Gendered Vulnerability Analysis

In Transnational Cycles of Gendered Vulnerability: Theory of Global Gender, Alison Jaggar argues that across the globe, women are entrapped in cycles of poverty, abuse, and disenfranchisement of multiple varieties. (Jaggar 33) Part of her argument emphasizes women 's lack of education, which contributes to their inability to find work, escape abusive relationships etc. While I agree that women worldwide are continuous victims of vicious patriarchal oppression and subjection, and that said despotism should be viewed as a universal injustice, Jaggar’s particular view of the role of education, race, socioeconomic status and sexuality is fallacious. Her criticism of Susan Moller Okin’s theory of gendered vulnerability relies heavily on her perceived

(43-35) Jaggar’s discussion of education’s role in victimization fails to highlight the actual facts surrounding women’s educational levels. She portrays minority women as uneducated; and because minority women are uneducated, they often end up with jobs that typical educated, white women won’t do. According to the National Center For Education Statistics, Black women earned approximately 66% of bachelor 's degrees, 71% of master’s degrees and 71% of all doctoral degrees that were awarded to Black students from 2009-2010. For perspective; in the year 2010, 1,602,480 bachelor’s degrees were earned in the United States. 10.3% of those bachelor’s degrees were awarded to Black people. 10.3% means of all the bachelor’s degrees earned in 2010, 164,844 of them were earned by Black people. Of those 164,844 degrees earned by black people, 65.9% of those degrees were conferred to women, which approximates to 108,632 bachelor’s degrees earned by Black women in the year 2010. In the same year, of the 1,167,499 bachelor’s degrees earned by White people, 56% were earned by women, resulting in 653,799 bachelor’s degrees being

The interrelation of race and gender through perceived benefits of white women in particular is a concept better known as “white feminism.” Believers in this concept argue that women who particularly focus on shallow, non-intersectional aspects of feminism are only concerned with advancing the agenda for the progression of white women who fit a specific mold. “White feminists” are often accused of finding solutions to anti-feminist practices that only benefit the “majority” of women, which usually is defined as the “typical woman” that Jaggar was describing; White, rich, and straight. It could be said that “white feminists” (which can include people who are not racially White), only see the denunciation of patriarchy in a specific light, and only view feminism as a way to advance White women, which references Jaggar’s criticism of Okin. Issues concerning “white feminism” often include things like the denunciation of rape culture, and equal pay for equal work. It may be said that my argument that “the only thing that matters is gender” effectively erases or ignores the struggles of women in a minority while effectively promoting a singular way of viewing both feminism and patriarchy. While I already addressed that race does, in fact, have a role in patriarchal hierarchy; the role of “white feminism” is often misconstrued. The