Notion of Progress : the social evolution in terms of gender parity

For a society or for humanity, progress can be defined as an evolution in the direction of improvement, and its progressive transformation towards more knowledge and happiness.

I’ve decided to focus on the social evolution in terms of gender parity to illustrate this notion.

One may wonder to what extent the making of improvement for society by oppressed people can be a never-ending process. First we’ll see how women used to live in a patriarchal society, then how they started to emancipate themselves and finally how we haven’t reached gender parity yet.

To start with, Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew”, dating back to 1590, depicts the typical patriarchal society where men are breadwinners, while their wives are totally submitted to them. Katherina, who used to be a headstrong, free-spirited woman, ends up being a compliant, and obedient bride after being "tamed" with various psychological torments by her husband Petruchio. At the end of the play, she delivers a speech in which she says that « Such duty as the subject owes the prince, Even such a woman oweth to her husband.». According to me the speech is undoubtedly ironic; Katherina has not been tamed at all, she has merely duped Petruchio into thinking she has.

Furthermore, The BBC Document « The history of the Suffragettes » points out how women fought in the aim to getting the right to vote. Indeed, in 1893, New Zealand became the first self-governing country to grant the vote to all women over the age of 21. When by 1903 women in Britain had not been enfranchised, Emily Pankhurst decided that women had to « do the work ourselves ». That is the reason she created, the Women's Social and Political Union to defend women’s rights. The movement had rather violent and law-breaking means of protest such as civil disobedience, throwing rocks at politicians’ window, litter bombs and hunger strikes. The death of one suffragette, Emily Davison, when she ran in front of the king's horse at the 1913 Epsom Derby, made headlines around the world. But during the first world war, when men were send to battlefields, they suspended their activities and took their places in factories for instance. So at the end of the war, in 1918 an act of parliament eventually implemented the right to vote for women (Representation of the People Act), but it was under some conditions. So women kept fighting again, and their fight bore their fruits in 1928, with the Equal Franchise Act which gave all women the right to vote.

Nevertheless, as Emma Watson said it during her speech at the United Nations, we haven’t reached gender equality yet. Men and women still don’t have equal rights and opportunities. Women are not being paid the same as their male counterparts, they can’t make decisions about their own body, and they are not even involved in the policies and decisions that will affect their lives. For instance in May 2019, the Alabama Senate passed the country’s most repressive anti-abortion law. A doctor practicing an abortion faces up to 99 years in prison, even if the woman is a victim of rape or incest. Of all the senators who voted the law, not one of them was a woman.

However, feminism has become an unpopular word. Women are choosing not to identify themselves as feminists, because fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous

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