The Feminine Mystique And The Paradox Of Change - American Women In Essay

The Feminine Mystique And The Paradox Of Change - American Women In The 20th Century - Essay Example As a result of the survey, Friedan formed the view that women were victims of an erroneous contention that their fulfillment in life could only be achieved â€Å"through their husbands and children†¦such a system causes women to completely lose their identity in that of their family† (Friedan 227-268). In contrast to William Chafe, Betty Friedan confines her observations mainly to the period immediately following World War II and to a single group: â€Å"white middle-class suburban communities†¦[and] that men returning from war turned to their wives for mothering† (Friedan 79-123). Friedan draws copiously on her own experiences and â€Å"remembers her own decision to conform to society’s expectations by giving up her promising career to raise children and found that other young women still struggle with this decision† William H. Chafe Chafe’s method of dealing with the development of American women’s position in the 20th century is to consider how women - in regard to both their social and economic status – underwent a series of changes. In order to achieve this, he took as his central theme the factors underlying women’s inequality and evaluated it in terms of their â€Å"political involvement in public life and their economic progress† (Chafe 21; Otero-Cleves 1). By considering how the role of women in the 20th century had developed, he was able to offer the suggestion. â€Å"The assumption that women constituted a separate and inferior category ended up by pervading both the assignment of women personnel and the salaries they were paid†.

Karl Marx and Emile Durkheimcitizens Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Karl Marx and Emile Durkheimcitizens - Essay Example He believes that the individual understands and fits into their society through "Their understanding of religious origin; they are social affairs and the product of collective thought" (Giddens). While the two philosophers had differing opinions on how a society is formed, they are similar in that they both studied how the individual fits into and reacts to their societies. Marx's theory of "fetishism of commodities" first introduced in his main work Capital, focuses on the capitalist society's obsession with goods and its devaluing of labor. He believes, "Commodities are seen as having power over the people who produce them" (Tucker). Therefore members in a capitalist society begin to function in a cycle of laboring for goods. They strive for more and more commodities and work harder and harder to get them, losing focus on the true value of the commodities. This kind of society loses the relationship between the producer and the consumer because the producer only sees the commodity according to the work that he put in to produce it while the consumer values the commodity at face value since they are unaware of what kind of labor went into producing it. Marx's theory reveals a society that is formed out of and run by commodities.