Preview

Women's Role In American History

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
535 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Women's Role In American History
A woman is a sword. She is struck by unseen blows and thrust into suffocating flames—repeatedly. She is tempered by her hardships and emerges as a sword, to strike fear in the hearts of her enemies. With men assuming positions of power and prestige throughout the ages, women have been overlooked. They are criticized as the weaker sex and are treated worse than children in some non-Western nations. Their ideas cry unheard and their dreams go unsung. However, as we move into the modern era, women are rejecting their traditional standing as man’s shadow. With this revolutionary refusal, women around the world are burgeoning into their full potential. Women in American history have long played important roles from Abigail Adams and her clandestine letters to Alice Paul and her bold proclamation for women’s equality. Partly inspired by the …show more content…
In India, tradition has spawned a chain that imprisons women. It is rusted with rape, acid throwing, and forced prostitution. And as a woman myself, I have seen the links of this chain during visits to Sri Lanka. To marry, women are pressured to pay a dowry and provide a house. If a woman is destitute, she will not marry or have a family. The culprit, tradition, cleaves a chasm between the rights of men and women to prevent a bridge of gender equality. Although the United States is the leading nation in women’s rights, she can still improve. For instance, France has expanded women’s rights by passing gender equality laws regarding abortion and maternity leave. The United States as a leader has already passed legislation protecting women’s rights, but now she needs to transcend and pass an amendment that states equality of rights shall not be denied “by any state on account of sex” (Francis). The United States needs the Equal Rights Amendment, to finally declare equality between both

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    Throughout time, scholars have wanted to understand American women’s history. Gender has played a role in shaping the behaviors and ideas within societies. The gender role that women played can be looked at in a historically specific manner. In the early 1500s through the late-nineteenth century, women have had a silenced place in society and within their home. This ideology silences real women’s voices under patriarchal structures. In the time period of Early America, women were silenced through various factors such as the laws and ideas created within marriage, views of women given by society, and…

    • 2180 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Throughout the many years of history, women have always had some kind of influence over man. Whether it be coercing him, tricking him, or demanding of him, they changed the actions of men. Sometimes it has been completely unintentional; sometimes intentional. Sometimes it has been covertly; sometimes overtly. Sometimes it has been the mothers of great men making decisions about their upbringing; sometimes it has been the choices made by female leaders or leaders wives. The United States in no different; women have been influencing, directly or indirectly, the decision and actions of the men in America starting from the choice to fund Christopher Columbus’s misguided exploration.…

    • 3329 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Woman have always played an important role in history, and also helped shape America into what it is today. Throughout history, the importance of gender roles was firmly established to maintain strong family structures. Which also meant, that woman had little to no rights in comparison to the men in colonial America. Woman in colonial times began to take notice of their inequality, and despite the hardships, pain and trials most of the woman experienced, they still succeeded in enduring some of the differences between their opposite sex. The social inequality many women had to face might have been the reason why many women opted to stay with the Natives after being captured.…

    • 806 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    According to the reading assignment American Women’s History A, Short Introduction by Susan Ware finds that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the was “no simple or linear status” for Indian and European counterparts” (Ware 6). Some aspects of women’s status changed, and some declined. but invariably over a span of time. However, by 1750 a new progressive colonial culture developed defining the difference between European men and women’s value and enforcement of gender roles. Women were important to both the Indians and the Europeans. The Iroquois Natives in New York played a vital role in tribal governance.…

    • 640 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    References: Kathryn Cullen-DuPont (1 August 2000). Encyclopedia of women 's history in America. Infobase Publishing. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-8160-4100-8. Retrieved 28 November 2011…

    • 1844 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    As our society continues to evolve, with the advancements in technology, so does sexism and discrimination. It is just molded differently to accommodate our modern day society. Women do two-thirds of the world’s work for only five percent of the income, according to Unifem, the United Nations Development Fund for women. Today young women across the world grow up to expect less educational, economic and political power than their male counterparts. Half the world’s citizens, women in the 21st century still only represent a tiny minority in democratic assemblies. Domestic violence, civil wars and international conflicts continue to destroy women’s freedom, power and security in particular. And yet women find…

    • 339 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Women's Role in History

    • 2216 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Maynes, M. J. & Waltner, A. (2001). Women 's life-cycle transitions in a world history perspective: Comparing marriage in China and Europe. Journal of Women 's History 12 (4), 11-21. Retrieved from the EBSCOhost database in the Ashford University Online Library…

    • 2216 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Gender stratification and women in developing nations is a serious issue women struggle to overcome. They are not respected by their own husbands let alone others within their communities. Women are forced to work in deplorable conditions with no financial rewards. They are denied jobs, education, healthcare and resources to provide good healthy homes for their children. Even in the United States where women are independent and hold many male-dominated professions there are still situation of gender discrimination.…

    • 2330 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    India portrays the image of society with men holding the whips, and taking control. It is as common to find women oppressed in the cities, as much as they can be oppressed in the remote villages. Majority of the women in India live in the fear of raising their voices, for they have been robbed of their rights and have been imprisoned to a world where they are voiceless. Even though today’s women are far more modern and independent, they are still haunted by the views and believes of the older generation where women are meant to be ideal housewives who take care of the family, feed them, maintain them and nothing more, while men are free to decide their future and choose what they want to be. A woman has equal rights as a man, she can choose the life she wants and the way she wants to live it. She shouldn’t be burdened with the views of the society or tradition. It…

    • 977 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Isabelle Allende and Laura Esquivel use magical realism and the art of Mexican cuisine to structure and develop the core of their literary works in The House of Spirits and Like Water for Chocolate. Elevated passion within each individual lead Tita and Clara to possess control over their own fate/destiny. This terminology promotes and exposes the general idea of gender role throughout the larger society. Their compelling personality traits enhanced the existentialist theme of “importance of the individual”. Through the influence of personal relationships both these women learn to take a powerful stand in a patriarchal-based society.…

    • 1434 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    In India women constitute nearly fifty percent of our population. Women are denied human rights from the cradle to the grave. In India the situation leaves much to be desired. Sexual abuse and flesh trade are gnawing evils, which threaten the existence of women as independent entities…

    • 1017 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Woman, the very creation of God that makes living beautiful is often at the receiving end of trauma. In 2009 rape cases have reached 2,497, domestic violence has crossed the 10,000 mark. Around 2.8 million social workers have been employed by the government to reach into villages across the country, to make women aware of their rights. But, much to the surprise women are not even aware that they have any rights in a man’s world. Significant numbers of the world 's population are routinely subject to torture, starvation, terrorism, humiliation, and even murder simply because they are female. It is generally known that women are disproportionally affected by the social and economic factors such as poverty, gender biased, unemployment, inequality, oppressive social structure and son preference. Violence against women cuts across race, religion, income, class, culture and age. It is not confined to a particular political or economic system, but pervades every society in the world, so much so, that millions of women consider it a way of life. To this purpose the National Commission for Women is set up for protecting women. Besides this there are Commissions set up in each state of the country to protect and uplift women…

    • 5269 Words
    • 17 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Women and Development

    • 396 Words
    • 2 Pages

    There’s a tendency to see women’s rights in developing countries as worthy but minor, as secondary in a world facing so many vast challenges of war, terrorism and environmental degradation. My wife and I, in our forthcoming book on this topic, try to argue that in fact you can’t address these larger issues of poverty, environment or security unless you also address the rights and status of women in these countries, and I just finished reading a new book that makes this case particularly eloquently. The book is Michelle Goldberg’s “The means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World.”…

    • 396 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Girl Child

    • 1339 Words
    • 6 Pages

    In a country like India with such an ancient civilization where it is believed that women were worshipped, such a sad situation having developed in the status of women is really shocking. Even our sacred books point to the fact that, Indians believed that, a country where women are not respected, can never prosper and progress. It is with this background that, it becomes absolutely shocking to note the rising crimes against women, and the deteriorating position of women in the Indian social scenario. Even now, when we see women in the outside world that earlier concept that women are mere chattels, labourers and child producing machines still persists to destroy the rising image of the women. When this is the status granted to women even to –day, it is no wonder that, India is…

    • 1339 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Women Empowerment

    • 433 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In the very beginning of civilization, women enjoyed a respectable position in society-at par with men but later men became dominant over women This situation had caused immense loss to their self-dignity as human beings and also their independent entities, associated with men, apart from other matter, in context with intellectual and professional capability.…

    • 433 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays