The Revolution Being The `` Gender Revolution ``

In society in the 1950’s the average woman played an inferior role to men. Men considered themselves superior to women and often expected women to cater to their wishes. Females were expected to adjust their feelings , thoughts and actions to accommodate men's beliefs. The “do not speak unless spoken to” rule was common for women. They were expected to obey their husbands and fathers without hesitation. In order to be judged as respectable, they would have to remain sexually pure until marriage. After a minimum amount of schooling, women had to find a suitable young man to marry. In some instances a woman’s parents would orchestrate an arranged marriage to benefit their social status or income. Being put in such a position deteriorated a woman’s power. Today, women have fewer guidelines to abide by. First, women

The woman’s role in society had many changes during the era of WWII to the baby boom era. It went from the strong independent woman that can work in a factory to a house wife that takes care of the family to the final slightly dominant, but still dependent female. All of these different feminine mystiques were changed because of society and through indirect propaganda in TV shows and

“Look at us! We’re just like everyone else. We’ve bought into the same ridiculous delusion; this idea that you have to settle down and resign from life.” (April Wheeler, Revolutionary Road). It has become a society norm that women are meant to serve housewives; to cook, clean, garden, and nurture children, even though they are much more capable of other things. The role of women is greatly overseen, as they are not perceived to be of their full potential, rather than as societies idealistic expectation. This is because men and those who are wealthy are unable to look past gender and accept women as of equal significance.

While social change has brought on more changes than what women are a custom too, at one point in history women actually felt a form of importance in fulfilling their roles not only in the home; but outside as well. “These demographic shifts account for many new or altered roles, such as increased number of duel-earner families, later and fewer marriages, fewer children, increased life expectancy, and the massive migration shifting employees across a nation and across the globe” (Lindsey, 2011, pg. 275).

In “The End of Men?,” an article featured in The Atlantic in summer 2010, author Hanna Rosin illustrates the drastic, ascending shifts perceived in modern society. Rosin poises the theory of how men were traditionally seen as the superior gender. The author believes there is a contractionary shift in gender roles and that the new era is “[B]etter suited to women” (Rosin 304). Recent studies show that women are becoming prominent in the workforce, education, and family. Accordingly, she explains how women are miraculously able to balance work while nurturing their children. Rosin believes that this occurs because men are not biologically made to tend children. Additionally, Rosin analyses how men lost “8 million jobs” during the Great Recession (Rosin 306). During that time, women were becoming what made a majority of the workforce. There were increases in women’s presence in what used to be male-dominated fields: school, politics, and business. Rosin questions this drastic shift concerning women and men’s roles in society, stating how they are now equally competing for jobs. Moreover, the way women behave now show their commendable abilities in the workforce and how society is changing as they establish their dominance and authority everyday. Once, women were frowned upon, but nowadays, more people favor having girls than boys. Today’s era is commending women with their admirable work ethic and self-worth. Throughout most of history, men dominated the

Early twentieth century America is shaped by World War I , the effects of industrial growth, and a beginning of a new age in literature. Despite movements for progressive reforms like the prohibition of alcohol and the movement for women’s suffrage women’s rights were still limited by traditional gender roles. Women are a “detached portion” of their husbands and expected to submit to his every demand. As result of women being viewed as flighty and emotionally unstable, men must take the dominant role and every decision made in the family is approved by them. Moreover, the purpose of a woman’s life is to maintain a household and birth and care for her

This module's primary sources engage the always-changing ideas of gender how we understand masculinity and feminity. How were notions of gender in the end of the Gilded Age/beginning of Progressive Era different than previous ideas? How have these ideas changed in the last century? How have they stayed the same?

The status of women began to change during the Progressive Era, they were being granted with more and more opportunities in America. Women began to graduate from college and enter in the field of law, medicine, science, or journalism. As Americans began to notice a change in the lives of the American women, the term “New Woman” had been coined. This term was “used at the end of the nineteenth century to describe women who were pushing against the limits which society imposed on women” (academic.brooklyn.cuny). The term implies a woman who was young, college educated, athletic, interested in a college career, and wants a marriage based on the equality of genders.

Later on Rich believed that women who were starting to make a difference towards society were switching their gender roles by surpassing the male. In the essay she claimed that “…middle-class women were making careers of domestic perfection, working to send their husbands through professional school, then retiring to raise large families” (Rich 9). She argued how women are supporting their spouses when the men are dependent and how women later put their dreams on hold when they start a family. But men don’t have the same sympathy towards the women’s careers, when they have children they don’t let them continue ‘their careers of domestic perfection’, instead they make the women become dependent on them. This is ironic towards the male and female roles because now the male is portrayed

In the article “The End of Men,” Hanna Rosin offers several examples of women overpowering men. The inequality between men and women has become a critical issue in today’s society. According to Rosin, women are slowly surging ahead in the workforce and family life while men are left behind struggling to meet expectations. Rosin argues that this role reversal is taking place because women are simply better suited for postindustrial society.

By equality, Frye is shedding light on the fact that in society femaleness is always a disadvantage while maleness is not. In the dominant-subordinate power relationship, the female is always socially, culturally, politically and economically disadvantaged. For example, historically women have been discouraged and barred from attempting any task, mannerism, or job that was deemed too masculine for her gender. This includes but is not limited to the women’s suffrage movement, the transition from dress to pants, female autonomy, crudeness, breaking the glass ceiling, etc. Furthermore, this harmful social perception of a female gender role, not only stunts individual growth, happiness, and equality, but with the current implementation of tampon tax, family paid-leave, and the wage-gap, it also dicates an economic handicap on female autonomy and reinforces the subordinate gender

In “The Unfinished Revolution” by Maria Shriver from TIME magazine, the author discusses about the process of changing of women’s role in the workplace and in their own family since the first Commission on the Status of Women of the U.S. For the first half of the article, the author mentions about her root and the beginning of the new age for the women once soft and submissive to rise up and take the lead in their own free lives. Next for the second half, the author interviews some of the men as she travels across the state, and turns out some of them are feeling stressed out too because they do not know how to react to the sudden change in the system that they used to know. A Seattle man told Maria: “All of us grew up thinking this was a man’s world, that doors were just gonna open to us because we had a Y chromosome”. Despite the change of equality in favor of the women, some fields still remain as roadblocks to the movement like sexual harassment, lack of health care services, childcare policy, and taxes.

With the industrialization of the economy during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women began to break free from the strict limitations that guided their lives for hundreds of years. Where the True Woman once existed, the New Woman emerged. Thus began the American journey towards women’s empowerment. Women’s newfound ability to make choices and right to traditionally male opportunities paved the way for the emergence of the Sexual Revolution and the exceeding popularization of neotantra, which in turn continued to empower women.

Throughout history, women have been seen in many different lights. From a woman’s perspective she is strong, smart, helpful and equal to men. In the eyes of men, she is seen as the weaker being, the housewife, and the caretaker. By looking at the following pieces of writing, one can see that through the centuries, women have struggled to break out of the mold that man had put her in and make themselves known in society as important.

The End of Men: And the Rise of Women, by Hanna Rosin, presents a new phenomenon of gender role reversal. Rosin explicates the transformation of women’s roles and the deterioration of men’s roles in education, work, and familial structures. Rosin provides detailed accounts of actual persons, statistics, and brief historical data on gender roles and how they transpired. The narrative demonstrates a separated gender gap, hence the title The End of Men: And the Rise of Women. The Women portrayed have progressed on all accounts while men steadily have taken a step back. Rosin introduces several individuals, both men and women through stories of her interviews who would challenge the status quo or deny it altogether. Her approach seeks to inform others of the gender inequality transformation that has ultimately left men behind. The transition of gender roles is at the forefront of End of Men. Rosin illustrates her journey in her unending pursuit of research concerning the present roles of men and women at home, in school and at the workplace. Moreover, she creates two characters, cardboard man and plastic woman. This construction of characters lay her foundation in demonstrating men are inflexible and women flexible which allows women to progress and men to remain stagnant, an epidemic she claims is plaguing men all over the country. Hannah Rosin’s book, End of Men: The Rise of Women