Women in America: Past, Present, and Future

The most effective way in which dominant groups maintain their power is by depriving the people they dominate of the knowledge of their own history, and it is through the lack of knowledge of one’s own history, in which women have been encouraged to think that they have no alternative to being oppressed by the opposite sex. According to Women’s America: Refocusing the Past by Linda Kerber, throughout the course of American history, women have understood this logic and stand utterly by accepting their role in a society dominated by men. One may often hear that history always repeats itself, and while that might seem as a cliché, in reality it is true. In the past, men have dictated the role women play in society and almost a hundred years later, men continue to dictate their role in society. According to Jessica Winter’s article in Time Magazine, “Subject for Debate: Are Women People?,” powerful male figures in the media and politics have often seen women as possessing an abnormality known as “XX,” a mutation of the normal “XY” pattern. It is due to this lack of a Y chromosome that makes most men believe that it has adverse affects on a woman’s ability to make informed decisions. While today, there is less opposition to women taking on larger roles in society than in the 19th Century, there are still extremists that want to control women.
Why do conservative politicians or even extremists in America always focus on stripping women of their rights remains a mystery? But these male extremists all want to control women; they want to control how women dress, how women act, and they even want to control the decisions women make about their own bodies and healthcare. Those who argue that the Bible says that the head of every woman is man that, however, is an unjustified reason to oppressed women, especially given that the Epic of Gilgamesh, which predates the Bible, states that women have a tremendous influence over society. As strong a case as women have made, many...