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- About Gender Lens
- From Purdue Online Writing Lab
Feminist
Criticism (1960s-present)
Summary:
This resource will help you begin the process of understanding
literary theory and schools of criticism and how they are used in the academy.
Contributors:Allen Brizee, J. Case
Tompkins
Last Edited: 2010-04-21 08:25:52
Last Edited: 2010-04-21 08:25:52
S/he
Feminist criticism is concerned with "...the ways in which literature (and other cultural
productions) reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological
oppression of women" (Tyson). This school of theory looks at how
aspects of our culture are inherently patriarchal (male dominated) and
"...this critique strives to expose the explicit and implicit misogyny in
male writing about women" (Richter 1346). This misogyny, Tyson reminds us,
can extend into diverse areas of our culture: "Perhaps the most chilling
example...is found in the world of modern medicine, where drugs prescribed for
both sexes often have been tested on male subjects only" (83).
Feminist criticism is also concerned with less obvious forms of
marginalization such as the exclusion of women writers from the traditional
literary canon: "...unless the critical or historical point of view is
feminist, there is a tendency to under-represent the contribution of women
writers" (Tyson 82-83).
Common Space in Feminist Theories
Though a number of different approaches exist in feminist
criticism, there exist some areas of commonality. This list is excerpted from
Tyson:
1. Women are oppressed by patriarchy
economically, politically, socially, and psychologically; patriarchal ideology
is the primary means by which they are kept so
2. In every
domain where patriarchy reigns, woman is other: she is marginalized, defined
only by her difference from male norms and values
3. All of
western (Anglo-European) civilization is deeply rooted in patriarchal ideology,
for example, in the biblical portrayal of Eve as the origin of sin and death in
the world
4. While
biology determines our sex (male or female), culture determines our gender (masculine or
feminine)
5. All
feminist activity, including feminist theory and literary criticism, has as its
ultimate goal to change the world by prompting gender equality
6. Gender
issues play a part in every aspect of human production and experience,
including the production and experience of literature, whether we are
consciously aware of these issues or not (91).
Feminist criticism has, in many ways, followed what some theorists
call the three waves of feminism:
1. First Wave
Feminism - late
1700s-early 1900's: writers like Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Women,
1792) highlight the inequalities between the sexes. Activists like Susan B.
Anthony and Victoria Woodhull contribute to the women's suffrage movement,
which leads to National Universal Suffrage in 1920 with the passing of the
Nineteenth Amendment
2. Second Wave
Feminism - early
1960s-late 1970s: building on more equal working conditions necessary in
America during World War II, movements such as the National Organization for
Women (NOW), formed in 1966, cohere feminist political activism. Writers like
Simone de Beauvoir (Le
deuxième sexe, 1972) and Elaine Showalter established the
groundwork for the dissemination of feminist theories dove-tailed with the
American Civil Rights movement
3. Third Wave
Feminism - early
1990s-present: resisting the perceived essentialist (over generalized, over
simplified) ideologies and a white, heterosexual, middle class focus of second
wave feminism, third wave feminism borrows from post-structural and
contemporary gender and race theories (see below) to expand on marginalized
populations' experiences. Writers like Alice Walker work to "...reconcile
it [feminism] with the concerns of the black community...[and] the survival and
wholeness of her people, men and women both, and for the promotion of dialog
and community as well as for the valorization of women and of all the varieties
of work women perform" (Tyson 97).
Typical questions:
- How
is the relationship between men and women portrayed?
- What
are the power relationships between men and women (or characters assuming
male/female roles)?
- How
are male and female roles defined?
- What
constitutes masculinity and femininity?
- How
do characters embody these traits?
- Do
characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this
change others’ reactions to them?
- What
does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically,
socially, or psychologically) of patriarchy?
- What
does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of
resisting patriarchy?
- What
does the work say about women's creativity?
- What
does the history of the work's reception by the public and by the critics
tell us about the operation of patriarchy?
- What
role the work play in terms of women's literary history and literary
tradition? (Tyson)
Here is a list of scholars we encourage you to explore to further
your understanding of this theory:
- Mary
Wollstonecraft - A Vindication of the Rights of Women,
1792
- Simone de Beauvoir - Le deuxième sexe, 1972
- Julia
Kristeva - About Chinese Women, 1977
- Elaine
Showalter - A Literature of Their Own,
1977; "Toward a Feminist Poetics," 1979
- Deborah
E. McDowell - "New Directions for Black Feminist Criticism,"
1980
- Alice
Walker - In Search of Our Mother's Gardens,
1983
- Lillian
S. Robinson - "Treason out Text: Feminist Challenges to the Literary
Canon," 1983
- Camile
Paglia - Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in
Literature and Art, 1990
Gender Studies
and Queer Theory (1970s-present)
Summary:
This resource will help you begin the process of understanding
literary theory and schools of criticism and how they are used in the academy.
Contributors:Allen Brizee, J. Case
Tompkins
Last Edited: 2010-04-21 08:25:59
Last Edited: 2010-04-21 08:25:59
Gender(s), Power, and
Marginalization
Gender studies and queer theory explore issues of sexuality, power, and marginalized
populations (woman as other) in literature and culture. Much of the work
in gender studies and queer theory, while influenced by feminist criticism,
emerges from post-structural interest in fragmented, de-centered knowledge
building (Nietzsche, Derrida, Foucault), language (the breakdown of
sign-signifier), and psychoanalysis (Lacan).
A primary concern in gender studies and queer theory is the manner
in which gender and sexuality is discussed: "Effective as this work
[feminism] was in changing what teachers taught and what the students read,
there was a sense on the part of some feminist critics that...it was still the
old game that was being played, when what it needed was a new game entirely.
The argument posed was that in order to counter patriarchy, it was necessary
not merely to think about new texts, but to think about them in radically new
ways" (Richter 1432).
Therefore, a critic working in gender studies and queer theory
might even be uncomfortable with the binary established by many feminist
scholars between masculine and feminine: "Cixous (following Derrida in Of
Grammatology) sets up a series of binary oppositions
(active/passive, sun/moon...father/mother, logos/pathos). Each pair can be
analyzed as a hierarchy in which the former term represents the positive and
masculine and the latter the negative and feminine principle" (Richter
1433-1434).
In-Betweens
Many critics working with gender and queer theory are interested
in the breakdown of binaries such as male and female, the in-betweens (also
following Derrida's interstitial knowledge building). For example, gender
studies and queer theory maintains that cultural definitions of sexuality and
what it means to be male and female are in flux: "...the distinction
between "masculine" and "feminine" activities and behavior
is constantly changing, so that women who wear baseball caps and fatigues...can
be perceived as more piquantly sexy by some heterosexual men than those women
who wear white frocks and gloves and look down demurely" (Richter 1437).
Moreover, Richter reminds us that as we learn more about our
genetic structure, the biology of male/female becomes increasingly complex and
murky: "even the physical dualism of sexual genetic structures and bodily
parts breaks down when one considers those instances - XXY syndromes, natural
sexual bimorphisms, as well as surgical transsexuals - that defy attempts at
binary classification" (1437).
Typical questions:
- What
elements of the text can be perceived as being masculine (active,
powerful) and feminine (passive, marginalized) and how do the characters
support these traditional roles?
- What
sort of support (if any) is given to elements or characters who question
the masculine/feminine binary? What happens to those elements/characters?
- What
elements in the text exist in the middle, between the perceived
masculine/feminine binary? In other words, what elements exhibit traits of
both (bisexual)?
- How
does the author present the text? Is it a traditional narrative? Is it
secure and forceful? Or is it more hesitant or even collaborative?
- What
are the politics (ideological agendas) of specific gay, lesbian, or queer
works, and how are those politics revealed in...the work's thematic content
or portrayals of its characters?
- What
are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of a specific lesbian,
gay, or queer works?
- What
does the work contribute to our knowledge of queer, gay, or lesbian
experience and history, including literary history?
- How
is queer, gay, or lesbian experience coded in texts that are by writers
who are apparently homosexual?
- What
does the work reveal about the operations (socially, politically,
psychologically) homophobic?
- How
does the literary text illustrate the problematics of sexuality and sexual
"identity," that is the ways in which human sexuality does not
fall neatly into the separate categories defined by the words homosexual
and heterosexual?
Here is a list of scholars we encourage you to explore to further
your understanding of this theory:
- Luce
Irigaray - Speculum of the Other Woman,
1974
- Hélène
Cixous - "The Laugh of the Medussa," 1976
- Laura
Mulvey - "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," 1975;
"Afterthoughts on Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," 1981
- Michele
Foucault - The History of Sexuality,
Volume I, 1980
- Eve
Kosofsky Sedgwick - Epistemology of the Closet,
1994
- Lee
Edelman - "Homographies," 1989
- Michael
Warner
- Judith
Butler - "Imitation and Gender Insubordination," 1991
Thoughts:
- How sexual identity has affected the creation of literary works.
- Our gender is defined by our culture.
- There is the dominance of patriarchal attitude in literature. Women are often oppressed by these.
- Examines the images of men and women in literature and culture.
Article (From 'The Independent')
Korea's
'comfort women': The slaves' revolt
Korea's dwindling
band of 'comfort women' have spent years fighting for justice. But a growing
revisionist movement in Japan refuses to recognise the abuse they suffered.
David McNeill reports
THURSDAY 24 APRIL 2008
In Korea they call them halmoni or grandmothers –
although many are so scarred mentally and physically that they have never
married or had children. In Japan,
they are known as "comfort
women", a hated euphemism for their forced role of providing "comfort" to
marauding Japanese troops in military brothels. But around the world, another,
altogether starker term will follow them to their graves: sex slaves.
Kang il-chul is one of a handful of
the surviving women living their final days in the Sharing House, a museum and
communal refuge two hours from the South Korean capital, Seoul. It is a stark,
concrete building in a sparsely populated area of rice fields and scraggly
mountain forests. But she says she has found some peace here. "I am among
my friends, who treat me well," she says.
At the age of 15,
she says she was taken and
sent to a Japanese base in Manchuria. On her second night, before her first menstru-ation,
she was raped. Soldiers lined up night after night to abuse her. She has
scars below her neck from
cigarette burns and says she suffers headaches from a beating she took at the hands of a Japanese
officer. "I still have blood tears in my soul when I think about
what happened," she says.
Like many of the
women, she finds it traumatic to recall the past, crying and knotting a
handkerchief, and swaying as she talks. But she gets angry and slaps the table
in front of her when the former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe is
mentioned. "That horrible man," she spits. "He wants us to
die."
Last year, Mr Abe
stunned the Sharing House by claiming there is "no evidence" to prove
the women were coerced, reversing Japan's position. Amid a political storm and
pressure from Japan's US allies, he backtracked in a series of carefully worded
statements that took the heat out of the controversy. But the denial
"terrified" Kang. "I felt that my heart had been turned inside
out," she says.
"The women's
greatest fear is that when they die, the crimes against them will be
forgotten," said Ahn Sin Kweon, director of the Sharing House.
Thousands of Asian women – some as young as 12 –
were "enslaved ... and repeatedly raped, tortured and brutalised for
months and years", according to Amnesty International. Sexual abuse, beatings and
forced abortions left many unable to bear children.
Most survivors stayed silent until a small group of
Korean victims spoke out in the early 1990s.
Among the first was Kim Hak-soon, who was raped and treated, in her words, "like a public
toilet". "We must record these things that were forced upon
us," she said before she died.
The call was taken
up by about 50 women, recalls Ahn Sin Kweon. "Many weren't married or were
living alone in small towns, barely able to scrape a living." A Buddhist
organisation helped construct Sharing House on donated land in the 1990s.
"They were initially reluctant because the more they were out in the
spotlight, the more people knew that they were raped. It is very difficult for women of that generation
to discuss sexual matters openly, let alone these experiences."
Japan officially
acknowledged wartime military slavery in a landmark 1993 statement, followed by
the offer of compensation from a small private fund, which expired last year.
But the so-called Kono statement has long baited Japanese revisionists, who
deny the military was directly involved. "The women were legal
prostitutes, earning money for their families," claims the revisionist
academic Nobukatsu Fujioka.
Although Mr Abe is
gone, replaced by Yasuo Fukuda, Kang il-chul and her fellow victims fear it is
only a matter of time before the denials return, perhaps with the next Japanese
prime minister. The struggle defines the final years of their lives: if they
lose, they will in effect be branded prostitutes.
When her health
allows, the 82-year-old drags herself to a weekly demonstration outside the
Japanese embassy in Seoul. The former sex slaves have been coming here since
the early 1990s and marked their 800th consecutive demonstration in February.
Their demands, including the punishment of those who raped them, an apology
from the emperor and the building of a memorial in Japan, are angrily hurled
against the walls, but are unlikely to be won.
The Wednesday
protest, as it is known, has become ritualised and tinged with sadness as the
already small group of survivors is reduced by illness and mortality. Of 15
former residents of Sharing House, just seven remain, most in poor health.
But the women are
heartened by small victories. Last year, the US congress passed Resolution 121,
calling on Tokyo to "formally apologise and accept historical
responsibility" for the comfort women issue. Kang il-chul was one of the
women who travelled to Washington to testify.
The resolution, sponsored
by the Japanese-American politician Mike Honda, was fought hard by Tokyo. An
editorial in Japan's largest newspaper, Yomiuri, said there was not "one
shred of evidence to substantiate" the claim that the Japanese government
systematically coerced and recruited the women.
Today, a large
banner showing a beaming Honda is draped across the main courtyard of the
commune. A copy of Resolution 121, signed by Honda and House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi hangs in Ahn Sin Kweon's office.
"The resolution was very important
for us because our priority is to keep the memory of the women alive," he
says, recalling Honda's reception when he visited here last November. "He
was treated like a hero."
Surprisingly,
perhaps, Mr Ahn reserves much anger for his own government. Like many
activists, he believes Seoul bartered away any compensation claims when it
signed a friendship treaty with Japan in 1965, in return for millions of
dollars in soft loans and grants.
He says it is also
up to the Japanese people to criticise their government. Every year, he says,
about 5,000 Japanese travel to his office. Their encounter with the former sex
slaves is often wrenching and tearful. Some stay as volunteers to work at the
centre.
But Kang il-chul is
deeply suspicious of Japanese journalists. "They want to show us weak and
dying," she cries, again slapping the table in anger. "Especially the
camera crews. They follow the oldest, sickest women around." Later, she
stops me taking pictures of a frail woman blankly watching television.
"You must show us strong," she demands and we take pictures of her
posing, like a boxer, beside a monument to the sex slaves.
She recalls the day
she was taken. "The soldiers had a list with my name on it. They put me in
a truck. My nephew came out to look at them. He was just a baby. The soldiers
kicked him and he died."
Memories like that
make her strong, she says. "Future generations will call us prostitutes.
Either they [the Japanese government] save their faces, or we save ours."
Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/koreas-comfort-women-the-slaves-revolt-814763.html
Thoughts:
- We can see that women have been
exploited especially in the past. From the news article, Korean women were made
as ‘comfort women’ or sex slaves to the men of the Japanese army. During the
war, to provide leisure and comfort for the soldiers, the Korean women have to
suffer as they were raped and abused by these cruel and inhumane men. One of
the victims, Kang il- Chul, says that she was taken away at the age of 15 and
sent to an army base at Manchuria. On her second night there, before her first
menstruation, she was raped.
- Night after night, the soldiers abused her. She
even has scars below her neck due to cigarette burns. She also suffers from
headaches due to the beatings she took from a Japanese officer. This shows how
brutal the Japanese soldiers were to Korean women. Being 15, she is supposed to
study and enjoy life. Instead, her basic rights were stripped off and she was
made a ‘comfort woman’. She has no say in how her life was supposed to be. She
is treated fairly and she is being exploited.
- Other women were also raped and
tortured. In addition, some begin as ‘comfort women’ when they were only 12
years of age. Due to the torture they received, some were left unable to bear
children. We can see how brutally treated they were by those men. Another
victim, Kim Hak-soon, says that she was raped and treated like a “public
toilet”. We can see the comparison that she makes show how extreme was the
treatment the women received. Women were like public toilets. How unfair can it
be? They were not given equal rights and they were treated like non-living
things. For years, these women have to bear with their suffering and traumatic
experiences.
Article (From 'The Independent')
The price of
being a woman: Slavery in modern India
The desire for sons
has created a severe shortage of marriageable young women. As their value
rises, unscrupulous men are trading them around the subcontinent and beyond as
if they were a mere commodity
MONDAY 03 APRIL 2006
Tripla's
parents sold her for £170 to a man who had come looking for a wife. He took her away with him, hundreds of miles
across India, to the villages outside Delhi. It was the last time she would see her home. For
six months, she lived with him in the village, although there was never any
formal marriage. Then, two weeks ago, her husband, Ajmer Singh, ordered her to sleep with his
brother, who could not find a wife. When Tripla refused, he took her into the
fields and beheaded her with a sickle.
When Rishi Kant, an Indian human
rights campaigner, tracked down Tripla's parents in the state of Jharkhand and
told them the news, her mother broke down in tears. "But what could we
do?" she asked him. "We are facing so much poverty we had no choice but to sell her."
Tripla was a victim
of the common practice in
India of aborting baby girls because parents only want boys. Although
she was born and lived into early adulthood, it was the abortions that caused
her death. In the villages of Haryana, just outside Delhi, abortions of baby
girls have become so common that the shortage of women is severe. Unable to
find wives locally, the
men have resorted to buying women from the poorer parts of India. Just
25 miles from the glitzy new shopping malls and apartment complexes of Delhi is
a slave market for women.
Last week, an
Indian doctor became the first to be jailed for telling a woman the sex of her
unborn baby. India is trying to stamp out the practice of female foeticide. But
in the villages of Haryana, the damage has already been done. Indian parents
want boys because girls
are seen as a heavy financial burden: the parents have to provide an expensive
dowry for their weddings, while sons will bring money into the family when they
marry, and have better job prospects.
But in Haryana, so
many female foetuses have been aborted that there aren't enough women for the
men to marry. The result is a thriving market in women, known in local slang as
baros, who have been bought from poorer parts of India. Anyone in the villages
can tell you the going rates. The price ranges from 3,000 rupees (£40) to
30,000 rupees for a particularly beautiful woman. Skin colour and age are
important pricing criteria. So is whether the woman is a virgin.
When the police
arrested Tripla's husband, he could not provide a marriage certificate.
Generally, there is no
real marriage. The women are sexual "brides" only. Sometimes,
brothers who cannot afford more share one woman between them. Often, men who
think they have got a good deal on a particularly beautiful bride will sell her
at a profit.
Munnia was sold
when she was only 17. Considered particularly beautiful, she was resold three times in the space
of a few weeks. Like Tripla, she came from Jharkhand, but she was lucky:
she escaped. Today she is in a government shelter for women. As she tells her
story, she breaks down in tears several times.
"My father
sold me to a man called Dharma," she says. "I don't know if he paid
for me or not. I came to Delhi with my mother on the train, and then Dharma
took me to his village. He used to beat me very badly. He used to hit me until
I allowed him to sleep with me. Usually it went on for half an hour."
She was with Dharma
just 20 days before he sold her. Her route criss-crossed northern India: Dharam
took her to his home in Rajasthan, before selling her to a man in Haryana.
"He told me: 'I have sold you to a man for 30,000 rupees'," she says.
"But when we got there I realised that man wanted to sell me on as well.
Then I ran away."
She found a social
worker who helped her escape. In that she was fortunate: few of the women who
run away from the villages where she was make it out alive. Government medical
tests found she had been raped by two men. She was only 17 at the time, and the
age of consent in India is 18.
"My father
told me Dharma would marry me, but the marriage never took place," she
says, blinking in the sun. She is deeply traumatised by her experiences; all
the time she speaks, her hands play nervously with her shawl. When we ask if
she wants to go home, she says: "I don't know anything. I have no will and
no hope in this world."
She is the lucky
one, all the same. In the villages she escaped from, hundreds of women are trapped in similar slave
marriages. The village of Ghasera is a world away from nearby Delhi. It
is still walled, like a fortress from centuries ago, and you enter through a
narrow gateway. The roads are dirt and the houses ramshackle huts: It is hard
to believe you're just an hour and a half's drive from the bright new India
that is being courted as an ally by the US and attracting investors from across
the world. More than 100 brides have been imported to this village alone,
according to locals.
The people are
hostile and crowd round strangers suspiciously. Even the police don't risk
coming in to these villages unarmed. Villagers have attacked police who tried
to rescue the brides, and set their cars on fire.
Anwari Katun was
sold for £130 and brought here from Jharkhand. The house she is living in now
is thick with flies, so many they make patterns in the air as they swarm. A
small girl is asleep in the corner, flies crawling over her face.
Ms Katun wants to tell her story, but the villagers
crowd into her house and stand by menacingly as she tries to speak. Her fear is
evident as they stand by. Most prominent is an old woman who moves forward
threateningly when Ms Katun says she is not happy. Cowed by the crowd she says:
"I accept what happened to me. I'm not happy but I accept it. This is a
woman's life. The only thing I want is that this doesn't happen to my sisters,
that they never get sold like this."
With that, she sits
in silence. Desperation is written on her face, but she is afraid to say any
more with the villagers crowding around. Once they are here, with no family and
no friends the women are helpless.
Rishi Kant has
spent the past four years rescuing women like Ms Katun. A jovial man in
designer sunglasses, he once spent four nights in Delhi's notorious Tihar jail
when police carried out mass arrests of protesters at a human rights rally. His
organisation, Shkati Vahini, has rescued more than 150 trafficked women. But he
says he can do nothing for Ms Katun at the moment. The government women's
shelter in Haryana state has places for only 25 women, and it is full. When
there is no space, he can do nothing: there is nowhere else safe for the women
to go. As soon as a place opens up, he says, he will go back for Ms Katun.
To get the women
out of the villages, he has to enlist the help of the police. In villages such
as Ghasera, the police only raid in heavy numbers, and only in the middle of
the night, when they can take the villagers by surprise. Otherwise, the heavily
armed villagers will resist by force. But the police are co-operative, and do
get the women out. Then the long process of tracking down their parents, and
trying to get them home, if possible, begins.
Getting the women
out of the villages is often not easy. Recently, Mr Kant found a trafficked
woman who convinced him that the man who had brought her to Haryana was running
a business, and had several more women. He and the police waited in the hope
the woman could lead them to the trafficker. But when they got back the next
day, it appeared he had become suspicious. The woman had disappeared. Mr Kant
believes she was probably sold to another part of India. He hasn't found any
trace of her.
Many of the trafficked women in the villages are
minors. Shabila came to Ghasera from Assam,
a thousand miles away. She says she is 25, but she doesn't look a day over 15. One of the women in the
government shelter, Havari, looks the same age. She is highly disturbed and
talks at one moment of having had a baby, then denies it the next. She has
hacked off all her hair. There is no psychiatric counselling for the women.
One of the women in
Ghasera told us her sister had been sold to the village along with her, then
kidnapped from it and exported to Oman. She was desperate for help to get her
out.
Some of the
trafficked women become traffickers themselves. Maryam, who was sold here from
her native Maharashtra in 1985, has just arranged the sale of another woman,
Roxana, to the village for 10,000 rupees. Although Ghasera is poor, it is
better off than many of the remote villages the women come from. With their
contacts there, the trafficked women can easily entice others to come
voluntarily. But once they come, there is no way out. Some of the women become
reconciled to their lives. Afsana speaks openly in front of her husband of her
unhappiness over the years here: she is not afraid of him. Although there was
no formal marriage, they have stayed together.
"I never
thought I would come here. I never even thought about where Haryana was,"
she says. "There are several girls who do not want to stay, but what can
they do? They are in a helpless situation."
Her husband,
Dawood, could not get a wife locally because he has a damaged eye. He travelled
to Bihar and saw several women before choosing Afsana. He paid £40. He
complains that there aren't enough women in Haryana, but he does not see the
link between aborting female foetuses and the shortage of women.
In Asouti, a
village a short drive away, you can find the reason behind all the suffering of
the slave brides of Haryana.
Lakhmi Devi had five abortions, each because the child she was carrying was a
girl. She had already given birth to four daughters.
She is still
tortured by guilt over the abortions. "It is better for a mother to die
than to kill her daughters," she says. "I was under immense pressure
from my husband's family to provide him with a son. My mother-in-law even
demanded I get another woman to sleep with my husband to give him a son."
Eventually, she gave birth to a boy, Praveen, and her agony was over.
A recent study by
Indian and Canadian researchers found 500,000 girls are aborted every year in India.
Today Haryana has only 861 women for every 1,000 men. Strict laws have been put
in place to prevent the practice. Abortion is legal in India but testing the gender of a foetus is not.
Anil Singh, a Haryana doctor, was sentenced last week to two years in prison
for telling a woman she was carrying a girl and offering an abortion.
But still, the
abortions go on. To get round the police, doctors have started using codes to
tell the people the sex of their baby: if the ultrasound report is written in
blue ink, it's a boy; if it's in red ink, it's a girl. If the report is
delivered on Monday, it's a boy, if it's Friday, it's a girl.
Meanwhile the
trafficked women keep coming, from across India, to fill the places of the
unborn women.
Thoughts:
- In this modern era, discrimination against women still takes places. One particular place where this happens is India. Women in India are treated as second-class citizens. Men have a higher power over them and can control them like they were puppets. From the article, we can see that young girls were being trafficked and sold as ‘brides’. They were made as sexual ‘brides’ as they would be no formal marriages. Sometimes, brothers would share brides as well and resell these brides if they think they can get a profit. These women are treated like objects.
- It seems like they are not humans as they can be sold from man to man without any restrictions. Besides, the abortion of baby girls is very high until there are not enough women for the men in India. They are stuck in these slave marriages and continue living without their family and friends. When they try to speak up, they receive threats from the villagers. Imagine living your entire life with your freedom being oppressed and be constantly abused. Is it reasonable to even call it life? This is how the women in India feel. They go through so much pain each day just because they were born as females and not males.
Article (From 'The Christian Science Monitor')
North
Korean women sold into 'slavery' in China
Like
the thousands of women who fled North Korea before her, Kim
Eun-sun made it into China and paid a woman to help her, only to discover she'd
traded one form of
captivity for another.
North Korean women cross
the road on a rainy day in Pyongyang, North Korea, Wednesday, April 25.
Ng Han Guan/AP
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA
The
price for a North Korean woman named Kim Eun-sun, her mother, and her sister to
escape to China was
2,000 Chinese
yuan, slightly more than $300.
Like thousands of North Korean women before them, they crossed
the Tumen River into
China and met a woman who said she would help them escape – only to discover that they’d been sold
to a Chinese farmer who wanted a wife.
“A lot
of women come to China not knowing what they are getting into,” says Ms. Kim,
who escaped the farmer with her family but was caught by Chinese police and
then sent back to North
Korea. “Women are
secretly sold in China.”
After
fleeing from North Korea to China a second time, Kim, her mother, and her
sister eventually made it to Mongolia moving mostly on foot across the Gobi
Desert. Mongolian soldiers found them and delivered them to the South Korean Embassy in Ulan
Bator whence
they were flown to Seoul.
Now a
senior in college here, she has received a US government grant that gives her eight
months of English-language training and another semester of study in psychology
at a US university. Wherever she goes, she conveys the message of the suffering inflicted on North
Korean women, generally estimated by officials and activists to make up at
least 70 percent of the defectors who cross into China.
She believes that exposure of
the plight of North Koreans, particularly women, is the best she can do to
bring about change.
Campaigning for women’s rights
Lately,
Kim has been campaigning on behalf of North Korean defectors held in China in
demonstrations across the street from the Chinese Embassy in
Seoul, protesting China’s policy of complying with North Korean demands to
return defectors to the North. Once she was angry enough to grab the microphone
and shriek out her sentiments in Chinese.
She also talks about the plight
of North Koreans in meetings at college campuses – though she’s disappointed by
the apathy she encounters among young South Koreans.
"I feel resentful there is
small interest here, but I feel thankful for those who attend when I
talk," she says. "I know I will work [to promote] North Korean issues
when in the US."
Kim says “living in North Korea was
impossible” as she discusses a book, “North Korea: The Nine-Year Escape
from Hell,” that she wrote with French journalist Sebastien Falletti.
Mr.
Falletti describes Kim's book as one way for her to raise awareness in South
Korea and the
world, considering how shocked she was by the reluctance of South Koreans to
heed the daily life-and-death struggle endured by most North Koreans.
Sold into
slavery
Kim Sang-hun, director of the
Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, estimates 20,000 to 30,000 North Korean
women are now entrapped in China in what many observers see as a form of
slavery. "Most of the women," he says, "are forced into sexual
slavery."
Female defectors typically must choose between being forced into
marriage, serving as a hostess in a karaoke bar or "massage”
establishment, or escaping into forbidding mountains where life is a constant
struggle for food and shelter. The last option means eluding Chinese police
often working in tandem with North Korean security officials.
Estimates of the number of
North Koreans, both men and women, living in China range from 100,000 to
200,000, he says, though there’s no accurate way of counting since they hide in
obscure jobs, merging with a populace that includes a community of more than 2
million Chinese citizens of Korean descent.
Kim Sang-hun says Chinese
authorities view those whom they capture as economic migrants who have entered
China illegally, preferring to appear oblivious to the issue of slavery.
The Chinese show little
inclination to respond to demands not to return defectors to North Korea.
Typically they are sent to North Korea by buses at night with curtains drawn
and then placed in special camps for interrogation and indoctrination.
China’s
policy outrages activists campaigning against a wide range of North Korean
human rights abuses. "It’s a modern form of slavery where you’re being
sold into a forced situation for a price,” says Frank Jannuzi, head of the Washington office of Amnesty
International. Rather than do anything about it, he says, the Chinese have
built "a brand-new detention facility where they would store 200 to 300
North Koreans."
‘A blot on
South Korean society’
Human rights organizations
blame South Korean gangs for some of the suffering. Working in cahoots with
Chinese Koreans, investing in karaoke bars in China, they are said to hold
women against their will while paying them just enough to survive.
"South Korean businessmen
are their best customers,” says Tim Peters, director of Helping Hands Korea,
dedicated to aiding North Korean children in China. “It’s a blot on South
Korean society,” he says, blaming the Chinese for "doing nothing about a
criminal system in violation of the rights of women.”
Ha Tae-keung, president of Open
Radio North Korea, broadcasting into North Korea via short wave for one or two
hours a day from Seoul, says informants in China report hundreds of North Korean women are forced to
work in “chat rooms” selling telephone and Internet sex at high prices.
“They are detained in a room
all the time, talking to people in South Korea,” says Mr. Ha, elected last
month to the South Korean national assembly representing a district in the port
city of Pusan.
Why so many women defectors?
The
market for women may help explain why such a high proportion of defectors are
female. “Women can sell themselves easily,” says Kim Tae-woo, president of the Korean Institute for National Unification. They
sense they can hide within a forced marriage or brothel, he says, though they
may not have quite imagined what they were getting into when they crossed into
China.
“Men are more conspicuous, more
active,” says Mr. Kim, as they move from job to job, earning very little for
often onerous labor.
Kim Eun-sun offers a more
elaborate explanation for the predominance of women among North Korean
defectors.
"Males do not do well
under starvation,” she believes, reflecting on the death of her father before
she, her sister, and her mother fled for the first time. “Men pass away more
easily."
Then, too, Kim adds, “A lot of
men are serving in the North Korean military and maybe worry more about
betraying the regime and changing their ideology.”
In the end, the lure of
relative freedom trumps the knowledge of the ordeal women are up against if
caught.
Once back in North Korea, they face beatings and humiliation at the
hands of prison guards even if they're not charged with crimes such as selling
stolen goods or spying, both capital offenses.
“Typically, 60 women are held in one room," she says. “When you
first are there, you are stripped naked. They search every part of your body to
look for money. If you want to go to the bathroom, you have to ask permission.
You feel like the North Korean regime has stripped you of humanity.”
She
predicts the numbers escaping are sure to increase. So far more than 23,000
North Koreans – some 80 percent of them women – have made it to South Korea,
usually via Mongolia or Southeast
Asia via Thailand or Vietnam. “The
North Korean economy is not getting better,” she says. “Many more will
escape."
Source:http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2012/0511/North-Korean-women-sold-into-slavery-in-China
Thoughts:
- Women are also exploited in North Korea. With this, they flee their country to countries such as China and Mongolia. For example, Kim Eun-sun, her mother and her sister escaped to China. However, instead of attaining freedom in China, they find themselves trapped once again as they find out that they have been sold to a Chinese farmer who wanted a wife. We see that North Korean women who dream of freedom by escaping North Korea once again experience ill treatment as they are being sold in China. The women are trapped in China as slaves. They are either forced into marriage, serving as a hostess in a karaoke bar or “massage” establishment.
- If not, they live in the mountains of China where finding food and shelter is a definite struggle. They are also forced to work in “chat rooms” selling telephone and internet sex at a high price. We see that the North Korean women suffer a great deal. As living in North Korea is “impossible”, they hope of a better life by fleeing the country. However, they still suffer in a different place. This shows how society treats women generally. Women who are humans as well and deemed “creations of God” deserve equal rights. They deserve to be treated fairly and not be treated like garbage where they have no value.
Article (China- Women)
WOMEN
| Traditional Chinese
society was male-centered. Sons were preferred to daughters, and women were
expected to be subordinate to fathers, husbands, and sons. A young woman had
little voice in the decision on her marriage partner (neither did a young
man). When married,
it was she who left her natal family and community and went to live in a
family and community of strangers where she was subordinate to her
mother-in-law. Far fewer women were educated than men, and sketchy but
consistent demographic evidence would seem to show that female infants and
children had higher death rates and less chance of surviving to adulthood
than males. In extreme cases, female infants were the victims of infanticide,
and daughters were sold, as chattels, to brothels or to wealthy families.
Bound feet, which were customary even for peasant women, symbolized the
painful constraints of the female role. Protests and concerted efforts to alter women's place in society began in China's coastal cities in the early years of the twentieth century. By the 1920s formal acceptance of female equality was common among urban intellectuals. Increasing numbers of girls attended schools, and young secondary school and college students approved of marriages based on free choice. Footbinding declined rapidly in the second decade of the century, the object of a nationwide campaign led by intellectuals who associated it with national backwardness. Nevertheless, while party leaders condemned the oppression and subordination of women as one more aspect of the traditional society they were intent on changing, they did not accord feminist issues very high priority. In the villages, party members were interested in winning the loyalty and cooperation of poor and lower-middle-class male peasants, who could be expected to resist public criticism of their treatment of their wives and daughters. Many party members were poor and lower-middle-class peasants from the interior, and their attitudes toward women reflected their background. The party saw the liberation of women as depending, in a standard Marxist way, on their participation in the labor force outside the household. The position of women in contemporary society has changed from the past, and public verbal assent to propositions about the equality of the sexes and of sons and daughters seems universal. Women attend schools and universities, serve in the People's Liberation Army, and join the party. Almost all urban women and the majority of rural women work outside the home. But women remain disadvantaged in many ways, economic and social, and there seems no prospect for substantive change. The greatest change in women's status has been their movement into the paid labor force. The jobs they held in the 1980s, though, were generally lower paying and less desirable than those of men. Industries staffed largely by women, such as the textiles industry, paid lower wages than those staffed by men, such as the steel or mining industries. Women were disproportionately represented in collective enterprises, which paid lower wages and offered fewer benefits than state-owned industries. In the countryside, the work of males was consistently better rewarded than that of women, and most skilled and desirable jobs, such as driving trucks or repairing machines, were held by men. In addition, Chinese women suffered the familiar double burden of full-time wage work and most of the household chores as well. As there come to be both more opportunities and more explicit competition for them in both city and countryside, there are some hints of women's being excluded from the competition. In the countryside, a disproportionate number of girls drop out of primary school because parents do not see the point of educating a daughter who will marry and leave the family and because they need her labor in the home. There are fewer female students in key rural and urban secondary schools and universities. As economic growth in rural areas generates new and potentially lucrative jobs, there is a tendency in at least some areas for women to be relegated to agricultural labor, which is poorly rewarded. There have been reports in the Chinese press of outright discrimination against women in hiring for urban jobs and of enterprises requiring female applicants to score higher than males on examinations for hiring. On the whole, in the 1980s women were better off than their counterparts 50 or a 100 years before, and they had full legal equality with men. In practice, their opportunities and rewards were not entirely equal, and they tended to get less desirable jobs and to retain the burden of domestic chores in addition to fulltime jobs. Source: U.S. Library of Congress : http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+cn0099) |
Thoughts:
- In The Joy Luck Club, we see that the Chinese society was very male-centred. Daughters lived a tougher life because they were females. This is true as the mothers in The Joy Luck Club suffered a great deal back in China. For example, situations such as being raped and marrying the rapist, sold off to be a wife of a young boy and such. They have little voice in whatever comes upon them. They weren’t allowed to speak up or to stand up for themselves.
Journal
- Being a Half-Wife: The Geisha Construction From The Gender Relation in Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha
Thoughts:
- In Memoirs of a Geisha, it is evident that there is oppression on women. The women here being the geisha community. As they lead their lives as a geisha as well as living in an okiya, they must compromise to rules. They shall never question the rules or break the rules. They live to be an entertainer. They entertain men and shall not be involved in any romantic relationships with men. However, if they are romantically involved with their danna (provider for geishas), they can be like a “half-wife” to their danna and can never be a “full- wife”. They have no rights to live on an equal level as men. Mizuage ceremony is also an example for the oppression of women. Geishas are supposed to go through this ceremony to become a full-fledged geisha. Their virginity is sold to the highest bidder. This is definitely surprising because women are treated as they sex objects. Besides, their virginity even has a value and be sold. This shows how shallow is the treatment received by women.
Questions:
1) How are women in Asia/Japan oppressed?
2) Are women oppressed only in the early 1900s or are they still oppressed now?
3) Are women only oppressed sexually?
4) Do regular women experience more freedom than a geisha?
Journal
- Religion and Violence: The Suffering of Women
Thoughts:
- We see the gender lens very closely related to patriarchy. Societies from the past and present are structured according to the system. The male is superior and the female are inferior to men. In both Memoirs of a Geisha and The Joy Luck Club, we can see this clearly. The women suffer as they were born as females. They do not hold power in society. They have to go through hardships because they were born females. They have no say how their lives would go about and they have no right to make decisions for themselves.
Questions:
1) What situation is a clear evidence of patriarchy?
2) How do the women suffer due to this?
Journal
- Social Construction of Women as Legitimate Victims of Violence in Chinese Societies
Thoughts:
- The oppression of women in the Chinese community is shown in The Joy Luck Club. We see the women conform to the authority by men when they were younger. They have to be obedient to their husbands. They are to follow traditions where they have no voice or opinion. This shows an inequality among the sexes where men were naturally awarded with more privileges where women were to face hardships due to their gender. Even women who were raped would marry their rapist as they feel that they have been tainted by the experience and no other men would marry such a woman. We see this situation happen in The Joy Luck Club.
Questions:
1) Are Chinese women just as oppressed as Japanese women?
2) Are Asian women in general oppressed?
3) Then, are Western women oppressed as well?
4) What causes such an extreme discrimination against women?
Article (From 'Sisters in Islam')
Thoughts:
- In Malaysia, Sisters in Islam is a non-governmental organization that advocates women's rights. Although Muslim men are allowed to have four wives according to the Syariah Law, this group is keen to prevent the law from being abused by having restrictions. They still maintain the integrity of their religion whilst protecting women's rights.
Article (Geisha)
Thoughts:
- Helps to define what a geisha is in my essay
- Helps to inform what a geisha is trained in: Sing, play instruments, dance, compose, and recite poetry, pour drinks and other drinks, etc.
Summary of Information from a Book
Source: Zastrow, Charles. Social Problems: Issues and Solutions. 5th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2000. Print.Thoughts:
- In terms of sexism, men are always given the dominant role in society. They hold a higher power than women. Women are considered as supporting roles compared to men. Men are always superior and women are always inferior to men.
- Quote from a Buddhist teaching: " ...like a maid servant. She serves her husband well and with fidelity. She respects him, obeys his commands, has no wishes of her own, no ill-feeling, no resentment, and always tries to make him happy”. Religion is incorporated with culture and affects their customs. Buddhism is a major religion in China and thus affecting why women are treated in such way in China.
Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women
Thoughts:
- According to Article 1, women should not be discriminated and receive equal rights with men. However, in many parts of the world, particularly in Asia, women are still not given equal rights. They are still taken advantage of and not protected.
Questions:
1) Why are these declarations ignored?
2) What should be done to further reinforce this declaration?
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