English: Compare and Contrast (Gender Equality) - Essay Example

Although, more than hundred years apart, the two women protagonist authors were able to raise gender issues which are still highly relevant even in the contemporary times. The patriarchal society was created by men to maintain a dominant position in the society that restricts the role of women in any decision making and promotes a set of rules for their conduct and actions, both within the family and outside the family environment. The women are denied the basic right for self expression and empowerment of women has increasingly become a major issue for the societies at large.

Later, when the women, especially those coming from lower strata of society and from black community, started sharing work with their counterparts, they were denied their rightful wages and status. Truth’s speech in 1851 at Ohio’s Women’s Rights Convention, is a persuasive text that question’s the society’s moral right to deny the women equal rights when they have shown that they are capable of working alongside men, in every field. In her speech, Truth has pointed out that though women, in general, have been denied equal rights and decision powers but the ‘black’ women have even been stripped of their gender identity and denied the basic minimum respect that ‘white’ women command!

She has been highly critical of system that lets the ‘black’ woman do the work of men but when it comes to recognizing them at par with the men, there is no hesitation in highlighting the gender discrimination. It is but for a woman, Mary, that ‘Jesus our God’ was born so how can a society morally deny the women any rights? She says that she has worked like a man, borne lashes and at times, even done better than them. At the same, she has borne and reared children who were sold into slavery in front them and still she has not been accorded the status of either a woman or equal partner!

She has exhorted the women to fight collectively for their rights because ‘if