Response post Jan 26

The three readings that we completed for today all addressed past waves of feminism and certain feminist movements…and all three readings left me with a slight feeling of emptiness. After reading Ellen DuBois article, I was discouraged by her final line: “Perhaps two waves of feminism will be enough to free us”. She repeatedly referred to the “shitwork” that women have been coerced into doing throughout history, but she hoped the second wave of feminism would be the final push to gender equality and female respect. We are currently in the third wave of feminism, and, from my perspective, we still have a long way to go until gender equality is realized.

We have certainly made great strides since the time when Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote the “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions” in 1848. Stanton declared that women should have the same legal rights as men, and she also wanted to implement change in how women are perceived in society. Of course, women are now equal to men in a court of law, so I think that Stanton’s goals have been achieved in the legal sense. However, sexism is still quite prevalent in our society…

I wanted to find a newspaper article that would be relevant to today’s readings, so I began browsing newyorktimes.com. I came across a letter to the editor in the opinion pages section entitled “Does test taking help students learn?” and my interest was sparked because memory/learning is one of my favorite subjects to study in psychology (my major). I clicked on the link, which brought me to the article and an accompanying image. The image is pictured in this post.

Perhaps I find this image sexist only because I saw the image while I was working on Women’s Studies…or, perhaps the image really is sexist. In a society where math and science has historically been considered a “male” subject, I think that it was extremely irresponsible of the Times to include two boys in this image, instead of one boy and one girl. The image reinforces the stereotype that men excel at certain subjects (math and science) where females may struggle.

DuBois and Stanton would not be pleased with this image. They both fought for women’s rights, and probably would have expected American society to have achieved full gender equality by now. Unfortunately, as the NYT image shows, gender equality has not been achieved in American society, despite all of the feminist efforts.