The Identity Of A Woman Being At Home Taking Care Of The Kids And Looking After The Home Essay

As the millenniums pass and years go by, the world continues to evolve each day. Across the world, in every society, men and women have specific roles that they carry out. During ancient times, in most cultures, women were inferior to men. This is still true in many countries today. It has taken American women many centuries to have gained the rights and privileges they have today. Women have made many immense achievements, fought for their rights and stood up for what they believed in during the past century. It is very important to understand the role of women in history because they have played an imperative part of how each society functioned. In Classical Athens, women and men were citizens however men were superior to the women.

During the 1970’s most fail to recognize how the women’s liberation movement resurrected the “woman question. This has then done the job of rebuilding our world with being more conscious of the exploitation and oppression of women. Women never had a strong voice and were never heard. When the mass movements in the 70’s created a differentiation along class and political lines women’s liberation have come to be dominated by a middle class leadership. The whole idea for this era was to raise conscious levels of organizing around someone’s own oppression. Most women around this time had a difficult time admitting that they had been oppressed, when in reality countless numbers of women and not only been oppressed but gathered a larger amount of frustration, anger and bitterness. In Fact while reading the rise and demise of

In 1954, a women’s charter was adopted at the establishment of the Federation of South African Women, its aim was to bring women together against the injustices of political, economic and legal aspects. The Federation of South African Women integrated the ANC Women’s league, the women’s branch of the Colored People’s Congress of South Africa, the South African Indian Congress and the Congress of

Throughout our experience, we have encountered so many challenges when it comes to gender in the society. Gender is being used as a basis for stratifying people in the society. In this article, the racial caste system that used to exist in the United State is depicted. In that the black women were denied the access to justice because of their status. They were perceived to be people who do not have any right within the society and no one could believed them when they were raped by the white men because all the court judges were white men according to this article. The women were classified to be from poor background and they should remain at a low class in the society.

Gender equality is an aspect of everyday life all societies in the world deals within their own way. It is the concept that men and women are equal to each other. In many places across the globe, women are seen as inferrer to men. Places in the Westerner world still have the ideology of how men are the superior and women are submissive to them. However, this is very untrue for the San society in Africa. It becomes evident that the ancient and long-lasting San society had gender equality when places in the world today are still struggling for the same results. The San society is the oldest and longest lasting hunter/gathering society in Africa. The book Nisa: The Life and Words of !Kung Women written by Marjorie Shostak is the life story of Nisa, women who grew up in the San society. Over the course of the book, her life story begins to unravel. Shostak goes into great detail about Nisa’s childhood, marriages and life thereafter. This gives the reader a clear insight into what it was like growing up and being apart of a gender-equal community that was the San society. Nisa is willing to share her story with the world so others could what it was truly like being apart of a community like the San.

‘A Few South Africans’ is a series of works by Sue Williamson that truly interested me. This prominent South African-English artist, known for her politically and societally questioning artworks, investigates the natural strength of black South African women, and how they were oppressed during this period. In this essay, I will attempt to understand the situation of South Africa’s past and in turn its present with the help of her references and her work. The main theme of Williamson’s piece is female activism and freedom of expression during a time of conflict in their country. It attempts to show how all women were affected by apartheid. The motives for wanting a fairer society based on equal distribution of wealth and power between different races shouldn’t be a tricky idea to understand. To explain is simple. To change is much harder.

The Population Act (1950) divided residents of South Africa into groups of: whites, African, colored and Asian. The Suppression of Communism Act (1950) gave police the power to do whatever necessary to maintain order within a “White Country”. The Preservation of Separate Amenities Act (1953) proclaimed separate living and amenity areas (entrances, toilets, park benches) for every race differently. When National Party won elections in 1960, with Hendrik F. Verwoerd as a leader, it became clear that the last drop of humanity toward Africans was dying. Hendrik F. Verwoerd was a descendant of Dutch settlers who already showed themselves as very unfriendly and aggressive toward local people throughout their South African history. This was an era of government-guided racial discrimination and the world of “white supremacy”. No racial group, but “white” could ever achieve full political rights (Hayter&Reinecke, 2001).

Albertina Sisulu once said “If people don’t know what they are fighting for its useless”. The ‘Mother of the Nation’ was a nurse, political activist and is considered to be one of the most important leaders of anti-Apartheid resistance in South Africa. Albertina was known to act on her own ideal of human rights throughout her life, assisted by her husband and fellow activist, Walter Sisulu. Moreover, she was a strong woman who persevered to achieve her ideals. Albertina Sisulu was the deputy president of the ANC Women’s League, Founder of the Federation of South African Women, and leader of the United Democratic Front who also participated in the Women’s March to the Union buildings as well as the launch of the Freedom Charter. Through her extensive efforts of achieving her successful ideals for South Africa, Albertina Sisulu is considered to be a significantly remarkable woman remembered in South African history.

Racial discrimination dominated South Africa in 1948, and this was further witnessed when the ruling party made the discriminatory apartheid policy into law, in the same year (Pfister, 2005). The Afrikaans word, which literally translates to racial discrimination ‘apartheid’, was legislated and it started with the Dutch and the British rulers. The initiators of apartheid applied it to all social nature of the South African people. For instance, the majority of the population who were Africans was barred from mingling with the whites. Further discrimination was witnessed in 1950, when the policy of registration of population came into place (Sonneborn, 2010). The policy provided that, South African citizen be categorized as Whites, Africans and mixed decent. The mixed groups were the Indians and Asians. The Ministry for Internal Affairs was charged with the mandate of categorizing citizens based on race and color. The apartheid policy of 1948 had huge impact in the South African society for many years until the country’s independence in 1994 (Allen, 2005).

Contemporary South Africans have to contend with both the outcomes of past racial injustices and inequalities as well as present day racial injustices and inequalities which are a direct consequence of the past (Matthews, 2012). This means that they have to face the continuing effects of socially constructed racism which encompassed economic, political, social and institutional actions that systemized and perpetuated unequal distribution of privileges, resources and power between white people and people of colour with a hierarchical motive in mind (DiAngelo, 2010, p.7). It also refers to the fact that the repeal of racist legislature does not automatically result in changes in the habits and attitudes of people and that the “inertial racism of white predominance” continues at advantage white people at both micro and macro levels (Outlaw, 2004, p. 166 in Matthews, 2012). Obvious responses to these past and present injustices are anti-racism movements which encourage people to challenge beliefs about themselves or the ‘other’ groups (hooks, 1997, p. 167). Anti-racism includes thinking and acting with a specific consciousness, self-awareness, knowledge and skill to challenge, interrupt, and eliminate manifestations of racism within one’s sphere of influence (Derman-Sparks & Brunson Phillips, 1997). White anti-racism involves, amongst other things, white people being against the racial denigration of other groups and unlearning internalized domination (DiAngelo, 2006).

The apartheid era in South Africa caused a separation between black and white people. The white people had the upper hand, because they had a way stronger financial background, which enabled them to employ black people to work for them. The black people were therefore undermined, and they worked as slaves. This problem is processed in the short story “The Journey to the Brothers’ Farm”, in which we are introduced to a girl named Annelie. She lives in South Africa, and has experienced terrible things, where she has experienced apartheid at first hand.

During the year of 1948, the lives of south Africans changed forever. The National Party, which was an all-white government, gained power and created hell for non-white citizens, their goal was to have white people continue to dominate the country and to keep each race separated from each other; even though at the time whites were only 20% of the population. The apartheid, which literally means “apartness” lasted until 1991, and during this time many acts were passed. One being that “non-white Africans were forced to live in separate areas from whites, and use public facilities separately. Contact between groups was limited.” (History.com) As for woman specifically, since they are “regarded as dependents and are inferior to men…” (anc.org) they were even further discriminated against during the apartheid. In rural areas, specifically, a woman’s workload increased dramatically as they tried to produce enough food off the land to feed their families. Many men were absent from their rural homes due to being a migrant laborer, which were poorly paid. The combined workload of caring for a family, the land, and themselves all alone, is the direct result of apartheid laws. When the apartheid ended, the hardships still effected everyone’s lives, and not in a good way.

During the Apartheid era of oppression, Steve Biko explains in the 1970s that the black people of South Africa were treated unfairly, to the extent to which their African identities were stolen due to forced socialisation. The Apartheid government put in structures which purposefully taught these Africans that their sole purpose was to serve subserviently to white South Africans, taking away their culture and distancing them from their history. They achieved this my means of altering their education, political privilege and spiritual poverty. Each of these aspects were altered by the Apartheid government which contributed to the changed identity of the black South Africans. A power difference had always existed between whites and black ever

and contribute up to 40% of the spending in this group. This segment is growing rapidly.

Before discussing anything about the apartheid in South Africa, it is important to analyze how the society was organized at the time. The years 1960s and 1970s are really important periods in the shaping of the apartheid; it is the period when the government forced people to move to different area by implementing a policy of resettlement. More than one can argue that one of the most significance of this policy was to preserve racism. People were being removed and placed to other areas based on what they looked like, based on their ethnicity. Although the effects of the removal was not very apparent in the countryside, but in the big cities people could witness the destruction of the black communities. This relocation of the individuals practically divided the country