Women Oppression

The social construction of gender and feminist theories of oppression correlate simply because the social construction of gender is the basis for many feminist theories. Oppression is a socio-political system designed to purposely confine, shape, manipulate or reduce a particular class or caste of people solely on arbitrary grounds and for the advantage, of another class. Marlyn Frye states “a woman in an oppressive society is somehow like a bird in a cage.� Women are oppressed in many ways from issues of sexuality to harassment in the workplace. In one simple example neither sexually active nor nonsexual active women are in the right. A sexually active woman will be thought of as a whore, slut, or nasty. A nonsexual active woman will be thought of as green, unable to sustain a man, or lesbian. Either way the woman cannot win, it is one of the many double standards that women must face everyday.
Firestone’s feminist theory argues that “Women are physically weakened by their reproductive biology and that the male dominated society arbitrarily takes advantage of this fact, and even makes that weakness more drastic.� I believe that this is quite true and that it is wrong to give gender roles. Gender roles are dete

When looking at the social construction of gender men and women are treated unequally because of their sex and that is the simple fact. In reality men and women are able to perform roles of each others gender and it is barbaric to believe that women are unable to do many things that a man can do “the biological differences between men and women are minimal and insignificant when compared with the similarities.” Gender determines what is expected, allowed, and valued as a gender and because of this women must face disadvantage, disparity, and discrimination when compared to a man. Because we live in a male dominated society women are forced to accept and adapt to the roles that are set for them, though the line between male and female roles is broadening there is still much work to be done in changing roles to be equal. Women have came along way in the last century and many men view women as equals but there are many “old fashioned” people that still oppress women to accept gender roles. These people can usually be categorized by where they are from as shown in the second video we watched. In bigger cities the average person was more accepting to women playing men’s roles and men playing women’s roles as the lesbian family pointed out, but in smaller towns people did not accept changing gender roles and that is where I believe most of the work must be done to change these ideas of gender.

Gender discrimination is found everywhere even in the classroom. In the past I hav