Post #11, 4-21-09, Women

Through recent readings, I've come across several perceptions of women and the place they hold in specific societies. On one side, women are viewed as "truly the fairer sex". The article selected for "The Verdict" section of the April 20th issue of Newsweek describes women in governmental roles. It is said that President Obama will choose a woman to fill the next empty seat in the Supreme Court. Currently, there is only one female member of the court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Many people strongly agree that there should be more women present in politics. A theory based on the book by Carol Gilligan, "In a Different Voice", states that "men prefer their law with rigid rules, clear lines and neutral principles; women prefer to look at the totality of the circumstances and favor what Gilligan calls an 'ethic of care' over an 'ethic of rights'." Women provide a different insight, a different perspective on topics of interest. It is necessary to have more than one viewpoint on consequential issues.

However, the other side of the extreme often objectifies women and treats them as inferior. Peter Hessler observes this during his two-year stay in China, and writes about it in his book River Town. In River Town, Hessler describes the two types of Chinese women, or "xiaojie":

"It was impossible to define exactly what xiaojie meant, because it stretched across a broad range of implication. Anne was a xiaojie and so was Li Jiali, the prostitute who had pursued me at the teahouse. Xiaojie was a vague term, which was appropriate because it was difficult to define exactly what was expected of young women in a place like Fuling. They weren't like young upper-class men, whose aspirations could be neatly summarized, and I found that I had no equivalently simple definition for the average young woman in Fuling. She was expected to marry young and promptly have her child, and yet her childbearing was strictly and legally limited. She was expected to have a job and earn money of her own, but job discrimination was even more severe than in America. Traditional morality was breaking down, but this happened unevenly and in unhealthy ways; prostitution was becoming increasingly common and so were love affairs. I was amazed at how many of my young married friends in the city were cheating on their spouses, but divorce still came with a definite stigma for the women involved."

Hessler continues with other complex conditions Chinese women are expected to abide by. He later says that although circumstances were worse in other countries, "the issue of women's independence had reached a transitional stage, and it seemed to be a particularly painful one."

I find it interesting that a woman's purpose and status in society has been and remains so controversial. It is unclear to most what is expected of women, and various cultures come up with their own ideas of what is acceptable.