The Role Of Womanhood In Looking For Alibrandri

Since the ancient times, societies fail to see women and men as equals due to the perceived differences in their abilities and interests. Due to this, women have experienced intense discrimination throughout history. These forms of discriminations include males’ domination in the society, lack of legal rights, job inequalities, biases within the distribution of health and health services, lack of freedom of expression, and segregation of women from certain duties. Gender studies have become very popular all over the world due to the numerous forms of discrimination that are attributed to the perception that men are better performers of certain practices in the community as compared to women. In most countries traditions, women are not considered as leaders, …show more content…
Creation of gender roles within a community which dictates how individuals should behave eventually changes the behaviors of both women and men in society. Ultimately, these pre-set conditions in society affect the behavior of newborns, and this entirely leads to firmly held beliefs. Gender is not a personal trait but a definition of what one does through the guidance of the cultural and social expectations (Eagly et al., 2016). In the teenage novel, Looking for Alibrandri, Josephine Alibrandi is seen to struggle in developing her identity in the dominant and minority culture of Australia. An example showing how the novel reveals gender roles as a product cultural practice is when Josephine's grandmother refers to her mother as to lack moral virtue for having a baby outside the wedlock. The woman is seen to be left with domestic responsibilities of taking care of the child in Australian culture while the man is not held responsible (Woods,