Women's Roles Quotes
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910. This is an excellent example of political sarcasm. Read literally, this quotation indicates that he was opposed to women’s suffrage, and was a fairly extreme sexist. What he was doing however, is stating publicly the argument that many men made at the time—especially those who were not highly literate or well-educated. By stating the argument of the opposition, he allows fair minded people to be exposed to views that they might otherwise not be exposed to. Many sexist men at the time read the quotation and, not appreciating Twain’s sarcasm, concluded that Twain, unlike most of the “egghead intellectuals” of the day was an opponent of the increasingly militant feminists. In actuality, Mark Twain was a strong feminist. See {630191}, {630192}, & {630193}.
Although she was living proof of a woman’s ability to accomplish what most men could not, she was always publicly differential to men and their sexism. Although she opposed women voting in Parliamentary elections, she did believe that women should vote in local elections where the understood the issues much better.
This view of the obsolescence of the family was one of the huge ideological chasms between Russia and the Western Democracies,
This was quite a radical, feminist statement at the time. But it gives us a good insight into the sexism that then existed where for many the belief was that a young woman would be harmed by a college education.
This was her last public speech. In general, when women would speak in public, they would be ridiculed and castigated by the press which reflected a macho cultural view that women should be seen and not heard,
Islamic modernists like Serageldin are many among the educated Muslims but their views are often drowned out by the violence and extremist statements of the fundamentalists.
