Women History Reflection

"Changing attitudes in Britain Society towards women was the major reason why some women received the vote in 1918". How accurate is this view?

This class has brought a lot of change to my views on the seemingly everlasting prevalence of sexism in America. Before taking women and writing this semester I had not realized how the stereotypes surrounding masculine identity have taken hold of much of the Greek life on college campuses, male-dominated/labor intensive jobs, as well as influencing a significant portion of the mainstream advertising and media that my peers and I consume on a daily basis. The readings that accompanied the course were clear, informative, and provided me with more insight to the challenges and inequality that women have had to confront in the past and continue to face in the present. This class taught me many things about the current

After studying women and gender history in early America for the past semester, my views about American history have changed tremendously. Having very little prior experience with history, I had many assumptions and preconceived notions from high school history classes. Women were never even mentioned in my previous learning about U.S. history, so I assumed they took on unimportant roles and had little, if any, impact on shaping our country’s history. However, after this semester of delving deeply into the women of early America, I could not have been more incorrect. Although they were not typically in the public realm, we cannot fully understand history without studying women. The following readings uncovered the roles of women in the private sphere and were crucial to my new understanding of the importance of women in American history by bringing women to the forefront.

Throughout this course, we learned that women’s studies originated as a concern at the time that “women and men noticed the absence, misrepresentation, and trivialization of women [in addition to] the ways women were systematically excluded from many positions of power and authority” (Shaw, Lee 1). In the past, men had more privileges than women. Women have battled for centuries against certain patterns of inadequacy that all women experience. Every culture and customs has divergent female

History has always been heavily dominated by men, and for women to earn a spot in history means that they would need to do something extraordinary. In “Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History,” by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, she points out several famous women in history that fit the mold of extraordinary. Through discussing Mae West, Rosa Parks, and Martha Ballard, Ulrich makes the claim that women rarely make history unless they have broken away from the norms of their society. By explaining the individual historical cases and her own opinion, accompanied by visual representations of her view, Ulrich argues how history dictates who gets a spot in history and who gets forgotten. However, a place in history depends on how out of the ordinary

Topic and Questions: What is the author 's topic and what questions does she attempt to answer? That is describe, who, what, when, and where. The author should explain her topic and questions in the first few pages of her article (Limit 200 words).

Through Women’s Eyes by Ellen Carol DuBois and Lynn Dumenil addresses American History from 1865 until present day. The third edition of this textbook includes visual and primary sources over several centuries. I used this textbook in a history course, “Women in the United States, 1890 – Present;” I found the textbook to be engaging, helpful, and useful throughout the course. The way in which in the information was presented allowed me to learn, assess, and analyze the difficulties women faced.

Bowles, M. (2011). American history 1865–present: End of isolation. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.

Women in the nineteenth century, for the most part, had to follow the common role presented to them by society. This role can be summed up by what historians call the “cult of domesticity”. The McGuffey Readers does a successful job at illustrating the women’s role in society. Women that took part in the overland trail as described in “Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey” had to try to follow these roles while facing many challenges that made it very difficult to do so.

Modernism is the term of deviating from the norm. In the early 1900s, modernism influenced women’s role in society by providing more opportunities, jobs, and role models for girls today, in society.

My enrollment in the History course this semester was due to requirements for my bachelor’s degree in nursing. Rather than feeling that the course took valuable time away from the core curriculum, what I learned has made a lasting impact on how I feel about the world around me and who I am in that world. Those changes are going to impact the way in which I interact with my future patients and conduct myself as a healthcare professional. The format of the course facilitated a deeper understanding of social and cultural concepts and how those concepts can affect and even define a group of people or region to the rest of the world. Through the education I have received in this course, I now watch international news reports and more clearly

The definition of feminism is very elusive. Maybe because of its ever-changing historical meaning, it’s not for certain whether there is any coherence to the term feminism or if there is a definition that will live up to the movement’s variety of adherents and ideas. In the book “No Turning Back,” author Estelle Freedman gives an accurate four-part definition of the very active movement: “Feminism is a belief that women and men are inherently part of equal worth. Because most societies privilege men as a group, social movements are necessary to achieve equality between women and men, with the understanding that gender always intersects with other social hierarchies” (Freedman 7).

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 sexualisation of women in advertising has become a very prominent and controversial issue in today’s society. Many brands, products and campaigns we are presented with portray women as being available and willing sexual objects, who exist to cater to the male gender. Gucci is one such brand that does this, focusing on emphasizing the sexual appeal of the female gender in order to sell their products, because as advertisers know: ‘sex sells.’ This new cultural shift can however, be seen as politically regressive for women, as the ideology it brings negatively impacts how women are viewed by society and how they view themselves.

1. Women's lives have changed enormously this century and the actions of women themselves have played a vital role in the transformation. Putting women back into history is about giving individual women their history, but it should also be about making some collective sense out of women's divergent experiences.