Charlotte Perkins Gilman Midterm- Study

Question 1

Gender Inequality

Answer 1

Believed that gender inequality was a social construct and not the result of biological inferiority. Gender inequality centered on the idea that women were economically dependent on men, and that this dependence prevented women from achieving true equality. Gilman’s approach to gender incorporates elements from Marxism, symbolic interactionism, and social Darwinism. She analyzed the political and economic factors that contribute to gender inequality, emphasizing the economic dependence of women on men in traditional family structures.Women comprised half the world’s population, did two thirds of the world’s work, earned one tenth of the world’s income, and owned one hundredth of the world’s property. While it affects people of all genders, child marriage disproportionately affects women and girls. UNICEF reports that more than 700 million women have been married before they turned 18.

Question 2

Economic Independence

Answer 2

Women should be economically independent, this would allow women to be fully integrated into society. economic independence and specialization of women are essential to the improvement of marriage, motherhood, domestic industry, and racial improvement.” Gilman advocated for the professionalization of domestic work and for women to work outside the home. Gilman suggested that people live in communal housing where both men and women are economically independent.

Question 3

The Corset

Answer 3

Put a corset, even a loose one, on a vigorous man or woman who never wore one, and there is intense discomfort, and a vivid consciousness thereof. The healthy muscles of the trunk resent the pressure, the action of the whole body is checked in the middle, the stomach is choked, the process of digestion is interfered with; and the victim says, ‘how can you bear such a thing?’”. this quote refers to false consciousness. the facts are there”—the inequality is there—but the person “does not feel it”; he does not see or know of it. She has internalized the pressures and constraints as her own. In short, the metaphor of the corset reflects that the constraints placed on women originate outside her.

Question 4

Primary Sex Distinctions

Answer 4

The essential organs and functions of reproduction

Question 5

Secondary Distinctions

Answer 5

The differences in appearance, behaviour and function that distinguish men from women. the manes of male lions,[4] the bright facial and rump coloration of male mandrills, and horns in many goats and antelopes.

Question 6

Excessive Sex Distinction

Answer 6

Sex inequity in the human race. The degree of feebleness and clumsiness common to women is an excessive sex-distinction. the differences we perceive to be inherently biological between men and women are actually social differences that we construct through a series of gendered power relations. An example of an excessive sex distinction is the idea that women are less able to perform physical tasks than men.