Social Status of Women in American Sociey
Social Status of Women in American Sociey
Do women have equal rights as men? Can they balance their housework, take care of kids and work outside homes? Do men in our society always overshadow their existence? These questions came to my mind when I first thought about the changes in the status of women from ancient times to the women of today. Throughout history, most societies have held women in an inferior status compared to men. This situation was often justified as being the natural result of biological differences between the sexes. In many societies, for examples. People believed women to be naturally more emotional and less decisive than men. Women were also held to be less intelligent and less creative by nature. Many sociologists and anthropologists maintain that various cultures have taught girls to behave according to negative stereotypes of femininity, thus keeping alive the idea that women are naturally inferior. But in the last 40 years significant changes in the work place, in homes, and have influenced the American political system.
The division of tasks that originally had been determined by physical differences became a matter of tradition. Consequently, even after machinery cancelled out the advantage of male strength and birth after birth control gave women the means to regulate their childbearing, women continued to face barriers to entering many occupations. But today there are much fewer barriers than before. Women have proved themselves in every field of work. But this changes occurred gradually yet consistently.
The changes began with women's examination of their personal lives and developed into a program for social and political change. Women's groups discovered discrimination in the work place, where women received less pay and fewer promotions than men. They also uncovered barriers to women seeking political office and to female students striving for high academic achievements.
Informal women's liberation groups, which were first formed by female students active in the civil rights movement and in radical political organizations emphasized self-awareness and open discussion to combat discrimination and to establish greater equality between men and women in marriage, child-rearing, education, and employment. Large, formal organizations developed alongside the small women's liberation groups that campaigned for the passage and strict enforcement of equal rights law. President John F. Kennedy's commission on the status of women, founded in 1961, discovered a number of legal barriers to women's equality. It reported on laws that barred women from jury service,...