Gender Inequality In Western Culture

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In Western culture, women are looked down upon and discriminated in many social structures existing today. This discrimination is often largely due to gender inequality, and more specifically male privilege. How is male privilege practiced in Western culture and does it undervalue women in our social systems? Ellison, Marvin M. “Holding up Our Half of the Sky: Male Gender Privilege as Problem and Resource for Liberation Ethics.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, vol. 9, no. 1/2, 1993, pp. 95–113. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25002203. Author Marvin M. Ellison studies the damage of male privilege towards society as a whole – within male and female. Ellison argues that: “gender privilege affects men’s moral knowledge and agency”…show more content…
Ellison clearly outlines the different power structures held between male and female in arguing that: “Men are encouraged in patriarchy to place ourselves at the center and be self-preoccupied while women are forced to center around and serve the needs not only of fathers, husbands, and children, but also employers and male authorities generally” (Ellison 98). This claims to be true in many areas of Western society (such as the workplace, education systems, etc.) where women are neglected in their harmful situations and instead, are expected to follow the demands of a male. To follow up with Ellison’s study and argument of male privilege, he sources a study from Diana Scully, a sociologist, who conducts interviews of men who have committed rape and why they do/did it. The results of the study show a strong patriarchal ideology within the males’ responses that do not show guilt or shame, but instead focus on their own pleasure and dominant power when raping women. The article is valuable in knowing how male privilege exists in our society – even from the perspective of men themselves. An interesting study to go deeper from this article would be whether…show more content…
The argument shown is that although men commit these crimes on women, the law still justifies what they have done. Both authors have emphasized the importance of recognizing these harmful situations that women are put in and thus, critique the law system as encouraging a violent practice in patriarchy/male privilege. Forell and Matthews look to apply a “reasonable woman”, as what they name it, conduct to the law where women are among the same measures of a man. This conduct will allow legal systems to equally acknowledge women’s experiences and perspective – especially in cases such as harassment and rape. The book written by Forell and Matthews looks at male privilege by analyzing current and ongoing cases of men mistreating women, while the law does little effort to recognize these issues from a woman’s perspective. The value in this source is that not only does it study how legal systems apply male privilege, but what change can be done in legal systems to shift away from a strict male ideology. Overall, the source will be used to analyze how male privilege has become prevalent in society and the harms it has on women. Razack, Sherene H. “Gendered Racial Violence and Spatialized Justice: The Murder of

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