Millet argues that women as much as men are responsible in perpetuating the sex-role images. Krishnaswami argues: ‘Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics (1970) makes a distinction between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ sex is determined biologically where as gender is culturally/ socially/ psychologically constructed through sex-role stereotyping and historical conditioning.
The difference between sex and gender is made by Kate Millet’s in Sexual Politics published in 1970. Here it is necessary to make distinction between gender and sex to understand the Gender studies at length. Gender studies is one of the off shoots of feminist criticism, more feminist criticism includes Gender Studies as a chief branch. The traditional point of view towards woman is erased by the movement and new conceptions and norms about women started to set. Krishnaswami highlights the traditional role of women and the view of society towards women: ‘In all traditions women have always been considered inferior and incapable of any serious thinking irrespective of religion, country, race, the period in which they live, more or less the same perception and sex-stereotyping is seen in language and literature.’ (Krishnaswami, et al. The movement increased the confidence of women and made them able to fight against injustices to them.
In 1960s, there formed a Women’s Movement to make women aware of their status, rights, duties and responsibilities towards society and it is also maintained that she is the integral part of all the activities around her. The subjugation of women in socio-political and economic construct all over the world is disclosed in later writing of women. A lot of questions were raised against the primitive notions of man-woman relationship inferiority of women imposed by the norms of society. These writers and their works formed the base for feminist criticism and gender studies. Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women (1869) and the American Margaret Fuller’s Women in the Nineteenth Century (1845) has started the struggle for identity of women writing imposing the socio-political, economic rights of women.
0 kommentar(er)
