The Marginalization Of Women

Marginalization is often whereby something or someone is pushed to the edge of a group and determined to be of lesser importance. Gender equality is in place to lessen the ideology of marginalization, but why is it, then, that women are still marginalized in so many areas of their lives? Throughout history, women have been marginalized in multiple aspects of both their public work and the domestic sphere. Although women have made major strides toward abolishing the inequality between men and women, a clear disparity is still prevalent between the genders. Women have faced many challenges despite their political and legal strides such as equal pay and laws against discrimination; they continue to confront additional acts of inequality. Women …show more content…
Women are expected to juggle taking care of their children, pleasing their husband, and tidying the home as well as maintaining a stable and successful career. Not only is this dynamic difficult for most Western women, but it nearly impossible for women whom are restricted by systematic oppression. Many women in the developing world come to first world countries and take up low paying jobs such as nannies, maids, and even sex workers. These women leave their entire lives behind to support their families, yet they are still expected to fulfill all the duties of a “superwoman”. This paradigm is demonstrated in Barbara Ehrenreich’s piece, Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy, which explained the story of Josephine Perera, a nanny from Sri Lanka, who moved to Greece to make income to support her children back home. In this piece, Josephine describes that although she is supporting her children, she has been gone for ten years almost consistently and her children are suffering greatly. Unfortunately, she is only one example of a woman whom does not have the privilege of “having it all” such as the superwoman complex suggests. Along with the women from developing countries who struggle to fit into this dichotomy, many Western women attempt to fulfill the superwoman complex by hiring the poorer women to do the work that they are unwilling to do. These affluent women often choose their careers over women, which creates a care deficit that domestic women need to fill. For this reason, many women, whether they are from First World or developing countries, struggle to maintain the balance in life that men hold so