Thursday, October 18, 2007
HW#22 Is Patriacrhy Still Alive?
After reading chapter two of Virginia Woolf's “A Room of One's Own," we were asked to explain why Woolf said the paper proved that England is a patriarchy. On page 33 in chapter 2 the Woolf states that "Nobody in their senses could fail to detect the dominance of the professor. His was the power and the money and the influence. He was the Foreign Secretary and the Judge. He was the cricketer; he owned the race horses and the yachts. He was the director if the company that pays two hundred per cent to its shareholders." As you can obviously see this man had all the power, and basically owned everything. Making England a patriarchy. When going to the website of the Boston Globe I don't think that it is much of a patriarchy today. The first story they have on their site is about democrat Niki Tsongas, who happens to be female, and happened to win the election over Jim Oganowski. This is showing you that it’s not all about the males winning everything and being higher up then us women. So as for the question is their patriarchy still around, I would have to say yes but not as much as their used to be.
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Yes, a headline with a woman winning an election would be a good first indicator that present-day US is less patriarchal than early 20th century England. I think to really compare the indicators of patriarchy you have to dig a little deeper, though. Since Woolf says man's dominance over woman is seen in that he was "the proprietor of the paper and its editor and subeditor. He was the Foreign Secretary and the Judge. He was the cricketer...He was director of the company...he suspended the film actress..." (Woolf 33-34), we'd need to look to see what gender the heads of state and ambassadors and company owners and athletes mentioned in the Globe are? Do the representations of men still outnumber those of women in powerful, non-domestic roles?
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