Oppression Of Women: A Conceptual Analysis

Imperialism is used to gain authority and control over one state or people in the form of an empire, based on practices of dominance and the idea of superiority. The term can be found in the history of Japan, the Chinese Empire, Greece, ancient Egypt and the British Empire.

Women have let the idea of looking beautiful take over their self-confidence and life. Healthy Place, an online magazine teaching women about living a healthy life, says that, “today's fashion models weigh twenty-three percent less than the average female, and a young woman between the ages of 18-34 has a seven percent chance of being as slim as a catwalk model and a one percent chance of being as thin as a supermodel.” So why do women push themselves to be excessively thin when these models are anomalies? They do it because the media tells them that this look is the only look that can attract men. Even if a woman is “beautiful” according to the media’s standards, she will always find something about her body that she hates, whether it is her hair or her belly button, no women is completely satisfied. Our society is very accepting of different religions and lifestyles, so why can we not accept different types of beauty as well?

Beauty standards are portrayed everywhere: on magazines, social media, ads, commercials, and even flaunted among peers. While the ideals are supposed to promote health awareness, fitness motivation, and self love, it unfortunately results in many unfavorable consequences. Women are constantly “penalized for not being beautiful and at the same time are stigmatized, even pathologized, for not feeling beautiful, for having low self-esteem, for engaging in behaviors like dieting and excessive exercising, or for having eating disorders” (Johnston and Taylor 954). Beauty standards are unrealistic and unhealthy to pursue, and misinforms the public on what true beauty is. While not all beauty image ideals promote negative feelings and dissatisfaction, many believe that the negative effects far outweighs any positive effects.

Through extensive secondary research using the internet to gather information, I have gained a broader level of knowledge on a number of struggles that women around the world continue to face today. The extent of oppression that women are subjected to varies depending on the their ethnicity, culture, religion, socioeconomic status and geographical location. Each of these factors will determine the quality of life that women will have in a particular society.

. What is oppression? Oppression is the state of being subject to unjust treatment or control. Women have been oppressed since the beginning of time, and in 2016 women are still oppressed. Many people would argue that women, especially in Western societies are not oppressed because women have rights, and do not experience the injustices women in places like Saudi Arabia, India, Africa, and other impoverished places have to face. However, if those same naysayers enrolled in a sociology course, they would know every culture and society is different and has different sets of problems.

I will discuss the gender issue presented in the movie Bedeviled (2010). Firstly, the film indicates female’s disadvantaged status in the society since all female figures in Bedeviled are persecuted by masculine dominance. The protagonist Hae-wön shows indifferent to other women who need her help, because she is afraid of male’s vengeance. For example, she refuses to be a witness when she sees that a girl is raped by three men, and she also pretends that she knows nothing about the little girl’s death. We cannot simply blame her indifference because the patriarchal society does not give her enough protection to upload justice. As a result, Hae-wön chooses to be indifferent

Oppression is perpetuated in our society through supremacy and discrimination. Women of color have been subjected to the justifications of unfair treatment from their oppressors— both male and female— for generations and are expected to identify with misconceived definitions that have been externally attributed to their own realities. There is an immense pressure on the women of color who have broken out of the cycle of this socioeconomic imprisonment to maintain their standing within society 's good graces. This is often discussed as though these women have something to hide, as though a friendly and modest demeanor are enough to erase the layers of transgenerational trauma from sight of the very same oppressors that caused it. At the

Historically, men have been considered the only sex and women, the Other, and as a result, men’s views and opinions have created myths of what women in society are expected to conform to and exhibit. Many of the expectations developed are restrictive and oppressive to women. One such expectation that men have developed and perpetuated is that a woman exists to fulfill his sexual needs. Man is the superior being and his “ideal woman” is one that will unquestionably submit to his domination (Beauvoir 201). In addition, men’s domination over women, places women in a state of dependence. Women are largely reliant on men for economic necessities and security. However, women’s reliance on men, leaves them vulnerable to male’s oppression on them.

Feminist perspective developed with the ideology that women face large amounts of inequalities in a patriarchal society. They aimed to address and rid the social world of this oppression of women by men. According to Bishop, (2015) “oppression occurs when one group of people use different forms of power to keep another group down in order to exploit them. The oppressor uses the power; the oppressed are exploited” (p. 133-134). Oppression must be by individual experience and not grouped into being the same for all. This includes understanding the original ideology of feminist theory being critiqued as only considering the experiences of middle class, white women. That black women, of lower class experienced oppression much different from the other women. Women are oppressed, thus has to be understood in a different construct that women are similar in some sources, experience of oppression but also experience oppression very differently from one individual to another. Feminist theories have further been expanded do its continuation throughout society and decades to encompass many more issues and arenas than just men and women relationships. Now it seeks to understand and address oppression based on culture, race, class, etc and not only for women but for all. Therefore, Bishop (2014) outlines five components that seem common to all forms of oppression and serve to maintain its presence in society.

Not only do men subordinate women, throughout history and up to today, but they subordinate every “other” imaginable. The oppression of these groups is due to the “dominant human male who has an unlimited right to exploit ‘mother’ earth”, which is quoted from theologian Anne Primavesi by Howell in her article “Ecofeminism: What One Needs to Know”. This view that men see themselves as having the “right” to such destruction means that they don’t only exploit nature, but they thus exploit women, animals, and anything that is considered an “other” to men without considering consequences. In this essay, I argue that the oppression experienced by women is inherently like the oppression of animals in how they are viewed as subordinate to all things

The oppression of women is due to a ‘global culture machine’, which consists of the advertising industry, the cosmetic industry and communications media (Chapkis, 1986). From this, a constricted, westernised ideal of beauty is encouraged to women worldwide. Chapkis analyses rituals women go through to achieve ‘perfection’ such as anorexia or bulimia, using these to reveal the levels of oppressiveness these regimes are for women. “Women are entrapped in the beauty system, but there are possibilities for change if women are willing to accept themselves and their bodies as they really are” (Chapkis, 1986). For this to be possible ‘beauty secrets’ (the processes females go through to conform to the cultural ideal) would have to be carefully scrutinized

It 's not a mystery that society 's ideals of beauty have a drastic and frightening effect on women. Popular culture frequently tells society, what is supposed to recognize and accept as beauty, and even though beauty is a concept that differs on all cultures and modifies over time, society continues to set great importance on what beautiful means and the significance of achieving it; consequently, most women aspire to achieve beauty, occasionally without measuring the consequences on their emotional or physical being. Unrealistic beauty standards are causing tremendous damage to society, a growing crisis where popular culture conveys the message that external beauty is the most significant characteristic women can have. The approval of prototypes where women are presented as a beautiful object or the winner of a beauty contest by evaluating mostly their physical attractiveness creates a faulty society, causing numerous negative effects; however, some of the most apparent consequences young and adult women encounter by beauty standards, can manifest as body dissatisfaction, eating disorders that put women’s life in danger, professional disadvantage, and economic difficulty.

From this, it is possible to analyze that performance is reproduced on the conditioning of discipline and surveillance. It can be view as a self-disciplinary or self-regulatory mechanism acts in relativity with other social audience. And it is only through this reproduction, the notion of gender sustains because the idea of gender is inseparably related with collective performance, otherwise, if reproduction or performance is not continuing, there would be no gender. This is what Judith called stylized repetition of acts. Such repetitions and imitations construct a body, especially female body, in a way, that define how a female body must be a feminized womanized body. The performative norm is not natural because a body need to achieve the

The first way that lead to womens oppression in women is thepremise of a divinity from the order that humans were created by God, in which women are seen as inferior to men, and men are seen as superior as well as closer to God. In the Abrahamic religons, Islam,Christinany, and jedusiaim, they believe that the first human was a man named Adam, and after him God created Eve.( ) Creation stories like these increased the belief and idea of womens inferiority in religious society, playing a huge role on womens sense of indemnity in said society. For examples in Christianity they belief“… God said, 'It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him'” (Gen. 2:18-24). This reenfoces the belief that Eve was created

Young women look at themselves in the mirror and despises what they see. Deluded by the commercials that blare from television screens, they are convinced that they are fat and ugly. It seems like all women are dieting, exercising, tanning and most excessively, the women of today are unsatisfied with their bodies.