It's a Woman's World?

“I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.” 

― Amelia Earhart

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Resources

Social Inequality Today: Education Inequality

Penina Warburg's blog on education inequality


Just in time for our classwork!


Gatsby and Inequality Today

Poetry by Contemporary Female Poets

Here are the two poems about women that we studied in class:

It's A Woman's World

Eavan Boland, contemporary Irish female poet

Our way of life

has hardly changed

since a wheel first

whetted a knife.

Well, maybe flame

burns more greedily

and wheels are steadier,

but we're the same:

we milestone

our lives

with oversights,

living by the lights

of the loaf left

by the cash register,

the washing powder

paid for and wrapped,

the wash left wet:

like most historic peoples

we are defined

by what we forget,

by what we never will be:

star-gazers,

fire-eaters.

It's our alibi

for all time:

as far as history goes

we were never

on the scene of the crime.

So when the king's head

gored its basket,

grim harvest,

we were gristing bread

or getting the recipe

for a good soup.

It's still the same:

our windows

moth our children

to the flame

of hearth not history.

And still no page

scores the low music

of our outrage.

But appearances still reassure:

that woman there,

craned to

the starry mystery,

is merely getting a breath

of evening air.

While this one here,

her mouth a burning plume -

she's no fire-eater,

just my frosty neighbour

coming home.

And Then the Prince Knelt Down and Tried to Put the Glass Slipper on Cinderella's Foot

•  
• 

Judith Viorst

How the Cinderella Story probably actually happened.

I really didn't notice that he had a funny nose.
And he certainly looked better all dressed up in fancy clothes.
He's not nearly as attractive as he seemed the other night.
So I think I'll just pretend that this glass slipper feels too tight.

(from Don't Bet on the Prince)

Here is another poem by a contemporary female poet:

"A Work of Artifice" compares a bonsai tree to a woman. To understand this poem, you also have to know that in Japan, girls' feet were bound so they wouldn't grow, because small feet was an ideal of beauty. Here is a bonsai tree. Notice how small and well-crafted it is:

The Bonsai Tree by Marge Piercy

The bonsai tree 

in the attractive pot 

could have grown eighty feet tall 

on the side of a mountain 

till split by lightning. 

But a gardener 

carefully pruned it. 

It is nine inches high. 

Every day as he 

whittles back the branches 

the gardener croons, 

It is your nature 

to be small and cozy, 

domestic and weak; 

how lucky, little tree, 

to have a pot to grow in. 

With living creatures

one must begin very early 

to dwarf their growth: 

the bound feet, 

the crippled brain, 

the hair in curlers, 

the hands you 

love to touch.

Carol Gilligan's Theory

Click here for information about Carol Gilligan's theory about the different ways men and women 

develop morally.

Women in Power: An Integration Presentation

WOMEN IN POWER

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