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THE NATURE OF WOMEN'S OPPRESSION
By Chan Lean Heng,
University of Penang
Although women share a specific type of oppression simply by being
women, they also share other defining characteristics and are subjected to
other different forms of oppression. Different women suffer from different
forms of oppression. Ruling class women, while they are oppressed by men of the
same class, they are much less oppressed than working class women and in many
cases, are instrumental in the oppression of working class women.
- working class women are at greater risks that upper class
women
- working class women have minimal access to options open to
them
Marginalization and oppression of women are legitimized by traditional
norms, values, institutions and scriptures that provide the broad ideological
foundation of patriarchy and other forms of domination-casteism,
racism, and classicism.
What causes the oppression of women?
THEORIES OF GENDER DIFFERENCES: The central concern in this theory is that the inner
psychic life of women is different from that of men. They differ in basic
values and interests, achievement, motives, literacy creativity, sexual
fantasies, personal identity. These differences are explained in terms of
BIOLOGICAL, INSTITUTIONAL or SOCIAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL factors.
THEORIES OF GENDER INEQUALITY: They view that women do not just occupy a different
location in society but they have unequal access to wealth, status and power
in relation to men. This inequality does not result from biological,
institutional or social-psychological differences between men and women but
from the NATURE OF SOCIETY.
THEORIES OF GENDER OPPRESSION: Women's location in society is a result of a power
relationship between men and women in which men CONTROL, SUBJUGATE and OPPRESS
women. The basic structure of domination is PATRIARCHY.
"While all women are oppressed,
not all women are oppressed equally."