I have recently attended a lecture on women’s rights given by a local female activist. She brainstormed about the issue of lack of women’s rights and why it was so important to recognize it and start working on it. She stated that until the time when women are able to feel comfortable in their workplaces and get paid as much as men do, our society cannot call itself liberal. This paper proves that the problem of female discrimination is a serious flaw on our society as it gets on the way of many women’s career development. Moreover, in order to make every part of our lives more comfortable and more efficiently working, we need to understand that both genders have to be involved in any kind of a business or production.
Linda Nochlin, a famous feminist of the 20th century wrote a significant essay that she called “Why there has been no great women artists?” In that essay, Nochlin mentions the problem of the absence female artists in the artistic heritage of the world. She says that the reason is that women never even got a chance to study art and to hold shows and exhibitions. Everything they were able to do was only watch their fathers or brothers painting or creating sculptures; they might sometimes pose as the models for those works. However, modeling, especially nude, was considered something close to prostitution. Women could not to be present in an art gallery if there was a nude model. And the answer is – there were no great women artists because they never got to be artists. Unfortunately, gender roles were pretty firm several centuries ago, and it wasn’t considered normal for a woman not to want a family but two want to be a successful artist. We are much further from that time; the lecturer claimed that in our progressed world of technology and medicine, it is a shame for us to still have some groups of people or discriminated. It is amazing to think how many Great works of art we could have if women were allowed to get education and run exhibitions.
The reasons why women were not allowed to build careers stays unclear. Maybe men were afraid that women would give up their families and dedicate their lives to work. Or they might I have been afraid of the fact that women could actually overthrow men and become more popular and relatable in art. Because women were always considered to be “weak”, men would find it insulting if the weaker earned more than they did. A simple jealousy might have taken place. An old anonymous article called “A week in the mill” mentions what one day from a typical female’s life looked like. The author calls her “the white slave of the North,” meaning that women didn’t get to do things that were joyful for them.
Another important work of the feminist theorist that is closely connected to my thesis is the essay written by Virginia Wolf called “A room of one’s own”. In this work, she talks about how every woman should have her own space to work. But this essay is also very similar to the previous one because it talks about why women are completely vanished from history like if they never existed. “But by no possible means could middle-class women with nothing but brains and character at their command have taken part in any one of the great movements which, brought together, constitute the historian’s view of the past” (Wolf 19) Throughout history, this was it taken away from women. It might seem surprising to us, but for a long time Women actually didn’t have rooms. Even during the recent days, people take care of their kids’ room, an office for the husband and the guest room. But mother’s room is never mentioned. It becomes clear that women that don’t have their private space are not able to work properly. In my opinion, this is not only relevant when one talks about women. It is relevant in every case, because every person needs a space where he or she would feel safe and where the walls would it help him or her get over any trouble. The fact that two women until the very recent time couldn’t get education, couldn’t vote (until in 1913 in her article called "Why We Are Militant," Emmeline Pankhurst stated: “We are just human beings like yourselves” (17) and couldn’t even have a room is really horrifying. While listening to the lecture, I became really frustrated about the fact that so little changed in our society. Feminist movement started hundred of years ago, but the society has done very little to influence the situation. There are so many “isms” in our society that we cannot to get rid of – sexism, ageism and racism – that we are sort of stuck in this inappropriate way of thinking.
Of course, in many ways, this contradicts the Bible and all of the fundamental Christian beliefs. In Christianity and other major world religions, women were always considered to be inferior to men. Many things that are connected to women are connected to impurity. For example, during a menstruation period, women in many religions are considered dirty and men are not allowed to approach them; nor those women are allowed to walk into temples and churches. They become isolated from the whole society for that short period of time just because of the natural phenomenon that they possess. However, other sources claim that menstruation carries no danger to faith and a man should “love them as his soul” (Fonrobert 400). In spite of the fact that there is more than just one opinion on this matter, the first one definitely leads. Because of how their nature is built, women face a lot of discrimination mainly from the church. It can even be stated that the church caused a lot of problems that women has been having throughout history. The church considered smart and beautiful women to be witches during the Middle ages, and they were burnt alive. Women that chose to live alone and never got a family with children were immediately called strange and thus, isolated from the society. Just look at all of the witches in the books! They are all single females that don’t have a desire to connect with anybody. We can clearly see that women that were different were immediately lynched by the church.
Women were also considered to be wicked, and thus feared by the society that was ruled by men. Men could influence women’s lives in a frightening way: whatever they were dissatisfied with, they could go ahead and tell on them in the church, and back in the days, the church would take care of the issue in a pretty brutal way. We can see that religion promotes dependence of women on men; we all know that Eve was made of a part of her husband’s body, and she seems to be reminded of that throughout history. Interestingly enough, Eve is also forced to take all the responsibility for the original sin that Adam took part in as well.
Of course, it is really hard to change the dogmas of the church. Those rules have been there for thousands of years and are unlikely to change. However, the church is able to develop a more liberal attitude towards women who are choosing career over marriage, for example, or towards homosexual women that are willing to register their marriage in the church or just openly come there. There are a lot of cases where the church has to reconsider its dogmas even thought they are deeply rooted in history.
In this paper, I have talked about the feminist event and things that influenced female discrimination at work. Some serious evidence like the works of famous feminists prove that we have to move away from the old approach to a woman’s nature in order to become liberal and provide comfort for every single citizen.
Works Cited
Pankhurst, Emmeline. "Why We Are Militant." Http://spot.pcc.edu. Web. 16 Feb. 2016.
"A Week in the Mill." A Week in the Mill. Web. 27 Apr. 2016.
Fonrobert, Charlotte Elisheva. "When Women Walk in the Way of Their Fathers: On Gendering the Rabbinic Claim for Authority." Journal of the History of Sexuality 10.3 (2001): 398-415. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989. Print.
Nochlin, Linda. "Why No Great Women Artists?" Nochlin: Why No Great Women Artists? Web. 27 Apr. 2016.
