Tuesday, February 26, 2019

How modern society changed women’s lives Essay

The position of wo hands is much considered to keep improved during the last few decades. There is, however, healthy tip all over as to the extent of deviate and the reasons for it. This essay depart emotional state at how womens belongs swallow changed in terms of booking, pay, development, business firm, sexuality and the state. I will conclude that the or so important changes for women be in nurture, tho that the fundamental pattern of unlikeness remains in most aspects of the social structure, from paying work to the firm divisions of force back, from sexuality to violence.Ann Oakley (1981) has traced the changing status of women in British society from the eve of the industrial Revolution to the seventies. She claims that the most important and constant consequence of industrialization for women has been the emergence of the modern role of house wife as the dominant mature feminine role Thus a crew of factors which included ideology, the banning of child drudge, and restrictions of the utilisation of women, locked the absolute majority of married women into the return housewife role. This led to the idea of a cornflake packet family where the male was the breadwinner, the wife was the housewife, and the family consisted of two children a boy and a girl.The m other(a) had an expressive role, plot the father had an instrumental role of going out to work. The inequality, and the extent to which the unalike aspects of this are interconnected, mean that is some use the concept of patriarchy to limn this set of social relations. Patriarchy is a social system by dint of which men dominate, exploit and oppress women. However, in recent decades, changes in the economic system and society shake altered the situation several of these changes will be outlined below.One of the most important regions to look at for the changes in womens lives is in terms of pay and employment relative to men. Women are less likely than men to be in p aid employment, nevertheless the quip has closed steadily over recent decades. The comparison of those in employment who are women rose from 38.1% in 1971 to 49.6% in 1995. However, most of the growing in womens employment has been in part time work. The harmonize of women working part time has change magnitude steadily, from 34% in 1971 to 47% in 1995.Women workers are concentrated within a very squeeze range of occupational groups, although on that point make been some significant changes in this recently. Over 40% of full time women workers are to be appoint in clerical employment. In contrast, men are spread by dint of a much wider range of occupations. Women are confined both to subvert grade jobs (vertical segregations) and to different jobs (horizontal segregation). The pattern of segregation however has changed significantly over recent years. At the top end of the hierarchy the number and proportion of women in the managerial and professional grades have substan tially increased. However, in the most powerful positions in public life, women continue to be seriously under-represented. Walby n is that in 1992 completely 9.2 per cent of MPs were women, on that point were no women Chief Constables until the 1990s, and in 1994 only one in 25 High Court decide was a woman. In 1996, there was only one woman among 50 British ambassadors or heads of overseas missions.Linda McDowell uses the theory of post-Fordism to understand changes in the force back market. This theory argues that businesses have moved away from mass production towards the flexible production of small batches of specialized products. In doing so, they employ a ticker of highly skilled workers who are capable of using their skills to produce a wide variety of products. Other work is carried out by half-time workers, or workers on short-term contracts, or is contracted out to other firms.McDowell argues that these changes are reflected in the increased use of part-time fema le labour and the reduction in the employment of males in full-time permanent jobs. throw out small-arm it is cl first important to take account of changes in the labour market and the economy as a whole in clubhouse to understand the changing patterns of gender inequality, it is necessary to be cautious or so basing an analysis on the theory of post foridsm. This theory has been heavily criticized on a number of grounds, and the work of Lovering and others suggests that post Fordism can non be stick outn as a general trend that has affected all employers.A different interpretation for the changing character and pattern of womens employment in countries much(prenominal) as Scandinavia has been the shift to statepolicy. Talcott Parsons had proposed a functionalist explanation of womens deprived position in the labour market, which focused on the impact of the household. He argued that men get paid more because womens domestic responsibilities adversely affect their involvemen t in paid work. However, in Scandinavia, there is a much greater public provision of childcare together with higher(prenominal) rates of female employment and a smaller wages rupture between women and men. Thus changes to state policy can improve the nature and pattern of womens employment.But has there been any change in womens pay relative to mens? The implementation of the partake Pay Act between 1970 and 1975 reduced the wages gap a little. In 1970 women earned only 63% on mens hourly rates, and only 55% of mens gross weekly pay. In 1997, women working full time earned 81% of mens hourly rate, but those women working part time only earned 59% of mens hourly rates. Thus the size of it of the gap has been closing steadily for those working full time, but not for those working part time.It does seem therefore that the position of women in employment has transformed itself in recent years, though there remains considerable inequality and the picture is not one of simple progress .One area where there have been considerable changes for womens lives has been in raising. Education has seen a transformation of the position of girls and young women. In schools, not only has the traditional gender gap in examination performance been closed but girls have overtaken boys while in higher pedagogy the gender gap is closing steadily. One reason for the change is the discrimination against women in education was made illegal in the 1875 Sex Discrimination Act. A further reason was the increase in the opportunities for women in the world after education as the labour market gradually opened up. These changes in education have potential implications for other aspects of gender relations since access to goodish jobs as some relationship to educational qualifications, women might anticipate winning a higher proportion of top jobs. It may also have an impact on wages, in so far as privation of qualifications, rather than discrimination, was a reason for womens poor r ates of pay. However, while girls are training in new areas,boys are not learning those subjects traditionally learned by women eg at present, only 15% of all boys do home economics.A further important issue to look at when considering the changing lives of women, is in the area of the household. The most striking change is the increased likelihood of families being formed of only mothers and children, which reflects to a spacious ground level the large increase in divorce rates. The number of alone(predicate)ly(prenominal) parents increased from 8% in 1981 to 21% in 1996, and the vast majority of these are women. One of the most significant features of one-parent families is their tendency to live in poverty, leading to many forms of social exclusion. The poverty largely results from the lack of a male income into the household, but is compounded by the lower propensity of lone mothers to be in employment as compared with married mothers.Changes in the upbeat state are also imp ortant in that they have disproportionately affected women because more of them head single parent households and more live to pensionable age. Women in old age are thus particularly vulnerable to the risk of poverty. A further change in the household has been in attitudes towards housework. Men are nowadays more likely to fancy that women should not be responsible for all the housework. However, it does seem that while there has been a change in attitudes, this is not to a great degree played out in action. The UK is in contrast to some countries such(prenominal) as Sweden where there is more shared parenting and childcare is part of education for boys and girls.Changes in sexuality have been a further impact upon womens lives. Giddens argued that there has been a transformation of intimacy in recent years. It is astray suggested that women have made great advance towards equality with men in the area of sexuality. The sexual double standard, whereby non-marital sex was accepta ble for men and not for women has reduced. Other changes include the much greater availability of contraception and serious abortion, which has made unwanted children much less likely. Furthermore, there has been greater credence of a wider range of sexual practices, such as gay and sapphic relationships.Feminist movements have also helped to change and shape womens lives. The1970s was the second wave of feminism in the twentieth century, the early one being instrumental in winning political citizenship for women. Many of the feminist ideas of the 1970s which had been considered outrageously radical when first expressed are now widely accepted. For instance, male violence is now recognized as a significant problem and the subject of serious discussion by the natural law as well as feminists. Equal pay is also an early feminist demand now accepted into mainstream policy initiatives such as Opportunity 2000.In Gender Transformations(1997), Walby reviews changes in patriarchy in t he 1990s. Although she discovers potful of evidence that antique structures remain in place in Britain, she also finds evidence of important changes. In particular, she claims that there is evidence of a generational difference between older and younger women. Older women tend to be restricted by the constrains of private patriarchy, which was the dominant form of patriarchy in their early lives. They are likely to have few qualifications and therefore have limited opportunities in the labour market. Younger women, on the other hand, have benefited from some of the changes that have taken place. They are likely to benefit from increased qualifications and improved labour market opportunities. Walby thus points to polarization between the younger and older women, while convergence between younger women and men.In conclusion, there have been many changes in the transition to modernity, which have shaped womens lives. While some of these changes have reduced gender inequality n rece nt years, especially in the field of education, the basic pattern of inequality remains in most aspects of the social structure, from paid work to the household divisions of labour, from sexuality to violence. This essay has pointed to many changes in womens lives, but whether their lives have improved has been a matter of debate Liberal feminists tend to see these changes as progress, while radical feminists tend to argue that little has changed and patriarchal domination remains firmly intact. Marxists usually claim that industrialization and the climax of capitalism led to a deterioration in the position of women and since the Industrial Revolution little has improved.BibliographyMcdowell L Father and Ford revisited gender, class and employment change in the new millennium Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 2001Walby Gender TransformationsAbercrombie, Warde et al, Contemporary British SocietyHaralambos and Holborn Sociology

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