Gender Inequality And The Oppression Of Women - 2144 Words

CP629 – Second Thoughts: Women Novelists from Bronte to Jelinek Assignment 2 (3000 words) Gender is a theme that has been greatly explored and challenged within literature. This essay will compare the theme of gender, specifically gender inequality and the oppression of women within a dominant patriarchal society, in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. De Beauvoir’s primary thesis is that men oppress women by characterising them, and the stereotypes of women are there because men put them there: the man is transcendent and essential, where the woman is insignificant and mutilated, doomed to inwardness, waiting for him to save her. De Beauvoir accepts the fact that as humans, we naturally understand ourselves to be in opposition to others, but by identifying the woman as the ‘Other’, the man is, effectively, denying her humanity and objectifying her. De Beauvoir explores the notion that, just as racial issues are created by white people, feminist issues are created by men, and that it is the man who insists on female mediocrity: ‘[T]he whole of feminine history has been man-made. Just as in America there is no Negro problem, but rather a white problem; just as anti-Semitism is not a Jewish problem, it is our problem; so the woman problem has always been a man problem’ De Beauvoir draws this parallel between women and the various oppressed classes, but presents one clear difference: the woman is not a minority, and nor hasShow MoreRelatedFeminism Is An Interdisciplinary Idea881 Words   |  4 Pagesfeminism broadens our ideas on gender and transforms it into a major field of study. George Ritzer, in Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots, breaks feminist theory down into four major varieties, gender differences, gender inequality, gender oppression, and structural oppression. 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Where women had very little rights of their own or a voice in society but made many sacrifices to achieve equal rights whether it be in employment or other areas of inequality. As men were seen as masculine breadwinners and women as more feminine by looking after the family and raring of children. What is oppression and discrimination There has been a major development