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Gender Inequality In The 1800s

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America is the land of many opportunities, just not for all. Immigrants travel from all over the world to America in hopes of achieving better living conditions, jobs, and education. In the United States today there are over 42.2 million immigrants currently living, working, and raising their families, in hopes that their future generations will have a more extensive spectrum of opportunities. America has always encompassed a large amount of societal issues dating back to the 1800’s when slavery was in full swing to current day where racism, sexism, and discrimination is dealt with on a daily basis. These issues stand in the way of equal opportunity and it is difficult to determine when and if they will ever be resolved. Opportunity should …show more content…

However, when looking at history the inequality started a lot sooner than the media portrays. Something as simple as defining the gender one identifies with can change rights and opportunities drastically. When the French Revolution broke out in 1789, thirty-three of the famous lists of grievances presented to the Estates General expressed female demands. This all started the movement later referred to as “feminism”, although it was just a movement for equality between the genders (Pugh 1997). The known culture in Provincial America taught that servant women were used as sex objects and their bodies were used to bare children. The average woman gave birth every two years, until she physically was not able to anymore. (Brinkley pg). Ironically enough, in 1840 during an anti-slavery convention female delegates were forbidden from taking their seats. Even at a time where equality was the main topic of discussion gender separated a society. Advancing to today, women still face unequal treatment in the work place, especially when it comes to pay. In 2015, female full-time workers made only 80 cents for every dollar earned by men, a gender wage gap of 20 percent. (Costello 2016) Physical and emotional characteristics should not be what determines ones’ opportunity, but instead ones’ work ethic and ability to accomplish a given …show more content…

The phrase “money can’t buy happiness” can be deemed true in many situations, but unfortunately today it seems to get ignored. The better the economic status one possesses determines a lot about the education received. Prestigious schools across the country cost a large fortune in tuition, but a degree from one is a golden ticket to the front of the line when it comes to the hire line at many jobs. Even when looking at something much more detrimental such as healthcare it is hard to ignore the factor money plays. Lower class individuals or families do not have the luxury of affording the healthcare that the upper classes do. (Stroud 2001) This becomes a problem with many private insurance companies that only accept those of a higher social class, leaving the middle and lower class to settle for less benefits if even that. It’s hard to get out of the mindset of “treating everyone equal” when in the real world big corporations and companies hardly ever do. They are out to make a profit, and if that means appealing only to the upper classes, they will do

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Lastly, take risk as another factor. Majority of the workers in nearly all the most dangerous occupations, such as iron workers and loggers, are male, and 92 percent of work-related deaths in 2012 were to men. Males are also more likely to pursue occupations where compensation is risky from year to year, such as finance and law. Research shows that average pay in such jobs is higher to compensate for the risk. Therefore, due to the fact that women and men do different type of jobs and work different hours, the gap in wage is not related to gender discrimination and feminism is again proven to be irrelevant

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770 Words | 4 Pages

In the document, The Rights of Women: Laws and Practices, there are multiple examples of women inequality. The source explains that men are able to hit their wives in order to stop them “from being annoying”. This is socially unacceptable today and demonstrates everything wrong with society back in the 1840s. Also, the document shows that women are paid 30-50% less than men who are performing the exact same job. Where is the fairness in that?

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290 Words | 2 Pages

For many years women have been seen as being “lesser” than men, and even in this great country, women didn 't have the right to vote until the passing of the 19th amendment in 1919. That amendment was passed almost 100 years ago, and surely we have changed for the better... Right? Many people would say that we have, however, it is clear that a woman working the same job as a man is making a significant amount less than the man would. This is a big problem in our country for a number of reasons.

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1101 Words | 5 Pages

During World War II, women joined the workforce when many men went to fight in the war. Even after the war, many women remained in these jobs, but were not treated equally to men. This inequality led to the creation of the women's rights movement. (Outside Information 2) The excerpt from Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past explains how the increased number of women in the workplace led to protests against wage differences and how these protests led to feminist movements.

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This view continued to stay stagnant, “...Women were forced to accept specialized roles in the domestic sphere or reduced status in the man's world” (Moran). The jobs they were forced to accept, if any, were restricted to “womens work,” for example as a nurse, and they were poorly paid. Women were negatively affected by this view and their status in society was seen as unequal living in a “man’s world.” Today, equality for women has improved because there is a stronger push from society for gender equality, yet statistics show in many fields women are in worse positions than

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A historian by the name of Ed Ayers once said “The exploitative natures of women’s work throughout history has been enormous.” I believe that this statement is true because after looking at history it shows that there were so many things that they had to overcome to get to the rights that they have today. Women during the 1700’s and 1800’s were challenged with expressing themselves in a social system that refused to grant women the right to express their views. Many events during these centuries which included things such as social and political movements that increased attention to women's issues like education reform. By the end of the 1800’s women were finally able to speak out against the injustices aimed at them.

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Did you know in the 1900’s women could lose their jobs for being pregnant? Women in the 1900s have always been discriminated against. They were only seen as housewives and did not have the same rights and opportunities as men. They weren’t allowed to be outspoken and were only allowed to take care of their kids, cook, and clean. Finally, women decided they had enough and started fighting for advanced education, voting rights, and equal pay.

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Hunter Elzy Hodges English 113 October 2017 Literature Research Paper Throughout history, gender roles of both men and women have changed in many ways, they are almost constantly evolving and changing. Over the years, starting with the original Sherlock Holmes books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle set in the 19th century all the way through the most recent version of Sherlock Holmes stories such as the BBC show Sherlock that is set in present day all show a good representation of how the gender roles of both men and women were during the time and how they played a role in each of the characters in each version of the stories. Starting in the 18th century, the idea that men and women have natural distinct characteristics from each other was universal. The distinction between men and women came from Christian ideology, classical thought, and science.

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Since the establishment of our country, women were treated as if they were the next best thing to slaves. The stigma and idea that women are made for birthing and staying at home with the children was

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1093 Words | 5 Pages

For centuries, women have been exploited by the society. Events of women being prohibited from doing things like voting or working and being forced to behave the way it is considered to be socially acceptable have been jotted down in history. Until today women are still viewed as the weaker sex. In some countries, women are regarded less than human and are treated like slaves. Khaled Hosseini goes into the oppression of women in his novel A Thousand Splendid Suns.

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591 Words | 3 Pages

While there are women in Women deserve all rights and equal treatment as men. There is a strong occupational division between men and women. Career discrimination between men and women is based on the differences in traits and abilities. Women were not and are not given the same privileges as men as far as work. Decades ago, the traditional role for a woman is to take on all of the household labor as work.

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1622 Words | 7 Pages

Throughout history discrimination has had a negative impact on people and has cause certain groups of people to suffer. Discrimination can be against people of different race, religion, gender and sexuality and in the late 1800’s women were one of the groups that were discriminated. Women had to fight hard to obtain the rights they now have in the 21st century and many of the women who fought for equal rights didn’t get to experience those rights since laws in their favor weren’t passed until years and years of fighting. In the late 1800’s American women were discriminated because they were not granted the same rights as men in the workforce, women had to be obedient to their husbands in their marriage and society had certain norms that women

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856 Words | 4 Pages

Marilyn French, a feminist, once said, “Men seem unable to feel equal to women: they must be superior or they are inferior” (200). In the past, women were in many ways thought of as being inferior to men. Back then, the typical lifestyle among families was for women to stay at home while men worked. Women were thought of being so inferior that they were not allowed to vote but things began change in the twentieth century. It was a long process but women finally gained equal voting rights as men in 1920.

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894 Words | 4 Pages

In the nineteenth century, while various parts of the world were progressing be it in the abolishing of slavery and the implementation of democracy, the treatment of women both in reality and in literature remained unchanged. Gender roles in the 19th century were more pronounced than ever, and there was a clear and distinguished line that had been drawn between men and women. This was because of something called separate spheres (Victorian terminology). Separate spheres refers to the natural characteristics of women and men – men were thought to belong to the public sphere because they were “powerful” and “logical” and “independent” while women in comparison belonged to the private sphere because they were considered to be “weak,” and “passive” and “illogical.”

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964 Words | 4 Pages

The Nineteenth Century, as known as the Victorian Age, “was an age where the impact of the industrial revolution caused a sharp differentiation between the gender roles, especially of the upper and middle classes” (Radek, 2001, para. 1). Males and females were thought to have separate societal duties based on gender differences. Male’s duty was to the public sphere and women’s duties were confined to the privacy of the home. During the nineteenth century, the advanced female status started to emerge through with the rise in female education and women’s rights. Kathryn Hughes’s article, Gender roles in the 19th century, introduces us to the fact that, in the past, gender roles were not so heavily revered upon.

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