[Semantee Chattopadhyay]

#33308

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It is the expectation of society that women wear a wedding ring if they are married and that they should not be wearing this ring if they are not married. I argue that this expectation of women to wear a ring or any kind of marital adornments is unfair and should be revoked.

The history of the tradition

The tradition of women wearing a wedding ring has been around for centuries. In the Middle Ages and medieval times, marriage was only about property, as the right to a piece of property was given to the husband. If the wife was married to a man, she was considered to be his property. A woman could not own property and neither could her husband. In the Middle Ages, women were not allowed to work and were considered to be the property of their husbands.

In the 1600s, the idea of a woman wearing a ring was created. It was thought that by wearing a ring, the woman would be more attractive to the man. In the 1800s, the tradition was formalized.

The expectations of women
Women were expected to be submissive and to be married. More than just being married, women were expected to be ‘good’ wives. This expectation of good wives was that they should be obedient to their husbands and should not question anything. For example, a woman should not ask her husband when they were going to have children. This expectation of obedience to husbands was not only in the household but also in society. It was expected that women should not be seen out of their homes unless accompanied by their husbands.

The expectations of men
Men were expected to support their families financially. They were expected to be the breadwinners. If a man did not support his family, he was considered to be a bad man. If a man did not support his family, he was considered to be a bad man. For example, a man who did not provide for his family would be punished. If a man was in a relationship with a woman, he was expected to provide for her. If a man was in a relationship with a woman, he was expected to provide for her.

[Semantee Chattopadhyay]

#33293

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When people grow up in a Muslim household from a young age, they are made aware of the various codes of conduct that they must follow. In the Quran, many values and traditions are mentioned which guide the behaviour of an individual in a society.. all these religious doctrines are to be accepted and respected. In practice, many of these doctrines become exclusively women-centric. As per Wikipedia, “Hijab is a head covering worn in public by some Muslim women. It is the religious code which governs the wearing of the hijab.” The truth is Quran prescribes Hijab for men also.
Surah Al-A’raf (7:26-31) addresses righteousness and piety as more important than the physical covering of our body. “O Children (of) Adam! Verily We have sent down to you clothing, it covers your shame and (as) an adornment. But the clothing (of) [the] righteousness-that (is) best. That (is) from (the) Signs of Allah so that they may remember.”
The Quran mentions that the first type of Hijab is our eyes. We should not invade the personal space of another being through staring or glaring which is the first and foremost principle behind the Hijab. When Islam was trying to reform the chastity and modesty of the community, it wasn’t just saying to reform women. It was trying to reform everyone. Main women both had to have an observance of that complete package known as Hijab. Many times we say that women should be wearing the head covering and have a good Hijab but for the men, if they show respect and lower the gaze the context will be different altogether. Many people miss the whole point of this altogether. They put the burden of wearing a Hijab on women. For some reason, people think that they can simply force women to observe Hijab. Prophet Muhammad was clear: in Islam, there is no permission for men to force hijab on women.

[Semantee Chattopadhyay]

#33292

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Language is a beautiful thing and from the wisdom of cognitive scientists, language shapes us early, broadly and guides reasoning. So when it comes to speaking about people and their identities specifically we should make sure we are being respectful and empathetic. Though language can shape how we think we can also shape language because it is a living, breathing thing. The words we use every day have a tremendous amount of power whether we are describing other people or events or ideas or the things around us. When people are telling us to say something different, it’s not because they think they know better they just trying to help make our words more accurate and meaningful. For different communities being specific and accurate is about respect that is owed to them. Using words that are historically loaded with violence, injustice and prosecution feel like an act of violence in itself. Freedom of expression does not mean freedom from consequences or judgement.
Many of us are familiar with the idea of saying “firefighter” instead of “fireman” or mail carrier instead of “mailman”. The great thing about using this sort of language is that it includes men and women and includes non-binary people. Being non-binary means that they don’t fit completely into the category of men or women. For some non-binary people that may mean that they feel like a combination of the two. Other non-binary people may feel like a third gender altogether. Some non-binary people are also genderfluid and feel more like one gender and some days and another gender on other days. Much of our everyday language reinforces the false concept of a gender binary. When we create an audience by saying “ladies and gentlemen”, believe out people who aren’t ladies or gentlemen. Instead of saying “ladies and gentlemen”, we could say “honoured guest” or just “welcome, everyone!”. Instead of asking someone if they have brothers and sisters we can ask them if they have siblings. When writing about a single person we can use gender-neutral pronouns like “they” instead of saying “he or she”.

[Semantee Chattopadhyay]

#33284

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Gender inequality is a profound injustice. It keeps millions of women around the world in poverty. Women are one half of the world’s population yet we are often denied equal access to health, education and political and economic participation. It’s first and foremost a rights issue but gender inequality also significantly damages a country’s economic development.

Measures to eliminate gender bias:
1. Spreading awareness: The only way to remove any kind of social evil is to bring awareness among the common people. They need to understand the importance of women. It is high time that they change their thinking that men are capable of doing everything and a woman has her boundaries. People should understand that if the sex ratio is not settled then numerous problems can arise in a society.
2. Focus on girls education: Lack of education is one of the main reasons for gender bias. Women who are not educated are not able to get proper knowledge about their rights and powers.
3. Provide equal opportunity: Women must be provided equal opportunities and this task should not be left to the government. Parents need to give both their sons and their daughters the chance to live their lives free from the boundaries of gender bias. Boys and girls should be provided with equal opportunities in every field whether it is at home or their workplace. There should be no discrimination in any field regarding gender.
4. Equality and equity: Women should have rights equal to men. Equal pay for equal work and recognition for unpaid labour is essential.
5. Promote gender equality in schools: children get their basic education in school and it is the place where they can change their minds. It is a proven fact that because of educated girls gender discrimination is minimised. Teachers have enormous power to promote gender equality by modelling positive behaviour in the classroom.

[Semantee Chattopadhyay]

#33283

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Feminism in India is a set of movements that redefined, re-established and defended equal political, economic, and social rights and opportunities for women in India. The history of feminism in India is divided into three phases namely,
1. The first phase: It began in the mid 19th century. It was initiated when reformists began to speak in favour of women rights by making reforms in education, customs involving them etcetera.
2. The second phase: It began around 1915 and went till Indian independence. It began when Gandhi incorporated women’s movement into the quit India movement and independent women’s organisations began to emerge.
3. The third phase: It began post-independence. It has focused on fair treatment of women at home after marriage, in the workforce and right to a political party.
Raja ram Mohan Roy and other male figures took on what was thought of as social evils- Sati, widowhood, child marriage, female infanticide, etcetera. The British had pointed out how backward we were. By the end of the 19th century, there arose a situation where on one hand, we had a national movement asking the British to leave, where on the other, people wear petitioning the very same British state saying that they wanted to raise the age of marriage of girls. So, this time the nationalists told the reformers this is not the time to be going in for reform. Interestingly what they also said was that they needed to have symbols. They needed cultural symbols of the uncolonized nation. The Hindu woman was the most potent cultural symbol. So they thought of the woman in the home, who was not to be seen outside who hadn’t fallen afoul urban subjected by the British rule. As they thought that the women were pure they would be the right kind of symbols for the new nation. The woman as a bearer of Indian culture was a very patriarchal construct.

[Semantee Chattopadhyay]

#33275

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She is on your mugs, she is on your tote bags, she is even on the back of our Jean jackets. Frida Kahlo went from being a radical self-portrait artist to a product sold and consumed all over the world. This tells us a lot about the consumerization of feminism. Kahlo was a Mexican artist known around the globe for her provocative self-portraits. She was disabled by polio at the age of two. At eighteen, she suffered serious health injuries as a result of a bus crash that almost killed her. Through paintings of her face body and posture, she depicted her struggles with disability and her fallout with long time lover Diego Rivera. Her work also gave insight into her family life and how she perceived herself. Politically, Kahlo was outspoken against the capitalist world order. She hung out with people like trust ki and constantly challenged Western standards of what it meant to look and feel like a woman. That’s why today she is seen as an important symbol of feminism. Feminism has become a very messy term, like many concepts it means different things to different people. Its history can be broken down into three main waves. The first wave, second wave and the third wave feminism. The third wave of feminism, during the 1990s and the 2000s, came about partially as a response to the person saved failures of the first and the second waves. With many of the voices emerging from the global south, third-wave feminism called out white feminists for enforcing their version of what liberation and equality ought to look like. Third-wave feminism is believed in the diversity of experiences and felt their stories were being hijacked by white feminists. Their main concern was ‘intersectionality’, which meant that the diversity of ‘women’ is recognised with an emphasis placed on identity, gender, race, nation, social order and sexual preferences. This is where the impact of Frida Kahlo is most important. At a time when being feminine was the norm for being a woman, she was not ashamed of her facial hair and even depicted it in her paintings. She also showed a lot of gender fluidity and put her disability front and the centre of her work. She would alternate between masculine and feminine attire in her self-portraits.

[Semantee Chattopadhyay]

#33274

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As much as feminism is a movement that opens women to choices that are taken away from them by the patriarchy. We often see a misunderstanding between choices and fear of politics. Giving women their reproductive choices is a part of feminism. Practising feminism that isn’t intersectional is a fear of politics. Choice feminism offers a worldview that does not challenge the status quo, that promises to include all women regardless of their choices and that abstains from judgement altogether. Choice feminism seeks to include women. Feminism comes under politics so it has a set of beliefs that do not change whether we like it or not. There was a conversation with someone who shared how everyone can be a feminist as long as they acknowledge that they are feminists. This is a bit problematic. Submission comes from playing the other, playing an unequal part in the relationship because someone else has the power. We cannot say that we are feminists and we are submitting because then we are asking for equality within our relationships. We cannot ask for equality within our relationship and still be submissive. There are criticisms of choice feminism. It is said that feminism is too radical, too exclusionary and too judgemental. Feminism sets on certain points- we won’t compromise, we want to dismantle the patriarchy, etcetera. Feminism is too judgemental. Feminism also has three important features- it says freedom as a capacity to make individual choices, oppression as the inability to choose. As per Feminism in India, “Choice feminism allows any action taken by a woman as an expression of her agency, and that she should be free from any form of judgement since, in making a choice, she is inherently feminist.”
The act of selecting one or more possibilities can be defined as “choice”. Ware is agency can be defined as the degree to which a woman has an influence over making her own choices.

[Semantee Chattopadhyay]

#33262

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Cyberfeminism is used to describe the philosophies of a contemporary feminist community whose interests are cyberspace, the internet and technology. The term was coined in early 1990 to describe the work of feminists interested in theorizing, criticising and exploiting the Internet, cyberspace and new media technologies in general. Cyberfeminism is considered a predecessor to network feminism. Cyberfeminism also has a relationship to the field of Feminist science and technology studies. The dominant cyberfeminist perspective takes a utopian view of cyberspace and the internet as a means of freedom from social constructs such as gender and sex difference. Cyberfeminism we use technology as a vehicle for that is the illusion of sex and gender as well as a means to link the body with machines. Cyberfeminism refers to the application of feminism(s) ideology to and/or perform in cyberspace. An authoritative definition of cyberfeminism is difficult to find in written works because early cyber feminists deliberately evaded the rigid elucidation. Cyber familism is also concerned with the relationship between existing systems of discrimination and computing technologies, including race and racialization. There is also cyberfeminist work exploring the relationship of new technologies to gender and sexuality. Scholars such as Jessie Daniels suggests that “cyberfeminism is neither a single theory nor a feminist movement with a clearly articulated political agent. Rather cyberfeminism refers to a range of theories debates and practices about the relationship between gender and digital culture.” In addition, “within and among cyberfeminism (s) there are several theoretical and political sciences about internet technology and gender as well as noticeable ambivalence about a unified feminist political project.” Cyberfeminism can be a critique of equality in cyberspace, examine the gender relationships in cyberspace, examine the collaboration between humans and technology, examine the relationship between women and technology and more. The innovation of the internet has had a huge impact on women’s lives. The idea of digital life has been introduced to all users of the internet, but this new technology is liberating or oppressing women is still unknown.

[Semantee Chattopadhyay]

#33261

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Sexism exists everywhere, it exists in the way we speak the words we write, the images we create, And the way we act. It impacts women differently and to a greater extent than men. It’s around us from childhood with boys and courage to run, jump and be active and girls pic socialized into passive pleasing ladylike behaviour. It hits out at us from bus stop advertising, magazine covers, toys, computer games or pictures posted on the wall at work. It’s there in the home where women still perform pharma unpaid work than men. It’s in the workplace where women are not and silenced, passed over for promotion, penalised for having a family. It exists each time a victim of sexual violence is told in court that she was asking for it. It’s present each time a sportswoman is portrayed as a wife and a mother or asked to conform to a girly stereotype and hurt sports achievements are downplayed. It’s there when girls drop out of sports because they are told they don’t have the right body. It exists when men who looked after the children are ridiculed. It exists every time politicians who are women are silenced by jokes or comments about their appearance. It spreads poison through social media with women and girls silenced and degraded through vicious, sexualised attacks. Sexism is not just an attack on women, it’s an attack on everyone. It leads to societies that are not safe for everyone to thrive with no space for diverse voices, talents or leadership. At worst it creates a climate that leads to violence and murder. Sexism isn’t a conscious thing. It comes from societal preprogram which we don’t know is happening. Sexism ruins intergender relationships. When we talk about this thing, we are met with disbelief and mistrust.

[Semantee Chattopadhyay]

#33257

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Worshipping women is a kind of misogyny because it’s imagined that women are beautiful, fragile things that one can possess. It turns out that women are not things. They are people in precisely the same way that you are a person and in the progressive era, they demanded to be full citizens of the United States. In short, women don’t exist to be your Joie de Vivre. Sam historian for the photos that I will be your between 1890 and 1920 as the “women’s era” because it was in that time that women started to have great economic and political opportunities. Women were also ate hit by legal changes, like getting the right to own property, control their wages and make contracts and wills. By 1900, almost 5 million women work for wages, mainly in domestic service or light manufacturing, like the garment industry. Women in America were always the contributors to the economy as producers and consumers and they always worked together for wages are taking care of children and their homes. American women who are also active as reformers. movements brought women into state and national politics before the dawn of the progressive era. Unfortunately, their greatest achievement, Prohibition was also the greatest national shame. Women’s cricket influence indeed games to membership and leadership in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. The WCTU was founded in 1847 and by 1890 it had 150,000 members, making it the largest female organisation in the United States. Under the leadership of Frances Willard, the WCTU embraced a broad reform agenda. It included pushing for the right for women to vote. In 1895, Willard boldly declared,” A wider freedom is coming to the women of America. Too long it has been held that women have no right to enter these movements.. politics is the place for women.” The petrol of women in politics did greatly expands during the Progressive era. As in previous decades minute of former Swayam middle and upper-class women but the growing economy and the expansion of what might be called the upper-middle class meant that there were more educational opportunities and this growth of college-educated women leaned in and became the leaders of new movements. There was a shuttle shift in gender roles as more and more women work outside the home. African American women continue to work primarily as domestic servants or in agriculture, and immigrant women most needed low paying factory labour but for native-born white women there were new opportunities especially in office work. By 1920, office workers and telephone operators meet up 25% of the female workforce, while domestic servants were only 15%. Union leader named Abraham remarked that working gives immigrant women a sense of independence: “They acquired the right to personality, something alien to the highly patriarchal family structures of the old country.” Women who needed to work wanted a way to limit the number of pregnancies. Being pregnant and having a baby can make it difficult to hold down a job. The word control advocates like Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman also argued that women should be able to enjoy sex without having children. Another group of progressive women took up the role of addressing the problems of the poor and spearheaded the Settlement House movement. Settlement houses became the incubators of the new field of social work a field in which women played a huge part. Their increasing involvement in the social movements at the turn of the 20th century led them to electoral politics. There was the first wave of suffrage, exemplified by the women at Seneca falls and this metamorphosed into the National American Women’s Suffrage Association or NAWSA. Most of the leadership of NAWSA was made up of middle to upper-class women, often involved in other progressive causes who, unfortunately, sometimes represented the darker side of the suffrage movement. By the early 20 century and a new generation of college-educated activists had arrived on the scene. Many of these women when more radical can be early suffrage supporters. They organised the national women’s party and under the leadership of Alice Paul, pushed for the vote using aggressive tactics that many of the early generations of women’s rights advocates found unseemly. Most separate organisations believe that what time service would help women on respect and equal rights. But, other activists like many progressives post the war and regarded it as a potential threat to social reform.

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