In American society dating back hundreds of years, women have always been viewed in the traditional viewpoint in the role the homemaker or caretaker. Even when women break away from the stereotypical role of the housewife and enter into the workforce, they still are not given an equal opportunity at acquiring a job that is seen to be as advancing or of higher recognition, as they would like to have. This unequal treatment in the workplace based off of gender, dates back as far as 1792 when Mary Wollstonecraft published her Vindication of the Rights of Women. In 1848, the first women’s rights convention was held and following this in 1929, Virginia Woolf published A Room of One’s Own. Following this the Women’s Equal Pay Act, which advocated
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She poses the question of whether men would, “generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience, they would find us…in a word, better citizens” (181). In this context, Wollstonecraft is referring to men as the oppressors in society over women, and even the men in power in our government are the oppressors over women, who are dictating the amount of freedom they are allowed to have. If men would break the chains of oppression that they force women to be in through putting them inside a figurative box of household duties, we could be living in a much more just society. Wollstonecraft offers her views of what she believes could change the direction of the path that society is taking to achieve this just society when she says, “There must be more equality established in society, or morality will never gain ground, if one half of mankind can be chained to its bottom by fate” (173). If women are constantly chained down at the bottom of society, being stay at home moms, cooking, cleaning, working secretarial and teaching jobs, and not getting the chance to work where they want to, side by side with men, then our society will never have the opportunity to come close to being
She poses the question of whether men would, “generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience, they would find us…in a word, better citizens” (181). In this context, Wollstonecraft is referring to men as the oppressors in society over women, and even the men in power in our government are the oppressors over women, who are dictating the amount of freedom they are allowed to have. If men would break the chains of oppression that they force women to be in through putting them inside a figurative box of household duties, we could be living in a much more just society. Wollstonecraft offers her views of what she believes could change the direction of the path that society is taking to achieve this just society when she says, “There must be more equality established in society, or morality will never gain ground, if one half of mankind can be chained to its bottom by fate” (173). If women are constantly chained down at the bottom of society, being stay at home moms, cooking, cleaning, working secretarial and teaching jobs, and not getting the chance to work where they want to, side by side with men, then our society will never have the opportunity to come close to being