Having recently being reading 'The Beauty Myth' by Naomi Wolf a question that I've noticed coming up more and more is whether or not women have a better everyday life now or back a few to when they had less legal rights. Obvioulsy what makes this such a hard question to answer is that people disagree as to what makes a better lifestyle. People who fought for the equal rights of women are going to be more inclined to prefer life today, but not everyone agrees that these rights have come at a worthwhile cost.
This is the basics of the question, is it better to be held back by legal methods or by mindsets? Legal methods may be more constricting on what you can and can not do, but at least you know one hundred percent where you stand. Women nowadays may have the right to vote among others but they have very little to defend themselves from the way the treated and though about by men.
In 'The Yellow Wallpaper' by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a 19th century house wife is driven pretty much insane by the 'second citizen' nature of her relationship with her husband. What surprised me most about this when I re-read it was how not surprising I found this simply because of the time setting of the story. Nowadays, while women do have new problems to deal with, they are at least considered to be equal human beings (if not people) in most educated circles.
While I personally have never experienced any serious discrimination against myself, it is still hard for me to understand how anyone would prefer the life my grandmother lead over the life my little sister lives. I actually find it hard to understand the point of view of people who would prefer to have their rights taken away than to deal with the problems modern day life presents us. This is just my opinion, but while it may be more obvious to know your goal when fighting for equal rights, surely it is all together easier to deal with our modern day issues of sexism?
No comments:
Post a Comment