Oppression Of Women

4 Pages 1020 Words

Women’s Studies
2:30-3:45 MW

The social construction of gender and feminist theories of oppression correlate simply because the social construction of gender is the basis for many feminist theories. Oppression is a socio-political system designed to purposely confine, shape, manipulate or reduce a particular class or caste of people solely on arbitrary grounds and for the advantage, of another class. Marlyn Frye states “a woman in an oppressive society is somehow like a bird in a cage.” Women are oppressed in many ways from issues of sexuality to harassment in the workplace. In one simple example neither sexually active nor nonsexual active women are in the right. A sexually active woman will be thought of as a whore, slut, or nasty. A nonsexual active woman will be thought of as green, unable to sustain a man, or lesbian. Either way the woman cannot win, it is one of the many double standards that women must face everyday.
Firestone’s feminist theory argues that “Women are physically weakened by their reproductive biology and that the male dominated society arbitrarily takes advantage of this fact, and even makes that weakness more drastic.” I believe that this is quite true and that it is wrong to give gender roles. Gender roles are determined by specific biological differences in men and women, such as women are expected to do light weight house work because they are less masculine than a man, or men are taught to fight and be manly as described in “Learning to Fight”. Because of these gender roles in our society men are typically taught to dominate over women from birth to death and because of this women are unfairly oppressed. But where and why did these gender roles start? There are many explanations to those questions but few right answers. One common answer to that question lies in the bible, Genesis 3:16 “To the woman he said, I will greatly increase your pains in child bearing; with p...