Gender Equality In American Culture

What is American Culture? American Culture has changed significantly throughout our world. From specific holidays, foods, music, or even fashion, American Culture has dramatically altered. Although many people can disagree, American Culture is shaped by two aspects from our past history, race relations and the struggle for gender equality, which in fact is due to slavery and the struggle for women’s equality with men. Slavery has and will always continue to be a topic that is relatively sensitive to our society and has left an everlasting impact on society as a whole. When African Americans first arrived in 1619, it was not clear as to what their rights were. However, it was soon determined by the British that Africans would be best served for labor and their importation increased. Slave codes were soon developed causing further restrictions on Africans to the extent that just because of their color of skin, they were a lesser person with little to no rights. With the Civil War

As women were known as the caretakers of the home, slowly but surely woman began to gain rights and today, are as close to equal as men as possible. Naturally, women are child bearers thus society deemed their roles to be in the home and to take care of the family. In the 1820s and 30s, a rise in women school teachers occurred which helped women increase their status. However, this was soon not enough for women and a demand for more occupational possibilities as well as political rights occurred. This soon led to the women’s movement which in turn led to women’s suffrage in 1920. With women’s suffrage, came a woman’s right to furthering her education and now today, women can hold any and all positions that men do. However, due to our physical appearances, women will still partially always seem lower or subordinate to men as men are looked upon as the stronger more powerful