Margaret Chan Women

It is often said: “We need to empower women. Give women a voice in the decision-making process. Give women a political voice where they can champion, for their own welfare” by Margaret Chan. To put it another way, women shall utilize the maximum potential of the power, in which they are given to create the best decision that benefits themselves instead of others. In the nineteenth century, the fifteenth amendment was ratified to ensure the voting rights of men but not women. It obviously showed the gender inequality is a global phenomenon towards the women in 1800s. Sometimes, marriage and decisions making depended on cultural background. Parents did not care about the happiness of the woman’s marriage but what they did really care about was …show more content…
According to Ichiyo, “Oseki, it’ll only embitter you. Fact is, it’s a burden many people have to bear. What with the difference in your backgrounds, it’s natural you’d meet with more suffering than a wife whose husband comes from same class” (Ichiyo 1114). The level of education disparity, her husband can never have a conversation with her because she doesn’t understand anything. He mainly demonstrates that the cultural backgrounds determined the levels of social position in a certain society; the upper positions in society are either occupied or controlled by men. In contrast, women are not allowed to get the education at that time so that they could not use knowledge to have rebellion; they were considering in the lower class and not being in educated. So education distinction can become one of the inequality problems between males and females in decision-making. According to Ukpong, he states, “There is none who could appoint a woman as a head. It is almost like a taboo to think of a woman being a clan head. Women are perceived as part of men’s property. Hence, a man is free to marry as many women as he can afford, whereas, a woman is not expected to have a friend beside her husband” (Ukpong287). He emphasis that women had been treated unequally in some religions. Under the system of male authority, men always oppressed women through social, political and economic …show more content…
Certainly, this could be true in some upper-class women but not in all circumstances. As we all know, in America where most women had been treated very differently in many aspects at the nineteenth century. Women are characterized as the small potato. There are only minorities of powerful women who are able to decide certain things beneficial for themselves at that time, but the majority of women are so “weakness”. Because of their position in society, they either had to follow the rules of family’s culture or religion. In addition, it is often argued that social position and gender inequality would not cause the value of women’s decisions. Admittedly, women’s decisions are not related to their gender and position nowadays. Nevertheless, back to 19th century, the attitude toward women was deprived of property rights and individual freedom. Men think women’s decisions are immature because lake of consideration and education. Women did not have enough capacity of decision-making according to their position status and background. So gender inequality still was a big problem between people and society in the past also nowadays. After equal right amendment had been ratified, all men and women are equal orally. Actually, there is still some discriminations and unfairness around women.