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Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

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Recommended: 20th century women's rights

In America, women’s rights has been a controversial and powerful movement that has caused women everywhere to stand up for what they believe in. Throughout time many civil rights movements have increased, decreased or haven’t changed at all in progression. A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry depicts how ideas of women’s rights have not been seen as a crucial issue and is often laughed off. The steady movement of women’s equality of rights has slowly changed for the better over the years. In the play A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry proves women being equal to men in the workplace has progressed very little as displayed in the lack of development of women’s rights today. Mama’s mindset of women’s rights in A Raisin in the Sun is the perfect …show more content…

You might think that there has been enough change due to women having the right to vote, or being able to have more freedom since years ago but the little progression it has had says otherwise. Women in the workplace has been unthinkable every since the 1800s. Mama in the play shows this unthinkable mindset when she shrugs the idea of Beneatha being a doctor. As demonstrated here, this is how people often thought of women working back in the 1900s, “Employ women in jobs for pay outside their homes?...These and other issues that were once considered scandalous and unthinkable are now almost universally accepted in this country”(Eisenberg 1). This was the idea of women back in the early 1900s. Today women are able to get jobs and are able to get a lot more freedom in what they choose to be in life. However, this isn’t necessarily progress when women are still making less than men. “An International Labour Organisation (ILO) study of 83 countries found that women earn 10%-30% less than men. Even in the US in 2010, women working full-time still earned only 77% of the male wage”(Van der Gaag 1). As revealed through both quotes, women working has definitely progressed but are still not as equal as men. Women are getting paid but are still earning a lot less that their male competitors. It shows that even over 100 years, women’s rights are still

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