Women Abuse and what Affect Patriarchy has on it
By Mary Anne Winslow In the basic of the traditional system of education and socialization of a gender there is a so called initial work distribution between men and women. This work distribution has defined completely different conditions for life of men and women. It gave men the right to external activity for world survey and its governance, thus he received a right of the subject of history. Meanwhile women only got a responsibility rather than a right to give birth and upbringing to children, right to take care of the family and house hold. Thus here in the family women turned to be subordinate to mens authority and became the object of men power. Patriarchy is a system when a man has a dominant part in society. Violence against women has been very wide-spread for such a long time, with severity, that it has brought the rise to women liberation movement. Sociologists have been very concerned over this issue, especially with the radical rise in feminism. In this discussion, we will define patriarchy and with reference to particular societies, we will analyse violence in society, causes of violence against women in Britain and elsewhere, and see the many responses to domestic violence and the possible solution to resolve this wide-spread phenomenon. Radical feminists believe that men are responsible for the benefit from the exploitation of women. They define patriarchy as a universal phenomenon and that it is a systematic domination of females by males. They argue that the exploitation of women by men is due to the reliance on the free domestic labour that women provide at home. They also bring up the argument about employment for females and the glass ceiling system that males have in place, where women confront an invisible barrier to promotion in the course of their careers. This glass ceiling includes obstacles such as family and child care responsibilities, discrimination, male networks and organisational structures. Shulamith Firestone, an early radical feminist writer, believes that because women are biologically able to give birth, they become dependant materially on men for protection and livelihood. James W. Messerschmidt argues that relatively powerless men use wife-beating, violent rape and even murder, to reassert masculine control when their masculinity is threatened by women. Thus, much violence occurs when the man perceives that his wife has not carried out her duties, obeyed his orders, or shown him adequate respect. However, radical feminists believe it is mainly a sexual oppression. They argue that the objectification of women through the media, fashion and advertising turns women into sexual objects, referring also to pornography, whose main role is to please and entertain men. However, there are social and individual explanations for this domestic violence. From a psychologists point of view, they tend not to identify the relationship between the private and public aspects of family life. This has resulted in the invisibility of battered women. Cheal argues however that feminist (as explained previously) and Marxist theories (pressures of economical transformations), have allowed sociologists to understand more abut the problems that occur within families and examine the structural causes, rather than accepting individual explanations when thinking of it as a private institution. Wife-battering has been largely ignored by police, who have traditionally been reluctant to intervene in family disputes. They believe that families are private institutions and they should not get involved. Cheal points out three key notions about the family from this belief. The first notion is concerned about the limited access to which the public has towards the idea of a family being a private institution, where they have an acute idea of the true circumstances. The second is the idea of a free agent, where women have the freedom of relieving themselves from an abusive relationship. The final notion explains the idea of interests. When acting upon interests, a woman should act for the whole family group, than that of her own personal individualism. It is estimated that one-quarter of women are victims of violence at some point in their lives, but all women face the threat of crime either directly or indirectly. A study in Britain concerning domestic violence, the largest of its kind, done by Dobash in Scotland, reveals more frightening conclusions. It reveals that twenty five per cent of all serious assaults were committed by husbands on their wives. It also revealed that due to our society allocating the domestic duties to the female, one major factor that has lead to this frightening statistic, was that men were not satisfied by their wives domestic duties. They also revealed that although most women who were violated had left their home, many were forced to return, due to their economic dependency on their partners or husbands, and the fear of the stigma surrounding the break-up of marriage. Relevant to this issue, is the way law in Britain took time to take action against domestic violence. Until 1991, women in England were forced to accept sexual intercourse against their will by their husbands. Connors, found that few societies penalised rape in marriage. Rape within marriage is an extreme example of violence to most feminists. There are questions to ask however! Is the system of patriarchy fair to generalise on all men? And do all women see it the same way as the radical feminists do? Are white females the first to express their struggle, views and defiance? Many black feminists and feminists from developing countries claim they do not. They believe that the main feminist schools of thought are only based upon the living circumstances of mainly middle-class white women in industrialised cultures and countries. They believe it is unjust for radical feminists to speak on the behalf of all women, as they are only a specific group of females. Bell Hooks, an American Black feminist argues and quotes: black girls have better self-esteem and are more assertive, speak more and appear more confident than their white counterparts. She also says that their parents and teachers were always urging them to stand up right and speak clearly and that all these traits were not considered by white researchers and that they were discriminated against because of race and gender, thus explanatory frameworks favoured by white feminists, for example that of patriarchy, may not be applicable to black societies and cultures. Referring to black men, Knowles and Mercer argue that because of racism, black men do not benefit from patriarchy the same way white men do. Thus, patriarchy is not a word that can be applied to the entire male race. Mary Anne Winslow is a member of Essay Writing Service counselling department team and a dissertation writing consultant. Contact her to get free counselling on custom essay writing. 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