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Gender Equality In Nellie Bly's Ten Days In A Mad-House

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Gender Equality
For as long as people can remember, women’s right is an issue around the world that is fought every day by people of all genders. Although some may say the problems at hand now are more important but, not having the right to vote until 1920 and being accused of things without a fair fight seems to be more than just a pretty big issue. Throughout the story, Ten Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly, the disturbing story of the mistreatment of women in insane asylums is told and how it is connected to our history of women’s rights. There is a constant theme of suffrage and women’s rights during the essay that were problems all over the world, not just in that asylum. The unfairness in court systems, sexual harassment of women and …show more content…

Women were expected to do only jobs that fit the criteria of being a “woman”. Nurses, bakers, and house moms were “typical” jobs women should have had back in this day even if they were not capable of any of these jobs. Throughout the novel, we see the incompetence of the nurses and the lack of care from the male doctors. Most of these nurses, especially Tillie Maynard, did not even knowing how to do their real job; “’What is it?’ asked the doctor. ‘Now you know I can’t tell,’ she said. ‘I don’t know; there are some figures there, but I can’t tell.’” (283). Most of these nurses do not even know how to read a scale let alone take care of sick patients who need intense attention, but since “women are suppose to be nurses” and it does not matter their qualification for the job. Most of the nurses could not even tell a patients weight or care for their well being, which not only hurt the patients but the system as a whole. These male Doctors are the head of Blackwell’s island and call all the shots, yet don’t care when the nurses are not doing their job properly, “The nurses returned to the room and Miss Grady remarked that she has ‘settled the old fool for awhile’. I told some of the physicians of the occurrence, but they did not pay any attention to it” (297). All these male doctors ignore beatings of patients and completely sane pleas because it is easier for them when the woman do all the dirty work. It was not until 1971, again almost one hundred years later, that the U.S Supreme Court just ruled against sex discrimination in hiring jobs which still does not solve many issues (Women’s rights timeline). If the process of actually going through and interviewing qualified people to work as nurses at these facilities then the women of these asylums could have gotten better or even been released once they pleaded their

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