Gender Essay

For almost of its history, western sandwich g overn spielforcetal scheme has ignored women. Women confound seldom appe argond in its analyses of who should throw off billet, when it in conclusion decided to notice women it usu every(prenominal)y def destinati angiotensin converting enzymed their extrusion from national affairs and their confinement to the interior(a) only r argonly pay off women been give earn as semi semipolitical animals worthy of serious consideration. The inequalities that subsist between men and women are seen as of teeny-weeny practical importance and sup limital interest.Feminist political theory however, sees womens situation as central to political analysis, its focuses on why in most societies men appear to gravel to a greater extent occasion and exemption than women and how can this be changed. The term libber came into use during the 1880s, indicating keep for womens equal legal, frugal, sociable and political rights with men. (Brys on, 2003) Feminism reflects the varied deficiencys and perceptions of women in various societies and situations. Feminists argue that all women give route the right to preparation, employment, political participation and well(p) legal par.Although beefed-uply remote in the past, they are largely get d birthed in the west today. However, women nonoperational tolerate disadvantaged despite gaining legal rights. (Bryson, 2003) All womens rightist do not think alike. Depending on time, culture and country womens liberation movement well-nigh the terra firma have mosttimes had unlike causes and goals. The labels help mark the range of different approaches, perspectives and frame dallys a variety have utilize to shape some(prenominal) their explanations for womens oppressiveness and their proposed solutions for its elimination.The trinity groups of libber theories I leave al whiz attempt to analyse in fix to assess their contributions against what is slamn ab stun ned Caribbean women and their realities in this es read are all-embracing, stalk and shameful libber perspectives. One thing we know slightly Caribbean women is that they have always moulded. Womens position in the Caribbean has been characterised by a dual fiddle role, they engage in both mansion and extra household work, in nightspot to provide for their families. secernate has sh give, that after slavery the tradition of distaff savvy play alongd.Joycelin Massiah states that subdued women had no alternative but to work, because the idea of man as the breadwinner was unrealistic and unattainable. Women were forced to take the study responsibility of their households because a large come in of men had emigrated. Erna Brodber examined the role of women in some Caribbean countries. She states that despite the general image of char which stressed on the abstention from bodily work for elite fair sex, Caribbean women continued to seek work impertinent the househo ld and financing themselves.Brodber also states that images of fair women portray them as delicate and unassuming, the baleful woman is portrayed as hardworking to the mastermind of being comical. (Massiah, 1986) Work eruptside the household however did not cost little Caribbean women from their household responsibilities these women mute had to check up on their husbands were still taken care of. Men in the Caribbean societies felt that because of economic circumstances, fe priapics should be use outside the home and should set up to the expenses.They also believe that domestic duties should still remain the womans responsibility, even if she is employed. In the exoteric domain of a function, women defer widely to priapic authority and decision making, but in the domestic domain, she exercises indicant. (Massiah, 1986) Radical womens rightist movement claimed to go to the roots of womens burdensomeness, and it proclaimed itself as a theory of, by and for women as such, it was imbrutedd firmly in womens own experiences and perceptions.Secondly, it saw the heaviness of women as the most fundamental and universal progress to of domination, and its aim was to ascertain and go against strategies for the end of that conquering. Thirdly, women as a group had interests opposed to those of men these interests united them in a popular sisterhood that transcended the division of course of study and pelt along, and meant that women should struggle together to achieve their own liberation. (Bryson, 2003) Radical womens liberationist movement names all women as part of an oppressed group, stressing that no woman can walk tweak the street or even alert in her home safely without guardianship of violation from men.French womens liberationist Christine Delphy points out that like all oppressed slew, umpteen women do not like to accept that they are part of an oppressed group, growth various forms of denial in localise to avoid identificat ion. To the radical womens rightists, patriarchy is the oppressing expression of male domination. Radical feminism makes male control visible as it is exercised in every sphere of womens lives, both public and private. It stresses that emancipation or equality on male terms is not enough.A total revolution of the kindly structures and the elimination of the processes of patriarchy are essential. (Rowland & Klein, 1991) patriarchate is the domination of men over women. Kate Millets early work (1971) is a cheeseparing example of the approach that sex is a status category with political implications. Patriarchy, dominates over clear up, religion, race and culture. Patriarchy is a dust of structures and institutions created by men in order to sustain and recreate male power and effeminate subordination.Institutional structures like the law, religion, the family, have ideologies which perpetuate the naturally inferior position of women socialization processes to ensure that women and men find behaviour and belief systems appropriate to the mighty or powerless group to which they belong. These structures are dominated by men who ensure that they maintain these positions. Within the private domain of the family, men have structured a system whereby womans procreative capacity leaves her vulnerable and powerless, domestically exploited, and entrapped in economic dependence. (Rowland & Klein, 1991)The family is maintained through the whimsicality of romantic love between men and women, when in fact wedding contracts traditionally have an economic base. Womens labour inside the family, which has been unpaying and unac companionshipd, is defined as labour of love. Women by temper are said to be passive, dominated and willing to be led. Processes like socialisation of children encourage this situation to continue. Patriarchy has a material base in 2 senses. First, the economic systems are structured so that women have difficulty getting paid labour in societ y which value only paid labour and in which money is the currency of power.Women without economic independence cannot sustain themselves without a breadwinner. They cannot leave a brutal husband, cannot withdraw sexual, emotional and tangible servicing from men, they cannot have equal formulate in decisions affecting their own lives. Radical womens rightists have therefore stressed the urgency for women to exercise economic power in their own lives. The second material base is the womans proboscis. Women in marriage are seen to be owned by their husbands and cannot bring a urbane courting of rape.Womens bodies are advertised and lamp bareamoor alike objectified and defined as other(a)(a) and available for male use. Rowland & Klein, 1991) Radical libbers sees the conquest of women as universal, crossing race and ethnical boundaries, as well as those of category and other structures like age and sensual ability. One of the basic tenets of radical feminism is that wha tsoever woman in the world has more than in common with any other woman regardless of class, race, age, ethnicity, nationality, than any woman has with any man. In sistership is Global (1984) Robin Morgan draws together contributions from feminists in seventy countries, the majority of which are deuce-ace world countries.She begins with a quote about the global position of women in the spread over to the UN Commission on the states of women. While women map out half the global population and one third of the labour force, they receive one tenth of the world income and own less than one percent of the worlds property. They are also responsible for devil thirds of all working hours. In the developing world women are responsible for more than fifty percent of all viands production. In the industrial nations women are still paid only half to three quarters of mens wages. some of the world are starving are women and children.Women in all countries bear the iterate burden of un paid housework in association with any paid work they do. Radical feminists thus hold that women are oppressed primarily and in the scratch line instance as women. But because of residues in their lives created by, for example culture and class, women experience oppression differently. (Rowland & Klein, 1991) Black feminist theorising has do censorious contributions to feminist epistemology. The theory comprises of a body of work by dumb feminist intellectuals reacting to the failure of vivacious feminist instructive framework to adequately comprehend the realities of calamitous women.Feminists like Sojourner equity, Audre Lorde, Patricia Bell, Patricia Hill Collins as well as many others interrogated existing feminist theories and found them lacking, as they broad ignored or denied black womens specific experiences. For instance Sojourner Truths powerful statement on racial inequalities Aint I A woman was a 19th atomic number 6 deconstruction of the notion of a global, common womanhood and an insistence on inserting black womanhood in the concept of what it meant to be a woman.In her speech Truth argued that sporting women were placed on a pedestal and gave them certain privileges (mostly that of not working), this military posture was not extended to black women. oral presentation of the U. S. A in the 1970s Audre Lorde stated, by and large, within the womens movement today, blank women focus upon their oppression as woman and ignore differences of race, sexual preference, class and age. (Barriteau, 2006) The work of black feminists reveals hierarchies of power within categories of race, class, gender, time-worn relations, sexual urge and sexual orientation.Black feminism demonstrates that uncontaminating or other feminist theorising refuses or fails to recognise race as a social relation of domination within feminism and society. Radical, socialist and disinterested feminist had examined other oppressive social relations but none had made race central to their analysis, black feminist theory exposes racism. They focus on difference in order to understand problems of oppression. Audre Lorde points out that white radical feminist bloody shame Daly images white women as Goddesses, with African women incoming her analysis only as victims and preyers upon each other.Here Lorde exposes a let out distortion that is similar to how early information discourses constructed women in the Caribbean. Women in the south, whether Caribbean, or African were seen as helpless victims in need of international development intervention. (Barriteau, 2006) This theory holds that the constructed invisibility if black womens lives must be challenged. For example, much of the history of the West Indies was ground on the activities of black men. Black feminist thinkers underline the importance of using lived experiences as a criterion for generating knowledge.Deborah Kings concept of ninefold jeopardy or multiple consciousness shifted the conception of womens oppression as confined within ethnic and racial boundaries. She was concerned with the invisibility of black women. She noted that class contrast compounded the problem of racism and sexism for black women and felt that class constituted a third jeopardy. She therefore defined multiple jeopardy as, a way to understand the ways in which various forms of oppression interact in ways that negatively affect the lives of black women.Much of feminist theory represents white ethnocentric feminist theorising and is therefore inadequate in not addressing the concerns of other women, especially black women. (Barriteau, 2006) conflicting radical feminism, black feminism goes on to demonstrate how anti-Semite(a) relations make out black women into the private realm. Experiences of relations of oppression within households differ for black or minority women in a racist state. Central to black feminist theorising is the knowledge that patriarchal relations structure women s lives very differently to their male peers.The determine of the father enforces mens power in the family and society. In the Caribbean, men have assumed the role of patriarchs. Black feminist theory reveals that there are other dimensions to black womens experiences of the home that are not captured by other feminist theories, especially for those black women who for centuries have been oblige to work outside the home, whether in fields, factories or the homes of others. Many of these women instead of longing to be liberated from the home, they yearn for the opportunity to go home or stay at home.Hazel Carby noted that ideologies of black female domesticity and motherhood have been constructed through black womens employment in movable positions as domestic workers and surrogate mothers to white families rather than in relation to their own families. (Barriteau, 2006) In terms of sexuality, black women have been stereotyped as having wild and unruly sexual urges. Black women we re presented as all whorish or unsexed they were either nanny-goat or jezebel. Evelyn Hammond has argued that black womens sexuality is constructed in opposition to that of white women.In the struggle for sexual liberation, many white women demanded reproductive technologies in order to register yes to sex, while black women wanted liberty and freedom from a racist and searching state in order to say no. (Barriteau, 2006) Criticisms of black feminist theory are that sometimes there is the depressive disorder that all oppressions are equal, and it has been critiqued for assuming that black women have a superior point of view in the world. There is also a sense in which persons of African occupation are favor in black feminist thought. (Bryson, 2003) The final theory I will analyse is the liberal feminist theory.Liberalism is based on the principle of unmarried liberty, in which every person should be allowed to exercise freedom of choice. Each separate should be given equa l opportunities and civil rights, but that was conceived of as a privilege that should extend to European men. When it comes to state interventions in the private sphere, liberals agree that the less we see of Big brother in our homes the better. (Tong, 2009) Liberal feminist Mary Wollstonecraft has been very important in her writing, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. She wrote at a time when the economic and social position of European women was in decline.These women were left at home with little productive work to do, and they were married to comparatively wealthy professional men. These women had no incentive to work outside the home or, if they had several(prenominal) servants inside it. (Tong, 2009) Middle class ladies were, in Wollstonecrafts estimation, kept women who sacrificed health, liberty and deservingness for whatever prestige, merriment and power their husbands could provide. She denied that women are, by nature, more pleasure seeking and pleasure giving than men. She reasoned that if men were confined to the same cages that trap women, men would develop the same flawed characters.She stated that women lacked the power of reason because they were encouraged to indulge themselves and enthral others. She believed that women should have the same access to education as men. She believed that women should experience full personhood. former(a) liberalists John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill believed women postulate suffrage in order to force mens equals. They claimed the vote gave people the power to express their own political views but also change those systems, structures, and attitudes that contribute to their own and others oppression. (Tong, 2009)Betty Friedan in the Feminist Mystique, studies the lives of white middle class housewives living in the suburbs. She described the dissatisfaction of these women as the problem with no name. She claimed that these women led unfulfilling lives in their traditional roles as mother and wiv es. She argued that a more meaning(prenominal) course for these women was to have the opportunity of full time work in the public sphere. She believed that the absence from the home would make children and husbands more self sufficient. She felt that by trammel women to being wives and mothers was limiting their full military personnel development.She also believed that women would always have to work harder than men. (Bryson, 2003) The main critique of liberal feminism is that of racism and classism, they focused primarily on white, middle class women. They also privileged so called male values. They also continue to distinguish between the private and public lives of people without understanding that the private and public sphere often intersect. In conclusion, feminist epistemology has transformed the world for many Caribbean women, as it questions womens lived experiences and their roles in identity formation.Caribbean women in their roles have mostly preached a pixilated wor k ethic and promoted a strong social identity. The Caribbean has a legacy of race and colonial legacies, therefore the experiences and history of Caribbean women has been different. contrasted some the white middle class women in European societies that the liberal feminist talk about, Caribbean women have always had to work and frequently they have been the principal breadwinners in their households. But because of all the earlier groups of feminist theories about women, it paved a way for the new knowledge about Caribbean women and their realities.