Women's Roles, Expectations, and Obligations

By: J. McManus

​Women’s roles and rights have evolved significantly, from the past centuries to the last decades: it is vital to commemorate and appreciate these important milestones because it actively shapes the world as we know it. Views of women and their purposes in life have changed so much and will likely continue to change: from childbearing ‘slaves’, to housewives and chambermaids, and today, as equals to their male counterparts. Expectations, restrictions, and rights for women have limited their capacities to achieve equal pay, respect, and command over male-dominated fields, and fortunately society progressed in the sense that women today do not experience as much of that oppression and chauvinism as before.
 
For too long, women had been treated effectively as slaves in respect to how they were bought and traded like merchandise, abused sexually and physically by their ‘owners’ and viewed as unimportant inferior objects due to the patriarchal society - the standard of that time. This limited women’s access to education, weight of opinion when making decisions (such as control of the home, finances, and ownership), and their right to freedom of expression (such as rebelling and voting). The problem with this norm is that no one believed that their actions had any unethical implications. Most men treated women that way because that was ‘the way things were always done’ and did so under the guise of ‘God’s will’. It was to their beliefs that God had made women only to serve as a homemaker, caring for and nursing children throughout their lives and because of this motherly instinct, they were ‘too emotional’ to make important decisions.
 
However, these grounds are unwarranted because it fails to recognize the true intention of the holy scriptures. Bible verses are misinterpreted and taken out of context for the time. The fact is, since the beginning of time, women have been unjustly blamed for sin and evil. The first sin in the first book of the Old Testament depicts Eve taking a bite of the forbidden fruit and being punished for doing so even when she was tricked – today, people will put her at fault when she had been manipulated into sin. Jesus, Son of God, and the body of God on Earth, was born a man. The truth is that catholic religion, whether it is on purpose or not, upholds patriarchal values and undertones. This can be seen through not only the birth of the only Son of God, but also the fact that the entirety of the church is run by the pope and male priests (most of whom are celibate), where the role of priests in the church is to be the messenger of God. In confession (for example), you confess your sins as if you were speaking directly to God and the lack of female roles in this matter tends to cause misconceptions. It is not only Christian/Catholic religion that presents their God and omnipotent being as a man. Other religious figures such as Buddha, Allah and Zeus are all presented as males, allowing the public to assume that women were never and should never be considered equals because the perfect and ever-loving figures that society looks up to is presented as a man, therefore, men are portrayed as superior.
 
Up until a decade ago, the Chinese One-Child Policy was still effective and prohibited women in China to bear or adopt a second child – this policy began in 1979 as a population control program and actively infringed women’s rights, even written into the national constitution of 1982. Since couples were limited to one single child, many female infants were discarded because their parents wanted the pride and nobility that came with having a son – presenting mainly the image built around it. Numerous consequences of this policy subjected women to forced contraception (birth control), forced sterilization (tubal ligation), and forced abortion, resulting in a startling change in the male-to-female ratio. An important circumstance to account for is the fact that even though each child is born with a father and a mother, the mother does not have the ability to avoid her child-bearing responsibilities whereas, even though it is morally questionable, the father can and often does. This leaves the mother in a conflicting condition where she must trade a career, social life, financial situation, and other opportunities for her child that deserves an attentive and caring parent. The father’s responsibility, under current legislation, can hardly be considered remotely equal in terms of energy given and time dedicated since their only obligation in usually to provide financial aid and child support.