Natalie Lozano
Dominguez 4
Feminism
Women in any society, past or present, are branded to be the more vulnerable gender. Being a woman meant being loyal, humble, and quiet, always following orders, respecting others, being emotional, and not being able to defend themselves. Nowadays some women have changed the meaning of being a woman but for the woman in “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe, they haven’t educated themselves. In the text “Feminism” discusses what women were referred to as back in the day.
Women have not yet reached the same dominance as men. For example, “The ancient Greeks abetted gender discrimination, declaring the male to be the superior and the female to be inferior (Feminism 171). Women, in studies, are said to be smaller and more fragile than that of the male who is taller, has more muscle, and aggressive. Also, males would see females as pieces of property to be ruled over. Nwoye was starting to develop into a tough, young man that would soon take his father’s place and Okonkwo, “was always happy when he heard him grumbling about women. That showed that in time he would be able to control his women-folk. No matter how prosperous a man was, if he unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man” (Achebe 45).
Women have been acknowledged as being nothing. For example, Simone de Beauvoir says, “Being subordinate to the male, the female discovers that she is secondary or nonexistent player in the major social institutions of her culture, such as church, government, and educational systems” (Feminism 173). A woman being compared to a man is to compare a dinosaur to an atom because men are so high and mighty that woman are barely even recognized as being the same species.
Females have not had a fighting chance to be above the male gender. Women will most likely never be above them because of how they are portrayed now and nothing has changed from when this was first noticed. In “Things Fall Apart” and “Feminism” these reading materials depict how females have been the less assertive gender. But without women there would be no life of this earth so men have to keep women around to keep populating.
