Five Faces Of Oppression Summary

In Iris Young’s article “Five Faces of Oppression”, she describes oppression as something that happens when people are put into classified groups, becoming excluded and despised. Young believes that “it is foolish to deny the reality of groups”. She also states that not every group is oppressed and to be oppressed a group must be subjected to one or more of the five conditions or the faces of oppression. They are exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence.
In exploitation, capitalism is used to oppress, keeping the rich at the top of the scale and the poor at the bottom. An example of exploitation would be miners in Africa; they are not paid a fair wage, even though they make money for the company.