Feminism And Gender Equality
Overall, the rights and status of women have improved considerably in the last
century; however, gender equality has recently been threatened within the last decade.
Blatantly sexist laws and practices are slowly being eliminated while social perceptions of
"women's roles" continue to stagnate and even degrade back to traditional ideals. It is
these social perceptions that challenge the evolution of women as equal on all levels. In
this study, I will argue that subtle and blatant sexism continues to exist throughout
educational, economic, professional and legal arenas.
Women who carefully follow their expected roles may never recognize sexism as
an oppressive force in their life. I find many parallels between women's experiences in the
nineties with Betty Friedan's, in her essay: The Way We Were - 1949. She dealt with a
society that expected women to fulfill certain roles. Those roles completely disregarded
the needs of educated and motivated business women and scientific women. Actually, the
subtle message that society gave was that the educated woman was actually selfish and
evil.
I remember in particular the searing effect on me, who once intended to be a
psychologist, of a story in McCall's in December 1949 called "A Weekend with Daddy."
A little girl who lives a lonely life with her mother, divorced, an intellectual know-it-all
psychologist, goes to the country to spend a weekend with her father and his new wife,
who is wholesome, happy, and a good cook and gardener. And there is love and
laughter and growing flowers and hot clams and a gourmet cheese omelet and square
dancing, and she doesn't want to go home. But, pitying her poor mother typing away all
by herself in the lonesome apartment, she keeps her guilty secret that from now on she
will be living for the moments when...
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