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Mrs

WOMEN AND THE LAW

ASSIGNMENT 2

CAROL THATCHER

STUDENT NUMBER: 2468749

QUESTION 3

There is a deeply entrenched ideology in our society that men and women perform different roles and occupy different spheres.Gender has been and remains a sole focus for feminist analysis, the gender question is central to all feminist, whether liberal, Marxist-socialist, cultural, radical or post-modern, the only significant differences is how they each view gender equality in respect of women and how this oppress women and how equality in regards to gender can come about.[1]

Different feminist have different perceptions of what equality means, this has bought about the gender and equality question amongst feminists’ scholars, questioning whether equality should it be perceived in terms of gender. This has bought about the sameness and difference debates among feminists, whether women are the same as men or women can never be the same as they are different to men.

The sameness and difference debate has lead many feminist to ask what a woman is question? In answering this question Simone de Beauvoir in the second sex states that ….man defines women not in herself but as relative to him. And she is simply what man decrees; thus she is called ‘the sex’ by which is meant that she appears essentially to the male as a sexual being ….she is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her. [2]

From the perspective of “the other” women are socially constructed in the relation to, and as inferior to the male. The man, whom assumes superiority, defines women’s role.
For de Beauvoir, the standard by which all matters are judged is that of the male gender. If maleness is the automatic reference point for the assessment of societal status, it follows that women ‘being different’ is the ‘other’ sex. De Beauvoir also argues that to be a woman is to be defined as a womb, an ovary, to be female, and to be defined so defined is ‘to imprison her...