How much has our society really changed compared to the past generations? Yes, our technology, life style, food all have evolved but, we lack to equalize women rights compared to men. Men have always been the dominate ones and till today our society still has it in the back of their mind. Roles for women have changed in a positive way throughout the years. Like, during the middle ages in Europe, women were seen inferior to men and they were unable to feel the freedom they deserved. The middle ages were the worse days for women, daughters had to stay attached to their fathers and wives had to stay attached to their husbands. It states in Guerilla girls that women are supposed to “obey their husbands and their husbands could beat her if she didn't" (Guerrilla 22). Also, people during this time believed in Christianity and in the bible, it said that God took a rib from a man to create a woman so people believed women had to follow men and do as they say. During the middle ages the life span for a human was much smaller than today but for woman it was even less because of the danger in giving birth.
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| This imagine is of a lady cutting her self because of the pain she is suffering. She had to hide her real self inside rather than express it like men were able to. |
The middle ages would not be a great place to find women artist but finding male artist wouldn’t take you any time. Women had to work as hard as men when it came to the labor aspect of it but the educational part only belonged to the males of the world. Men worked the same amount as women and were paid more and also had the opportunity to get an education and become something while females were to take care of the household and work equally as their husbands or fathers. In Guerilla Girl, it expresses how education would hurt women from being the best wife and mothers possible. It stated, "Education was thought to interfere with a woman's ability to be a good wife and mother. Almost no women were taught to read and write" (Guerilla Girls, 22). As we got to the end of the middle ages and started headed towards the renaissance period “The ideal of femininity produced through activities like needle-work and drawing contributed directly to the consolidation of a bourgeois identity in which women had the leisure to cultivate artistic “accomplishments.” (Chadwick 148). Chadwick helps show how the time of women had arrived and they were starting to be involved in helping outside their homes.
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| This image shows us the trouble women went through and how the men are keeping her captive against her will. |
As time went the Renaissance period came into play. Women finally started to receive more respect from people around them and they were allowed to explore outside of learning the excellence of being a house wife. They started to learn art and create painting and women artist started to become a common thing but that didn’t change the fact men were still seen as the better artists. The woman who opened the door for all women to have the ability to become artist was Sofonisba Anguissola and Chadwick states “Sofonisba Anguissola's example opened up the possibility of painting to women as a socially acceptable profession, while her work established new conventions for self-portraiture by women and for Italian genre painting. Like many subsequent women artists, she has been subjected to wildly fluctuating critical evaluations” (Chadwick, 77). She lacked education because she wasn’t provided it in the best way possible. Males were still viewed for being the brain, heart, and soul of the community and for women to try something different brought a lot of criticism. Throughout this time, we saw a lot of change being made compared to the past years but one major thing never really took a turn for the good was male patriarchy. Bell hook takes us in depth of patriarchy and actually defines it as ““a political system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence.” (Hooks, 18). Patriarchy actually never changed and it still exists in our society today.
As we entered the 19th century, the role of women and their art finally got the recognition they wanted. They were being given opportunities such they never thought they would receive. The female artist who dedicated in receiving the same rights as men helped get life for others. Women were being pushed down and were expected to stay under men and never expected to rise and become so talented. The world went upside down for women after the 19thcentury, it became the moment they could finally fulfill their dreams.
Links:
Work Cited:
Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. Langara College, 2016.
Hooks, Bell. “Understanding Patriarchy”. The Will to Change. New York:Atria Books, 2004. 17-33. Print.
The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. Penguin Books, 2006.
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