Wayward Women And Good Girls Analysis

Cultural norms influence the behavior and characteristics of people in their societies. The introduction of both modernization and globalization into cultures, have impacted the principles upon which gender roles have evolved. Since the beginning of time women have played an important role in the cultural and social dynamics of their environment and the roles they have traditionally played have transformed. The ethnographies, Wayward Women written by Holly Wardlow and Juki Girls, Good Girls by Caitrin Lynch, are works that examine gender response to cultural changes. These accounts analyzed how women altered their gender roles as a result of cultural changes and in the process how they responded to the challenge by adapting, resisting or just “going with the flow”. The outcomes were ultimately guided by the women’s upbringing. In the Huli society …show more content…
In 1992 the then President Premadasa promoted the installation of garment factories in rural villages to counter poverty, prevent the potential of political unrest and in this way improve the economic standing of his people. The 200 GFP (200 Garment Factories Program), as the program was coined, employed poor women to sew clothes. Political opponents, unhappy with the plan, perverted the agenda and fabricated a stigma surrounding these women. These challengers verbally insulted the women by calling them “Juki girls”. They alleged that they committed sacrilege against the Buddhist tradition, that they were “Bad Girls,” and that they were sexually inappropriate. Although caste segregation had dissipated in their society, the title of these factory workers became synonymous with the new untouchables. This negativity affected these girls who often were single. A job in these factories almost guaranteed that it would be difficult to get married to a respectable