Women Suppresion Essay Research Paper In the

Women Suppresion Essay, Research Paper

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, women felt discriminated against men and by most ofsociety. Men generally held discriminatory and stereotypical views of women, which mademany women dissatisfied with their lives and made them, feel their lives were unfulfilledand isolated from common society, this is an integration of our history. According toDorothy Smith in the past, and present women are suppressed and divergent by society(which she delineates to be male). Her article which argues that women have beenexcluded from the “production” of our culture suggests that society shapes and molds thestandard living of women which is not to their liking. Smith accuses the media andgenerally everything that relates with society forms “ideological apparatuses` of the society”which contradistingushes women and implies inferiority. I on the other hand think Smith’sargument to be bias and only a fraction of the truth. It is clearly a feminist point of viewintelligently raging against today’s society. She purposely leaves out women’s achievementsand only focuses on the negative aspect of reality. In this paper I will say my opinions onwomen and indicate why I think Smith’s argument fails to prove her incongruous point. To begin with Smith gives too much credit to man: according to her article shethinks highly of them and believes they are superlative to women. She credits this world tomen, which is completely irrelevant and sarcastic. When she says that “the universe ofideas, images, and themes- the symbolic modes that are the general currency of thought -have been either produced by men or controlled by them”(Smith). It seems to be heropinion and shouldn’t be taken seriously. Women have contributed immensely to today’ssociety. In fact she is insulting her own sex, she doesn’t realize that women contributed tosociety such as their fight to earn the right to vote, to be treated equally and grantedsuffrage. This enables them to produce some ideas and images to society. Even before thewomen’s movement they must have contributed to todays way of thinking but it isn’tacknowledged to women yet it isn’t acknowledged to men either. It is credited to society, itis a chain reaction between both sexs contributing to todays way of living. One quote Ibelieve is “our culture does not arise spontaneously; it is manufactured.”(Smith) HoweverI believe this culture was manufactured to believe that the sexs are equally accepted.Discrimination spurred women to take action. Women began to revolt, they beganexpressing the feelings they had bottled up inside all along. They were fed up with thelaws prohibiting them from the right to vote, hold office or sit on juries. It is true that menoften treated women as if they were chattel, nothing more than possessions or property. They had no respect for their wives or mothers, and they constantly treated them likehousemaids whom were to answer to their husbands every command. And men whobelieve women who could incite such a revolution were evil and should have beenstopped. They opposed women suffrage and believed that women were less intelligent andunable to make decisions that affect society, But women pulled through and achievedacceptance, isn’t this manufacturing a culture. All the women’s ramifications to becomeequal with men are not credited. But Smith attacks women’s positions in the world sayingit is influenced by men. Which to my knowledge is equal, men and women share the workforce and both sexs influence the world. And even the past it was never men writing whatthe world should be and only gratifying what men want and believe. These statements areboldly preposterous. Smith insults women by saying that they are influenced by society, shesuggest that women have the intelligence and integrity equivalent to a little child and haveno chance to emerge from there so called “suppression”. Absurdly Smith states ” let us beclear that we are not talking about prejudice or sexism as a particular bias against women ora negative stereotype of women. We are talking about the consequences of women’sexclusion from a full share in the making of what becomes treated as our culture.”(Smith) This statement contradicts itself she is implying in it’s purest form – prejudice againstwomen existing in society: any kind of suppression is prejudice. And claiming that womenlive in a man’s ideological world, it’s foolish to justify that it isn’t prejudice. Furthermore Smith claims that men with careers are more likely to advance thanwomen, and “women’s experience of work in this kind of society is located in standstill jobslacking career structure and in a status system in which their positions derived from that ofman.”(Smith) Yet there are female physicians, executives, and engineers. Todays jobmarket is for both men and women and there isn’t any barriers to stop them fromadvancing in their career positions. These claims Smith makes are small minded and haveno substantial evidence. The only reasonable point she makes is when she indicates thatwomen were systematically and consciously excluded from the growing profession ofmedicine… (Smith) It is true women were stifled in white collar occupations but that wasthe past. Society has been manufactured to accept all colors, genders, and religions to beconstituent in the workforce. Furthermore she goes on saying Two points are of special importance: first, the concentration of women are relatively temporary nonladd