Adrienne Rich What Does a Woman Need to Know

Adrienne Rich - What Does a Woman Need to Know

Adrienne Rich associates power with a lot of different things in her essay. She associates it with "exploiting the powerless -- including women and children." Power according to her means exhibiting force mainly against the women. Moreover she stresses that power has been historically linked to the "use of force, rape, with stockpiling of weapons," and the accumulation of wealth. I agree with Adrienne that power is associated with accumulation of wealth and weapons. Today or in the yesteryears it has always been seen that the people in society or nations globally, who have wealth and military strength are always more powerful and they exhibit an oppressing force towards the others. However power is not used or defined as exhibiting force against the women. I would more agree that power has been associated with the use of force against the weaker components of society and this can include men, women and children.

The basic need for women stressed by Rich in front of a class of graduating women in 1979, is the need for an education. She further stresses that it is a woman's right to gain knowledge of their heritage and female roots because if denied such an education, she feels that women will become completely powerless. She wants education in universities to be without any bias and to include any positive and creative roles played by women in history. She wants women to take control and get trained with independence research and data evaluation and emphasizes that most of what women would learn would be self-taught. That kind of an experience or learning cannot be achieved by a university education. Rich feels that lack of such knowledge would result in women living without context and vulnerable and exposed to whatever fantasies the males of the society would project.