Rights of Women Today

In ancient Athens, it was customary for women to be kept indoors. They were not supposed to be out in public places or mixing with the men. That was considered immodest and bad manners. Though they could come out for social reasons, such as to help family and friends or to attend festivals, their sphere was essentially domestic and in the home was where they were supposed to be.[footnoteRef:2] The famous Greek playwright Euripides had a line in his play The Trojan Women: “What causes women a bad reputation is not remaining inside.”[footnoteRef:3] In ancient Sparta, however, it was just the opposite: women there held positions of power and even ruled the city-state. Spartan women could own land and had other rights that Athenian women did not have.[footnoteRef:4] This difference should not be surprising, however, because these same differences still exist today. The differences that lead to some women staying in the home and other women have roles outside the home are cultural—just as they were in ancient Greece. Athens was known for its artistic and political culture. Sparta was known for its warrior culture. The former was more refined and genteel. The latter was considered basically barbaric by educated Athenians (one reason Athens and Sparta never really got along well). Today, one sees in America how different traditions and cultures create the same kind of differences in the way women perceive their roles. For instance, in traditional Latino homes, many women still believe their role is to be housewives.[footnoteRef:5] They depend on their husbands for their financial support and they tend to the house and take up domestic work. Other women in more liberal American homes believe it is their right and even duty to get a career and work as a professional. They look back at the rights American women have won for themselves and believe they must continue on bearing the torch. Thus, even in modern America, the rights of women are not universally celebrated or pursued: it depends on the culture one grows up with. [2: Lewis, Sian. The Athenian Woman: an iconographic handbook (Routledge, 2013), 138.] [3: Euripides, The Trojan Women, http://classics.mit.edu/Euripides/troj_women.html] [4: Fleck, Robert K., and F. Andrew Hanssen. \\\"“Rulers ruled by women”: an economic analysis of the rise and fall of women’s rights in ancient Sparta.\\\" Economics of Governance 10, no. 3 (2009): 221-245.] [5: Cauce, Ana Mari, and Melanie Domenech-Rodriguez. \\\"Latino families: Myths and realities.\\\" Latino children and families in the United States: Current research and future directions (2002): 3-25.
In some traditional families, Feminism is still considered a hateful word. Some people view Feminism as destructive to families and family values. They see the rise of Feminism as correlating with the rise of the divorce rate and the shrinking of the family size. They note that traditional families used to have many children—now with both Mom and Dad working they want to limit the size of the family and keep it small.[footnoteRef:6] Their perspective is based on a culture that is not aligned with the modern culture that others in this country embrace. Traditional families, particularly Roman Catholics who cling to traditional ideals and roles, still embrace the notion that a woman’s place is in the home and that a man’s role is to go out into the world and earn a living to support the woman and the family. The woman is tasked with keeping the house, cleaning, raising the children, and getting the meals prepared. The man earns the paycheck and fixes things around the house when necessary. Far from being offensive to traditionally-minded people, this is actually a preferred set-up. [6: Rice, Joy K. \\\"Reconsidering research on divorce, family life cycle, and the meaning of family.\\\" Psychology of Women Quarterly 18, no. 4 (1994): 559-584.]
Yet it jars with what women are expected to do in a progressive culture that of the U.S. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 was a major victory for women in the 20th century, and so too was the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 and the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. These pieces of legislation helped to create an environment in which women could more comfortably take jobs outside the home and expect to be treated equally. It allowed women who wanted to balance family and career to do so. Feminist leaders like Betty Friedan pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable for women at mid-century and her book The Feminine Mystique made bold arguments that helped to push American culture in a more progressive direction. Friedan lamented that
We have made woman a sex creature…She has no identity except as a wife and mother. She does not know who she is herself. She waits all day for her husband to come home at night to make her feel alive. And now it is the husband who is not interested. It is terrible for the women, to lie there, night after night, waiting for her husband to make her feel alive.[footnoteRef:7] [7: Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (W.W. Norton, 1963), 29.]
Friedan saw traditional family values as oppressive and she believed that women had rights that were still being ignored. Yes, women had obtained the right to vote earlier in the century, but there was still a long way to go before they could be considered equal to men, Friedan argued. She stated, however, that this oppression only existed because women allowed it to exist: in their own minds they embraced it and perpetuated it in their families, teaching their children that the woman’s place was in the home. Friedan lamented that the “chains that bind her in her trap are chains in her own mind and spirit. They are chains made up of mistaken ideas and misinterpreted facts, of incomplete truths and unreal choices. They are not easily seen and not easily shaken off.”[footnoteRef:8] It was Friedan’s aim through Feminism to help women shake off those chains. [8: Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (W.W. Norton, 1963), 31.]
However, because the idea of women’s rights is cultural, not every woman wants to shake them off or even considers them as chains that oppress women. Friedan was Jewish, as were many of the leaders of Feminism, such as Gloria Steinem, founder of Ms. Magazine, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Justice. As Jewish women they had a much different cultural perspective than women from more traditional, Christian or Catholic homes, like those found in Latino culture, where the Catholic religion plays a big part in the lives and the formation of family members. And while America is a melting pot of various cultures and people, there are still big chunks of culture that remain within American society—little silos of culture that resist the developments and progressive ideas that get stirred up in the rest of the mix.
That is how American society and culture is today. Friedan, Steinem and other Feminists helped to promote the idea of women’s rights in the latter half of the 20th century, and celebrity activists like Alyssa Milano continue to promote the idea of equality and the rights of women on Twitter whenever there is a cultural challenge to their views—like the recent abortion bill in Georgia. The fact is, however, that modern America is still much like ancient Greece. For all the centuries and years of difference, people really have not changed that much. Cultural views are still formed in one’s education and family, and there are still groups who, like the ancient Athenians, believe that the woman’s role is domestic, while three are other groups, like the ancient Spartans, who are happy to see women in leadership positions outside the home. The fact of the matter is that the notion of women’s rights is as much of a concept that exists in the mind as the notion that motherhood and being a stay at home mom was viewed as a chain in the mind by Friedan. The socio-cultural values that people apply to themselves and their families differs depending on the traditions, the context, and background, and the big picture views that those groups have.
Bibliography
Cauce, Ana Mari, and Melanie Domenech-Rodriguez. \\\"Latino families: Myths and
realities.\\\" Latino children and families in the United States: Current research and future directions (2002): 3-25.
Euripides. The Trojan Women. http://classics.mit.edu/Euripides/troj_women.html
Fleck, Robert K., and F. Andrew Hanssen. \\\"“Rulers ruled by women”: an economic analysis of the rise and fall of women’s rights in ancient Sparta.\\\" Economics of Governance 10, no. 3 (2009): 221-245.
Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. NY: W. W. Norton, 1963.
Lewis, Sian. The Athenian Woman: an iconographic handbook. Routledge, 2013.
Rice, Joy K. \\\"Reconsidering research on divorce, family life cycle, and the meaning of family.\\\" Psychology of Women Quarterly 18, no. 4 (1994): 559-584.