Women’s rights are a much-debated subject, with new notions streaming in at the break of each dawn. Numerous works of art have been composed to shed more light on the subject of women’s rights and equality. The battle that remains to surge is overcoming mental repression. Some authors think that women’s predicaments result from the failed system they are brought up in, while for some, women’s problem lies in their nature. This paper will provide a comparison of the past and the present discourse of women’s rights.
Past debates focused on advocating for low-income families to provide their daughters with equitable support they accord their sons to give them a reliable profession. Doing that would reduce employment inequality, helping women compete effectively with men in the same line of duty (“The Wollstonecraft Controversy and The Rights of Women” 352). Such schools of thought also centralized on providing women with more employment opportunities as they are already advantaged. They call for women to purchase commodities from stores with women attendants, employ female workers, and for female undertakers to handle female bodies (“The Wollstonecraft Controversy and The Rights of Women” 355). Conversely, current discourses center on creating conducive workplaces for the female gender. Nowadays, women are gain family support in building a profession and can access any form of employment. However, some firms pay hardworking women less than their rather lazy male counterparts for the same jobs (“The Wollstonecraft Controversy and The Rights of Women” 355). Previous discourses call for equal payments for the same positions regardless of gender.
Past discourses focused on freeing education from a tool of women suppression. Some religious and other educational teachings linked women’s happiness to male obedience to make them more agreeable (“The Wollstonecraft Controversy and The Rights of Women” 362). Those days’ educational system was flawed since the males who formulated the curricular of the perfect women did not play their part in it. They set up women to fail yet blame them for not being good enough. The dialogs focused on making the society more benevolent to women who indulged in vices due to inevitable circumstances to attain basic needs. Current literature on women’s rights revolves around breaking women’s mental suppression. Girls are ingrained with the notion of beauty and frailty at a young age, shaping their mindsets and influencing their future decisions (“The Wollstonecraft Controversy and The Rights of Women” 362). The girl child’s societal perception set them up to be at home with mediocrity and settle for less than their capacity. Current discourses call for women to be more open-minded, modulate their thinking, separate dogmas from facts, and be influential figures in society.
In conclusion, society would be a better place for women if it were more kind to them. Naturally, women look up to men for protection; therefore, men need to play a better role in fulfilling that need in women. One of the main contributors to women’s indulgence in vices is the struggle to fill the gap left by men in their lives. Additionally, the same men who are, in most cases, the root causes have no right to dictate or judge a woman’s actions. Most importantly, women should recognize that beauty and frailty are not adequate reasons to settle for mediocre lives.
Work Cited
Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects. 1792.