Attention All Females: Men Can Be Wrong
January 18, 2008
Michael J. Ball
Ms. Robinson
English III
07 December 2007
Attention All Females: Men Can Be Wrong
Just as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream to bring equality to all men, many women in history have had dreams of leveling the genders and gaining equal rights as women in the United States of America. Through a large number of advancements, both social and legal, women have progressed to abandon many archaic ideals of gender separation. These ridiculous divisions in status between genders have been almost completely eliminated from the minds of all normal human beings.
The fight for equal rights between men and women can be traced back to the first decades of the United States. The “Cult of Domesticity” was an early 19th century ideal that embraced the idea of women as calm, nurturing mothers, and loving, faithful wives. This concept described them as passive and delicate, and also pious and religious. These women were believed to have been the backbone of support for their stoic husbands. The women that embraced this ideal were believed to develop their husbands into suitable members of society. Females of the time were also highly sought after as teachers, which became one of the first out of home jobs for them, because of their ability to develop these needed skills. A woman that highly regarded such views, Catharine Beecher, once said “woman’s greatest mission is to train immature, weak and ignorant creatures, to obey the laws of God, first in the family, then in the school, then in the neighborhood, then in the nation, then in the world.” While a generally common stereotype of a female is the classic feminine spirituality, passiveness, and nurturing love, the women of America’s modern society have abandoned many social limitations. Today’s woman no longer fits their former stereotypical views. While a woman teacher is more common today, other occupations are noting an exponential rise in female employees. Women today are not only taking up occupations that were never sought after before, but are eclipsing men on the economic ladder in today’s business. Each day, more and more women join the workforce, destroying ancient ideals of a woman’s place of work: the home. No longer is the household work thought of as a responsibility as it was in the early 19th century. A stay at home mother is now valued as an integral piece to many family situations. The abandonment of many of these primitive stereotypical ideals has led to an increase in independent women, who are now half of the face of working society.
In this modern world, anomalies are what are detected, while very common details slip right through the social crack. It is a common stereotype that women are worse drivers than men. This stereotype can be branched from the common thought of cars as a masculine field, giving them superior ability to operate them. The United States Department of Transportation has, since 1975, kept an in-depth record of all automobile-related fatalities. More than one million deaths were recorded in these archives as of 2003. The records also show that about 73 percent of all people killed in car accidents are male. This male-dominating statistic extends up through the mid-90s in age. Even in the pedestrian deaths, the number of males killed towers over the amount of females killed. In the statistics it is seen that the number of male pedestrians killed eclipses the female amount by far around the age of puberty. Some would argue that this amount of male pedestrian deaths is related to the risks that some males feel the need to fulfill during the age in which hormone levels are exponentially increasing. This argument can be countered by claims of driving mileage differences and roughly different conditions; however, these statistics do show that the stereotype of women as consistently terrible drivers is unrealistic.
Throughout the turmoil of social, economical, and political separation, women have advanced far beyond the goals of Elizabeth Katie Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. Many women including those great activists have provided concrete evidence that allows men to see that their difference is only physical, their place is the same. Women are no longer inferior in the gender equation. Women have advanced to make their mark on the social world, through protests, conventions, and hearings to encourage the public, not just other women, but men too, to realize how ludicrous the separation of the genders is. Now that mankind (which is used here only as a title for all human beings) has embraced the subject of gender superiority with common sense, the world can grow closer to knowing true equality.
