Should Women be Given Special Rights in Modern Societies - Essay Example

Should Women be given Special Rights in Modern Societies because they have historically been the Victims of Injustice? The term ‘feminism’ was first used in 1892, in Paris, during the First International Women’s Conference. It was an altered version of the French word ‘féministe’, which stands for advocacy and belief in the concept of equality of men and women in all areas of life. The reality, however, is that in most of the communities of the world, actions which are indicative of feminism have been carried out for centuries. Women like the female leader of the ancient British tribe known as the Iceni, Boadicea, and the famed Joan of Arc proved in their eras that women were as capable as men in warfare among other activities. The feminist movement, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, was the culmination of virtual centuries of women struggling for equality with men in public as well as private life. This was first realized in Europe and America before the effects of feminism began to affect other nations in other continents. The feminist movement has proven to have a profound effect on western societies, and is now beginning to impact eastern cultures as well; however, it is still necessary because all the objectives that were phrased from the outset have not been realized. Just 60 years ago, the existences of women in virtually all societies around the world were limited in that they were subject to the whims of their men in all respects. In the home, women were to obey the rules of their husbands or fathers. Working was also discouraged for women. From birth, women in developed as well as developing nations were conditioned to aim to become the best wives and mothers that they could be. The role of motherhood was overly praised and women were sometimes forced to become wives and mothers against their will in developed nations like the United States. Once they married, wives were expected to bear children, look after them without requiring or expecting any assistance from their husbands, and also meet the multiple needs of their husbands. According to Van der Tuin (2011) women in America would spend more than 55 hours on a weekly basis in looking after their families. This meant that they had no extra time to pursue any additional pursuits. In addition, they remained subject to their husbands under religious as well as state laws that asserted that husbands were the ‘masters’ or ‘heads’ of the home (Walter 2010). The aim of the feminist movement was to address all these unfair realities. It also aimed to deal with the reality of women’s lack of access to higher or management jobs in organizations through anti-discrimination regulations. When the newly established Equal Employment Opportunity Commission would not push for rules to protect and defend female workers, a number of prominent feminists who included Betty Freidan made the decision to confront the existence of discrimination in the workplace through the American courts (Walter 2010). In 1966, these feminists created the National Organization for Women and proceeded to lobby for pro-equality rules to be reinstated. The aim of these feminists was not necessarily to dismantle the existing system but to encourage it to embrace female participation on the political and public level. The ‘women’s liberation movement, which would come later, demanded for more radical changes because they believed that the majority of women lived with oppression in all aspects of their lives. According to the feminist theory, there are four key orientations; these include the Marxist, liberal, socialist, and radical models. The liberal feminist perspective was central to the objectives of American and European women in 1800s when they sought to correct women’s lack of human rights and working opportunities as a result of the inequality of women in personal relationships and through the uneven distribution of wealth (Undurraga 2010). The main aim of liberal feminism was to achieve reform in society through concentrating on educating the masses. The Marxist feminist model is different in that it supports the notion that women’s oppression resulted from the introduction of the concept of private property which resulted in the creation of sexism and the institution of class systems. Marxist feminists believe that inequality between men and women can only result from the rearrangement of the processes used to allocate property (Roberts 2007). The socialist feminist model, on the other hand, asserts that the oppression of women results from long held beliefs in the significance of the patriarchal system, housework, motherhood, and consumerism. This theory is mainly concerned with addressing the needs of the poor women in developing nations as well as working women. The radical feminist model is based on a woman-centered perspective of the world which confronts archaic concepts endorsed by the patriarchal systems. According to this model, women’s oppression is mainly caused by cultural institutions and can only be abolished through the eradication of the concepts of gender roles (Platt 2007). The feminist movement, which involved grassroots as well as cultural projects, and was made up of numerous caucuses brought significant changes to American public and private lives. It made it possible for women to gain access to jobs that were usually reserved for male workers. It also changed the way the elements of the mass media would portray women. Today, in the West, women are able to work in any job they like and support themselves without necessarily having to ask for the permission of their male relatives first. They can also have property that is registered in their names and retain control of their own salaries even after they marry. One of the most important consequences of the women’s movement is that it supported the creation of laws that would support and protect women whose lives had been threatened by male family members or spouses. Before the feminist movement, issues such as domestic violence rarely got the appropriate reactions from law enforcement authorities because it is was subtly assumed in the majority of society that women had the capacity to force men to react to them in violent ways. In addition, women were considered as being the property of their husbands. They were literarily legal minors, according to the laws in many states (Phillips 1995). The women’s movement challenged and eradicated this type of thinking; thus giving women’s issues the type of relevance that men’s issues were addressed with. The most recent feminism trend is couched in the ‘third wave’ of feminism which started from the mid-1990s. In this age in which the developed world became media-saturated, there were different objectives that the women’s movement had to establish. Women born in the late 70s and 80s had benefited from the accomplishments of first and second wave feminism and had access to greater professional as well as economic power. From childhood, they has developed with the anticipation of better achievement as well as the awareness of the hindrances to the progression of women that still existed due to the existence of classism, racism, and sexism. They chose different methods from their predecessors to combat still existing inequalities in public life. For instance, they would use sarcasm, irony, and radical democracy as well as grassroots activism to challenge patriarchal systems. Feminism’s third wave has also been different in that it has included the views of girls and women of color; which was not common in the first and second waves. Feminism today still has to deal with false perceptions of women, though. In the past, women sought to break out of the mould that society forced on them of being weak, passive, devoted, and faithful in both good and bad circumstances. Today, feminism has to address the erroneous perception of women as being demanding, domineering, emasculating and slutty. This backlash has arisen as a result of the first and second waves’ accomplishment of the empowerment of women which enabled them to be more assertive in their dealings with men. Feminism today is not as overt as was the case in the 70s, however, it is accomplishing more objectives because it has numerous elements of the mass media at its disposal. For instance, media programming today increasingly portrays women and girls as being independent and smart while occupying the lead roles in different programs (Peltola, Milkie, and Presser 2004). Mass media elements such as blogs, discussion forums, and videos are also used to challenge the more patriarchal systems that still exist and hinder the progress of women. Moreover, feminism at present also faces challenges that were not faced in the first and second waves because of the inclusion of people from different ethnicities who have various class identities and past experiences of discrimination. To a great extent, feminism is still very important. Women should keep being given special rights because they still cannot compete with men on an equal level in many facets of public life. While it is important to root out retrogressive and archaic forms of thinking, accomplishing this feat will not really result in immediate changes. Cultures which took years or centuries to be developed cannot be erased in a decade or even half a century. For millennia, women were objectified in virtually all societies in the world and were forced to mold their personalities to suit the desires of their male counterparts (Nussbaum 1999). The fact that the first, second, and third waves of feminism did and continue to challenge this aspects does not mean that it has already been eradicated. In both developing as well as developed nations, any beauty practices that cultures support are not based on the desires of women, but rather on the desires of men. For instance, breast enlargement, which is a serious surgery which could result in serious complications, is quite common in young as well as not-so-young women in the West (Moore 2009). Its popularity is not based on the genuine desire of women to have bigger breasts. Many small-chested women opt for this surgery in order to be aesthetically pleasing to men. Even though feminism still challenges women to make decisions based on how they feel and not how men feel, it will obviously take longer for oppressive types of thinking patterns to be eradicated in their minds (McRobbie 2004). Feminism is also still relevant because women still have their identities defined by things other than their own selves. For instance, beauty practices such as skin lightening, wearing makeup that has elements such as mercury, and dieting have in the past compromised the health of thousands of women. According to Mansbridge and Okin (1994), in the West, women even refer to wearing their make-up as ‘putting their masks on’. It would appear that they are well aware of the fact that without their makeup, they would not feel as empowered as they are when they have it on. According to a research documented by Mann and Huffman (2005), this concept has actually been proven. In this study, it was established that female participants who went to their workplaces without any make-up were actually met by both male and female co-workers who concernedly inquired, “Are you ok today?” Naturally, this type of subtly-expressed disapproval of a woman without make-up enforces the notion that make-up is necessary for women to be able to improve themselves. This proves that even in an era where feminism has inundated the airwaves with the message that women do not need anything to validate their existence, there are still negative thinking patterns that will take longer to be removed or replaced with more positive thinking. According to Lindner (2004) the majority of women who are considered to be in the millennial generation (the people who were born in the 1990s) are still struggling to implement the rules that they consider as being beneficial to their own lives and fulfilling the stereotypes of what women should be and how they should act. This struggle is also exemplified in the lives of women from ‘Generation X’ who may have important jobs or hold senior positions but immediately give up their jobs to stay home with their children once they marry. According to Hancock (2007) young women are bred to doubt their own choices, question their worth, and perceive themselves as being human-beings who still have room for improvement instead of believing that they are perfect in their imperfections even as men are. Today’s mass media, while being a channel for disseminating information on the importance of embracing feminism ideals, is still used to confine women into certain cultural (Freeden 1996). For instance, many women who consider themselves modern still subscribe to the notion that the only way to be considered as being attractive is by being extremely slender in shape. They are torn between the need to express their own selves freely without fearing the thought of being castigated for their choices and also wanting to be perceived as beautiful women by men. The media, to a large extent, plays into this indecisiveness by sending women mixed messages about the true source of their identity. Another reason why feminism is still relevant in modern society is because of the emergence of forms of entertainment that threaten to undo all the progress that was accomplished by first wave and second wave feminism. The ‘hip hop’ genre of music, for instance, encourages people to refer to women in the most demeaning terms. To consolidate this constant abuse of women, female friends are even encouraged by the words of celebrities to refer to each other as ‘bitches’ or ‘hos’ (Brown and Cody 2006). This trend is presented as being extremely trendy as it is used by young and stylish people. Indeed, any woman who takes exception to this shocking display of respect of women the world over runs the risk of being labeled as ‘old’- something that most women do not wanted to be referred as. Such attacks force women to spend all their time concentrating on superficial problems so that they do not have the opportunity to really reflect and think for themselves. While the media asserts that they have liberties that their mothers and grandmothers could only dream of, this supposed ‘liberty’ is only restricted to functioning as sexual objects and nothing further (Alexander-Floyd 2012). This is still the same kind of sexism that was combated by women in the 1960s- the only difference lies in its approach. In conclusion, there are ways in which research into feminism can be improved. One way is by developing woman-centered approaches with the objective of illuminating the existences and experiences of women which are based on their languages, cultures, and references. It is an established fact that research can be unintentionally or even deliberately biased as a result of existing orthodoxies whose negative stereotypes have not been challenged. Feminism can easily challenge subjective concepts, modify methodologies, and advance scientific practice in studies concerning women’s rights and their place in life. References Alexander-Floyd, N.G. (2012) ‘Disappearing acts: reclaiming inter-sectionality in the social sciences in a post-black feminist era’, Feminist Formations, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 1–25. Brown, W.J. & Cody, M.J. (2006) ‘Effects of a prosocial television soap opera in promoting womens status’, Human Communication Research, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 114 – 144. Freeden, M. 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(2011) ‘New feminist materialisms’, Women’s Studies International Forum, vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 271–77. Walter, N. (2010) Living dolls: the return of sexism, Virago Press, London. Read More