ensayo lucía (compatibilidad)
TRANSCRIPT
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Shushed Voices
We are exposed to gender labels all the time. While men do the rough work, women either stay at
home or take pink-collar jobs. Adults preconceived ideas rub off on us at a comparatively early
age without our knowing. Sometimes even intelligence is called into question depending on the
sex of a person.
The aim of this study is to demonstrate how women have been shunned and snubbed throughout
history, as well as to point out what their situation is today.
Analysis and Theory-based Interpretation
Although women suffer from sundry stereotypes, it is difficult to determine where these
stereotypes stem from. In her book The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir argues that men
normally believe in the myth that women are mysterious and cannot be understood on a logical
level. In her own words,[this myth]permits an easy explanation of all that appears inexplicable;
the man who does not understand a woman is happy to substitute an objective resistance for the
subjective deficiency of mind; instead of admitting his ignorance, he perceives the presence of amystery outside himself: an alibi, indeed, that flatters laziness and vanity at once. [] then the
mystery serves to excuse it all.
As Beauvoir says, men find it easier to put women down as mysterious, since this allows them to
treat them differently. Following this train of thought, she states that in patriarchal cultures men
are the norm and women the deviation,and she observes thatwomen have internalized this
ideology, so that they live in a constant state of inauthenticity.
In a similar vein, Lorna Goodisons story I Dont Want to Go Home in the Dark gives an example
of an inauthentic woman: She realized all she had to do was to sit there and maybe saymmmmm every now and then. This kind of behaviour is explained by Beauvoir in the following
quote, woman is taught from adolescence to lie to men, to scheme, to be wily. [] she is cautious,
hypocritical, play-acting.
Aside from being hypocritical, women often have to play a passive, dull role in marriage. It is an
embedded belief in our society that the man has to be the head of the household. Since he is the
financial provider, his wife has to stay at home in order to take care of the children and do the
housework.
In regards to this issue, Beauvoir says that since man occupies a privileged situation in this
world, he is in a position to show his love actively; very often he supports the woman or at least
helps her; in marrying her he gives her social standing.
Virginia Woolf also addresses the issue of economic dependence, and she concludes that a
woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. Woolf explains that
female writers in the past did not have privacy and often found themselves interrupted while they
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were writing. In addition, she remarks that female writers were usually mocked and regarded as
less intelligent than men.
In this sense, she explains that there was an enormous body of masculine opinion to the effect
that nothing could be expected of women intellectually. [] There would always have been the
assertionyou cannot do this, you are incapable of thatto protest, to overcome. Moreover, Woolf
states that any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would certainly have gone
crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village [] feared andmocked at.
Woolf also attempts to answer why men tend to subjugate and discriminate against women, and
she concludes that the former, in order to feel better about themselves, think that other people
are inferior to them. This issue becomes evident in Lorna Goodisons story when the main
characters date tells her, You drive a ten-year-old car and you live in a flat which is very
charming but you dont own it and it might fall on your head soon.
In regards to womens current situation, many improvements have been made when it comes to
legislation. Most countries recognize the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms ofDiscrimination against Women(CEDAW). In addition, womens salaries are, broadly speaking,
equal to mens.
However, gender labels are still present, since most CEOs and presidents in the world are male.
In addition, many countries still regard women as inferior to men. For example, the Indian writer
Sailendra Singh gives a detailed account of womens current situation in India. Her story
Women in India Want to Be Men describes what it feels to be a woman in a misogynist society.
She tells us that many women are well aware of the fact that they are treated unfairly, but at the
same time they know they cannot do anything to change that.
Conclusion
As we have seen, women still suffer from gender labels, which might prevent them from fulfilling
their potential.
In my view, women have to actively pursue their dreams and pay no attention to what others
might think about them. Dealing with stereotypes of any sort is a daunting task, but it is a
prerequisite for success. Since it seems improbable that most men will change their views,women themselves have to demonstrate that they are not lower than men. Step by step, they
might manage to break away from any label given to them.