Howard Zinn The Patriarchy Of Women

“It is possible, reading standard histories, to forget half the population of the country. The explorers were men, the landholders and merchants men, the political leaders men, the military figures men, the very invisibility of women, the overlooking of women, is a sign of their submerged status,” stated in Chapter Six of Howard Zinn’ s famous book, A People’s History of the United States. As Zinn has stated in the quote, women and their achievements in history have been rarely mentioned in society which is the sign of treating women as inferior subjects. Treating women as inferior has started since from the day Christopher Columbus had brought his people to his claimed land which later became America. The idea of patriarchy was brought along
with sails from Europe and was practiced in America. In 1800s, women, regardless of their race and age, were treated no better than a property of men in the house.
Women were expected to serve the men in the house, either husband or father. Gender-expectations such as purity, piety, submissiveness, and domesticity became only tasks for women to maintain and fulfill in their lives. While tasks for being born as a woman were already set by society, the right to control of her own life had already been snatched by the man of her house, her father or her husband. Later, the respect between a man toward a woman had been disappeared and men’s greed for complete authority inside his house had overflown. However, the main victims, women, in this matter, are also the accomplices of the problem because women from 1800s and earlier period had also believed and accepted their fate as being supporters of their men. Therefore, women were at their own faults but what worse were the men who used women’s untainted acceptance and belief as a chance to treat them as properties of theirs. In this research, how groups in society had encouraged the treatment of women as inferior and how women from different backgrounds had later resisted and rebelled against the ideal men and society had expected them to
be. The main thesis for this research is to present the oppression toward women had existed in history and is existing in 21st century in United States. This gender discrimination is rebelled by women from different backgrounds as their knowledge are broadened as time passed on. They rose the awareness and influenced many women worldwide thorough books, music, and speeches. However, there are still small matters of discrimination and a belief of men could do better still exist in everyday life. Therefore, main purpose of the research is to help raising the awareness in hope of even the smallest root of discrimination between women and men would disappear among the society.