Gender Equality, Strengths And Equality: Women And The Feminist

“...I see women contending’ for their rights…” (Truth 254). She noticed women trying incredibly hard to gain their rights. Women wanted to be viewed as equals and felt they were no different than men. Truth was successful in her speeches because it gave women to power to speak up and push for their right to vote. If she never advocated for these women, society today may be very different.

With years of rebellions and protests made against many of these issues, women have come a long way from where they used to be. A big movement that was established was called the Women’s Suffrage Movement. This was the time where many protests were occurring so that these women would be allowed to receive the same rights men had. They mainly focused on the right to vote and hold an office which later, eventually passed. If women did not stand up for themselves then, women today would not be able to experience all of the freedom they have.

Many people believe that after winning the battle for woman suffrage, that equality for woman was won and there is no longer a need to worry. As amazing as that victory was for woman in America, there still remains a multitude of areas woman are still regarded inferior. As a society, we have come a long way since the days that Wollstonecraft was alive but as a whole, we are only as strong as our weakest length. Wollstonecraft argued: There must be more equality established in society, or morality will never gain ground, and the virtuous equality will not rest firmly even when founded on a rock, if one half of mankind are chained to its bottom by fate, for they will be continually undermining it through ignorance or

This talks about controversial topics such as prostitution and slavery, marriage, employment, and reform. Growing up as a women in the 1800s, made Margaret want to speak out against the inequality that all women faced and to spread the message of fighting for what is

Men should have absolute rule over society. This was the mindset back when women's rights activists were considered rare and unorthodox. In A Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, Elizabeth Cady Stanton rejects the status quo and finds solutions to the overbearing problems she sees within society. A concept that has greatly been dreamt over throughout history has been challenged, by a woman. Elizabeth Cady Stanton exerts repetition, allusion, and pathos to express her opinions in favor of increasing women's rights.

No one can really say how old feminism is for sure or the date feminism started, but most is credited to past centuries. Nevertheless, women have been feminists for much longer. In Sophocles’s Antigone, the heroine Antigone defies the authority of a patriarchal society and takes action on her own belief of what is right. Antigone goes directly against a man’s will and attempts to bury her brother, this gets her in trouble but sets her apart from the women at the time and defines her as a woman and not just a person, Sophocles argues that Antigone is a proto-feminist whose implementation in a mostly male dominated culture is inevitable to cause problems. Ismene, points out to Antigone, “Remember we are women, we’re not born to contend with men,” (Sophocles 646).

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s contribution to this cause was monumental to the start of this movement. They, along with plenty of other women and rights activists, fought for equality for women in society. Not having the right to vote made women feel as if their opinions and political views were trivial and not equal to those of men. However, men felt as if women were too emotional, less educated, and were unable to evaluate political issues that did not pertain to a group consisting of mostly stay at home mothers. Obviously, as history has now demonstrated, exactly the opposite is true.

Both leading, female protagonists face the downgrade in status to property and are forced to overcome the horrifying struggles of a misogynistic based society by turning to extreme measures. Offred and Tess, losing a sense of who they truly are as women, put their lives on the line through dangerous means of rebellion in order to combat the oppression of women. Atwood and Hardy, through their literature, convey the struggles of women throughout history who are wrongfully subjected to the status of property and inferiority and have to find a way to navigate through a male dominated

However, many feminists fight for full equality. Gender equality is so much a human rights issue as it is a women’s issue. While it is now normal for women to have jobs outside of a housewife, females still fight to succeed in the male-dominated society. Recent presidential elections have included women candidates. This would have been unheard of before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1920, which gave women the right to vote.

Its opponents have even suggested that feminist rhetoric condemns the opposite sex to the extent of gender antagonism (Young). In light of both the altruistic progressivism and the criticized status surrounding the contemporary women’s movement, the progress made through centuries of perseverance overall suggests that the movement intends to better and help the status of women in society. Now a movement based around securing the franchise of women, contemporary feminism initially spawned to uphold the rights of women before they were legally acknowledged. The spirit of the movement established itself at this initial point, a “gathering devoted to women’s rights” (“The Women 's Rights Movement, 1848-1920”). As such, in commitment to its original form, the contemporary movement reflects