Class: Woman's Roles, A Historical Perspective Midterm Exam

1991 De Paul University

Class: Woman's Roles, A Historical Perspective

Midterm Exam

Teacher: Mary Cannon

                                                                  

Midterm Exam Women’s Roles

 

October 17, 1990

 

Question 3

 

I strongly disagree with this statement. Women have been fighting for equality for centuries. It appalls me that despite centuries of assertion, speaking, and sticking our necks out we still do not have equality.

 

Susan B. Anthony lectured, started a woman's group The Daughters of Temperance in 1851, and founded a radical magazine The Revolution. The speech she gave in New York, other than the right to vote, still speaks to the feelings of women today.

 

Sojourner Truth (1795-1883), a slave in New York state, voiced in "Ain't I a Woman?", the link between sexism and racism.

 

Elizabeth Coty Stanton addressed the New York legislature in 1860 for the enlargement of women's property rights. She dared to say that women are citizens with rights just as a man.

 

Mercy Ottis Warren was the first American historian; she wrote Observations of the New Constitution in 1788. She saw the need for a Bill of Rights.

 

Margaret Fuller sought women's rights in Women in the Nineteenth Century in 1845.

 

Carrie Chapman Catt organized the International Suffrage Alliance to start women's groups in other countries.

 

Betty Friedan in my opinion, slowed the progress of the women's movement by directing herself toward middle- and upper-class women. She left out so many women: blacks, poor, uneducated, - the many masses of women who are in desperate need to feel included in the movement.

 

I was surprised to learn about what Bell Hooks wrote in  Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory. I felt ashamed that that happened.

 

Teacher's comments: Nonetheless, the movement Friedan started, probably helped Hooks along and for that, we can be grateful.

 

Question 4

 

Yes, a woman is her own worst enemy. Women do have power; we raise sons, they are in the palms of our hands, and yet we have a world full of "macho men" who see us as wimps.

 

Women ALLOW men to take advantage of them. I think we all tell others how they may treat us. If women were more "together" among themselves, they could give each other strength to stand up for our rights.

 

Women are frequently so involved with their own coping with the inequalities in their own lives that they don't reach out to other women for strength and support.

 

Women have bought into the ideologies of the patriarchal society. I recall asking my aunt why women couldn't be priests, and she was appalled that I would even suggest such a thing. She believed it so strongly nothing - on logic could shake her. She could not give me a reason - just that it's forbidden.

 

Women could do whatever they wanted if they believed they could, got together, and did it.

 

It works against women in general when we compete with each other; we would be stronger if we cooperated instead. While we are busy fighting among ourselves the men are running things.

 

I know I have tolerated things in the past I would not today. Why? Why do women not SEE themselves as equal? First, we must SEE ourselves as equal, then just act accordingly.

  

Teacher's comments:  Yep! to last statement.

 

Not too much in historical specifics here, but awfully good questions and logic.  45 points out of 50.