Gender Values Led to the Success of the Women’s Suffrage Movement

Can you guess my gender if I described to you the features of the playthings I possessed when I was a child? My guess is yes. My toys were fragile, bright in color, most of which had wigs, usually fully clothed, and were handled with delicate care. As a young girl, I was taught emotional characteristics: empathy, and sensitivity, to prepare me for my future as a caring mother and homemaker. My brother, however, was taught more pivotal characteristics: competitiveness, aggressiveness, and confidence, and such qualities are supposed to provide him with the essentials he needs to prepare for the workforce.

It is a well-known fact that males are perceived to be the more autonomous and the stronger of the two, while females are the exact opposite: submissive and flimsy.

I believe that gender values/roles are the reason for the stereotypical concept of masculinity and femininity, and it had a negative impact on our modern world. At a young age, children are told how to act, what to wear, and whom to become. Generally, young girls are expected to like soft and sentimental shades, and young boys to like “macho” and darker colors. It seems non-threatening. However, it can have a negative effect on both genders. Similarly, our expectations of each gender represent a system of social control, which essentially steers the activity of each individual. Gender values are quite damaging in nature and seem to restrict both genders’ ability to evolve their own character, occupation, and personal choice. And in some cases, these standards force persons to become someone they are not; then those individuals are forced to live uncomfortably in their own skin.

In the past, dating back to when we were hunter-gatherers, division of labor among the sexes was a social norm, with men doing the heavier lifting, hunting, and fishing and women gathering plants and preparing meals. Similar gender roles are present in our modern world today, where men take on a role working outside of the home to preserve family stability, and women stay home and care for the children since they are considered to be the more nurturing and emotional sex.

This idea is illogical and gives men more power over women and forces women to comply and live under such limitations. Modern society has labeled jobs such as cooking, cleaning, caring for children, and the endless household chores as jobs meant for women, and men are the sole income earners, which is one of the reasons why women are so reliant on men. However, if people are indeed created equal (paraphrase: Sarah Grimke 348), everyone must have an equal value, and we cannot make the assumption that men are born smarter or stronger than women and vice versa. This makes neither gender more worthy than the other but parallel to one other.

Similar to the previous concept is John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women, which argues for equal roles and participations, and laws equally accommodating to both sexes… “The legal subordination of one sex to the other––is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power to privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other….” (J.S. Mill 215).

J.S. Mill denounced the legal oppression of women as wrong and stated that domestic slavery is a delaying feature of society’s development. J.S. Mill also believed that women adopted different beliefs since the early stages of their childhood due to society’s forcible pressure; “All women are brought up from the earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite to that of men; not self-will, and government by self-control, but submission and yielding to the control of others.” (J.S. Mill 216). J.S. Mill opposed the belief that women should submit to the will of their husbands and argued that they should have their own voice and gain independence from their reliance on men.

The impact men had on women led to women’s desire for social and political change. They demanded equality, legal and economic opportunities, and social reform. But women realized that in order to achieve any kind of reform, they must first gain the right to vote. During the progressive period, the woman suffrage movement––namely in Western Europe and the United States––became a great movement (paraphrase: Marvin Perry 348). Hundreds of thousands of women held public rallies, something women rarely did during the time, to advance and expand their shared interests in regard to politics and the injustice and inequality within society.

Advocates and woman suffrage supporters also held gatherings to inform the public about the validity of the pivotal woman suffrage movement. Women exhausted every source and still had a lot more work to do, such as persuading their opponents. Those of which who argued that women lacked a certain sophistication or mental capacity to offer a practical opinion related to a political or social matter. At last, after nearly eight decades of continuous failure and being told “no,” despite all of the challenges they had to overcome, women won the right to vote.

While it is indeed a fact that women have, and continue to defeat many opponents for the sake of liberty and equality, modern society has altered gender values into something much more acute: wrongful gender stereotyping. This phenomenon continually provokes bigotry against women. Gender stereotyping leads to the objectification of women’s bodies, which overlooks women’s basic human rights. This kind of stereotyping violates their rights in ways such as the failure of the law to fully inspect and investigate sexual and physical brutality based on the idea that women should dress and behave in a modest manner.

According to a study done by Arizona biologist Dr. Michael Ghiglieri, more than 88% of sexual assault victims are women. They seem to be the more vulnerable gender, which makes them an easy target for a ruthless predator. Dr. Ghiglieri stated that “violence is a male tactic, and such brutality is used to control females.” Dr. Ghiglieri’s research indicates that certain actions done by men are often done to gain a sense of control and authority. The soundness of this experiment validates the negative effects of gender values modern society has turned a blind eye to.

It is my belief that gender values resulted to the success of the woman suffrage movement–which was an empowering and courageous movement–however, gender roles have been more damaging than beneficial. Each day, women are forced to live a role, one which they did not choose, and endure being society’s second-class citizens. And in some countries, such as Palestine, where my mother grew up, women haven’t even considered citizens but the property of their husbands or father. A citizen is granted citizenship rights, such as voting rights, freedom of speech, liberty, and equality. My mother was granted neither one simply because of her female status. In spite of all the challenges females have overcome, inadequate representation of women continues to exist all over the world today. Whether it is in the workplace or in their own home, they experience soaring levels of distress, and such misrepresentation will continue to build a barrier against their personal development.

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