The Intimately Oppressed Summary

Women have been downgraded and mistreated because of their gender. From birth, Women and Men grew up with very different rules to follow. Men were raised to be the head of the house and do work for a living. Growing up as little girls, women were taught to raise their kids and make food for their families. “Strong family structures were necessary because the family was the basis for all other institutions. The government, church, and community all worked through the nuclear family unit.”(“Gender and

Women, like black slaves, were treated unequally from the male before the nineteenth century. The role of the women played the part of their description, physically and emotionally weak, which during this time period all women did was took care of their household and husband, and followed their orders. Women were classified as the “weaker sex” or below the standards of men in the early part of the century. Soon after the decades unfolded, women gradually surfaced to breathe the air of freedom and self determination, when they were given specific freedoms such as the opportunity for an education, their voting rights, ownership of property, and being employed.

It's not fair the way women have been treated in today's culture and time before ours. The first meeting for the women's rights was held July 19-20 in 1848 so women could be able to vote created by the 19th amendment which “guarantees all American women the right to vote (House of Representatives)”. Strong, confident and forceful women have brought about gender equality and redefined the woman’s place in society; this is illustrated in A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen and in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

Sexism has been observed throughout history. There was once a time where women were denied an education, the

As the years progressed from the 1700s into the 1800s, women started to see that they were not treated as equal as men even though they could do anything men could. During the late 1800s was when women first started to fight for more rights and equality. They started forming more and more women groups, and even went on labor strikes to protest the diversity. Although it seemed that as hard as they tried to gain this equality, the harder it was for them to obtain it. They were treated horribly and unequally to men. While African American men received the power to vote in 1870, women still did not have a chance at that right. Even though many people disagree that women were treated fairly, the studies show that they were discriminated against. The treatment of women in the late 1800s was discriminatory because they

Today in society it can be agreed that women have indeed gained many rights that were not accessible to them 100 years before. Although, despite the mentality that men and women are treated equally there are still very many discrepancies between the treatment of genders. Many of which can be attributed to the expectations placed on the genders, gender roles between both genders, and women in the workplace. These issues have caused a great rift to form between the genders, a rift that has caused one gender to claim dominance over the other and this can develop a sense of inferiority by the submissive gender.

Women have always been oppressed in society. This was a widely accepted social norm throughout history until 1848 when scattered protests of women were erected after Margaret Brent

Sexism is generally associated with women but, when researching the effects it also has on men, my opinion has shifted. One of the first times we identify sexism dates back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. At this time, due to a woman’s deceitful moral compass, settlers had the belief that women had to rely on men. Due to the religious beliefs at this time, and the story of Adam and Eve, women were deemed corrupt and untrustworthy. Feminine sexism has been around for decades but, we are just recently recognizing that men are victims of this disturbing phenomenon. (Tracy)

Martin Luther King Jr. once said “our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” However, I will not be silent. Sexism is a thing of the past, present, and future. Women have never been seen as equal to men. This idea and concept affect how women carry out their lives. Women may act different or speak different just based on society's thoughts about their gender. In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and in today’s society it is clear that because of women’s perceived “weakness”, men now dominate women legally, physically and financially.

Women of early to mid 1900’s were oppressed by the man’s perfect view of what a woman should and should not be. Hastily after they were given the right to vote in 1920, men pressured women to stay in the realm of expertise they had already participated in for centuries, domesticity. Sylvia Plath the writer of, The Bell Jar, uses the life of Esther Greenwood to show how cultural views of women disabled women from reaching their highest abilities. Women who sought a higher education or an occupation above the norm were pitied in society, looked down on for not conforming to the American dream of the “suburb housewife” (Friedan,60). Women of higher positions were judged by their looks instead of the qualifications. Life for women was particularly hard in the 1950’s, many women would go about their day drugged with uppers and plaster the fake smiles on their faces just to be favored in society; but the mundanity of daily life dragged on and many women found no challenge or enjoyment in their tasks (Friedan, 62). Men used the pressures of society to oppress women in conforming with the ideal housewife, instead of joining the workforce and creating their own destiny -like the women before they had fought for- they applied themselves to an image created for them by “God” and by “man”.

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed Paulo Freire mentions the teacher-student contradiction. The contradiction is when students are controlled by teachers. The teachers have the authority over the students, which puts the students in a position that lacks freedom to experience their identity as humans. This contradiction exists due to the banking concept of education. Freire states that the banking concept encourages the contradiction between teachers and students. The banking concept rejects students as individuals and sees them as objects. As a result of the rejection as individuals, students are unable to speak or act upon their own

Women were always seen as being inferior or “weak” to men; that they couldn’t do the same things men did because they lacked the physical strength to do so. Because women were physically inferior, it became easy to oppress them due to this difference in power.

Throughout much of history, women have been viewed as inferior to men. In the 1800s and early 1900s, women were not allowed to hold the same jobs or

Throughout history, countless acts of gender inequality can be identified; the causes of these discriminating accounts can be traced back to different causes. The general morality of the inequity relies on a belief that men are superior to women; because of this idea, women have spent generations suffering under their counterparts. Also, a common expectation is that men tend to be more assertive and absolute because of their biological hormones or instinctive intellect. Another huge origin is sexual discrimination; even in the world today, many women are viewed by men as just sex objects rather than a real human being with

In the primitive age in some tribes woman had more importance than men, because they were ruled by a matriarchal society. The importance of physical strength increased in the process of solving the internal problems of society and of resisting external attack. Thus, changing the society system to that of patriarchal social order to be able to meet the necessities. Male started dominating society, all the power was concentrated in their hands. Racial discrimination is what ignited gender discrimination, it was around colonial times when man felt superior over women. Women were viewed as mere tools or servants, they had no rights other than bringing up children, cooking and cleaning. For many years women have been trying to prove themselves to the whole of their society that they are better or equal to men, in this point in time is that really necessary? Women just like men have gone to the moon, fought in wars, and