Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

Women have fought and struggled for equality for many years but are still treated as second-class citizens. Socially constructed gender roles all too often undermine a woman’s potential. Even in fictional novels such as Isabelle Allende’s Eva Luna, “she depended on her husband for everything” (Allende 149). Sexual discrimination denied a female her health care, education and legal protection. It also robbed her of the power to make decisions, to earn a living and to be free from violence, abuse and exploitation. The forefather (scratch that, make it “foremother” even though this feminine term is not found in Webster’s New World Dictionary) of the Women’s Rights Movement, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, pointed out, “The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her” (Eisenberg 2). The movement has come a long way, and women in the United States of America enjoy so many rights virtually unheard of in regions such as the Middle East. There are many examples: women can now vote, get the education they deserve and divorce their husbands. However, equality should be taken in context - wo