Gender inequality Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Gender inequality - Essay Example western United Statesern feminists, such(prenominal) as Rich argues that rape and violence against wo manpower are central to the control of women and their bodies, especially when the advancement of women in the public sphere is de-stabilizing this power basePatriarchy is a familial-social, ideological, political system in which men - by force, direct pressure or through and through ritual, law and language, customs, etiquette, education, and division of labour, determine what part women shall or shall not play, and in which the female is e realwhere subsumed under the male. It does not necessarily imply that no fair sex has power, or all women in a given culture may not have sealed powers.3People ... whose lives cut unfamiliar paths across the distinctions of rule suggest still other structures of feeling in formation, other sites of power to identify, a wider range of sources to consider, and, not least, other kinds of memories to call on and st ories to tell.4When considering other theories of power, especially in relation to sexuality and race depends upon violence and control over the body, which is an indicator that there is implicit in(p) discrimination in the legal, social and political system. However, there is a lot of similarities in Western and eastern cultures in respect to control and power over womens bodies. Carla Rice states that whenever we as women look at ourselves through the lens of culture, we end up engaged in a war with our bodies, one that we cannot win. Society has check our bodies and we have absorbed into our skin and bones (1999, 317)Stoler introduces an interesting connection between womens bodies and culture however the new-fangled restraints on women and the body are not new, i.e. history has restrained the body in differing ways. The modern earned run average has heralded freedom in the sense of the mind however culture has enslaved women using their body again, i.e. the reproductive fun ctions were the prison of the past, superficial beauty is the prison of today. This imprisoning of the mind by using the body is a very old weapon used by the dominating male hierarchical system in panic that women can no longer be so easily controlled. If one considers cultures, such as Asia and the snapper East, being too fat or having a big nose is not a amour of consequence because women are still imprisoned by their reproductive functions. The male dominated system of the West has been forced to alter cultural images and notions to further dominate women therefore culture has had to alter by forcing women into a new box, i.e. an underfed, tall, big busted woman. The war waged on womens bodies is first a conflict over dramatis personae and size, over the terrain of our bodies, played in a deeply entrenched cultural taboos and a powerful arrange against women taking up space and claiming room of our own.5This statement of Rices sums up the conflict between the advancement of women and the restraints constructed by the male dominated culture, which has to adapt to the advancement of women in the late 20th and 21st Century. Rice is typeset in her evaluation of the male dominated culture adapting to imprison women from declaring their own rights and space.Foucault6 has provided a discourse that has gone(a) farther than just making women equal to men or races equal, by understanding that