Abstract
In the following report, you will read about how women have put forward great efforts to obtain a place in this world and how men have suppressed the talents of women. Regardless of how far women have gotten in this world, they continue to struggle to leave behind the stereotypes that men have set for women.
Women’s Rights
Throughout history, women have struggled to have rights in this country. Women have been treated like second-class citizens. The battle for rights has been long and arduous and still continues. We can refer to it as the American women’s movement.
In the early times, women were viewed as a source of bringing new human life into this world. However, they have also been viewed by the dominant group as intellectually inferior and as a source of temptation and evil. Early Roman law saw women as children, forever lesser then men. St. Jerome, a 4th-century Latin father of the Christian church said “Woman is the gate of the devil, the path of wickedness, and the string of the serpent, in a word a perilous object.”
In the past, women lacked many rights. They were not allowed to own property, sign a contract, vote or hold an opinion that contradicted that of their husband. Women were to marry and tend to their household and husband. Education that went beyond writing and reading was uncommon. Once a woman married, the little bit of freedom she may have enjoyed before marriage would be gone. Few women worked, but if they did, they had no control of their earnings. They had no right to sue, and if they divorced, they lost custody of their children and possessions.
Women have been considered the weaker sex. Women were viewed—and presently still viewed by many—as delicate, squeamish, and not able to perform work requiring logical or muscular development. Much of society, for example, relegated domestic chores to women, leaving the heavier labors such as hunting and plowing to men.
But women did not easily accept this role assigned to them...