other hand, says that the moral aspect of love works as social contract used for the advantage of some at the expense of others. Rousseau defines moral love as “an artificial sentiment born of social custom and extolled by women with so much skill and care in order to establish their hegemony and make dominant the sex that ought to obey” (11). He specifically argues that women manipulatively use moral love to gain control over men and as result men turn into a slave, fearful, and weak; therefore, impairing men’s ideas of love of oneself. Rousseau further asserts moral