Assignment 5
In the paper “Are women human? It’s not an academic question” by V. Spike Peterson and Laura Parisi, they argue that most of the time women critiques “human rights” as rights just for men, as a result women believe they do not have the same rights as men and they do not deserve the same role in society. In this chapter, Peterson and Parisi argue that first, it is very important to define what is the difference between androcentrism and heterosexism. Androcentrism is defined as “centered on, emphasizing, or dominated by males or masculine interests”. according to this definition, just men are considered humans with rights. On the other hand, the heterosexism defined as “relationship to sex difference (male and female bodies) and oppositional gender identities (masculine and feminine subjectivities) (Pg. 133) means the role of men or a woman influence at the moment of being part of the “human rights”
In order to analyze why women were marginalized because of their gender (female) the authors of this chapter considered women’s right according to the “three generations of human rights” (Pg 142). The first generation rights correspond to civil and political liberties were men were considered “humans” and women “others”. There was a gender inequality where women should be at home (private sphere) and were not able to work (public Sphere). Women were denied to have property and most of the time they were treated as property to men.
The second generation rights correspond to economic, social and cultural: where women’ job at home was not considered important and valuable. On the contrary, this is established as something with less value from a men’s work. In this case, also exists inequality of gender because if a woman has a job she gets less money that men. In the social aspect, women have a specific role as a housewife and mother. (Pg. 148)
Finally, the third generation corresponds to the rights of Collective/Groups rights. In this case, women do not have economic and political independence and they do not have their own identity. Women are not able to make decisions for themselves
As I was reading this chapter most of the points about how women are treated stood me out. It is really sad to see how big is the difference because of the genders (female/male). I believe the heterosexism has a big impact on gender difference and how human rights and are not the same for women and men.
I think even now women are treated as “things” rather than humans. Most of the time women are subject of oppressing in different situations as: domestic violence, rape, sexual harassment and everything looks normal just because we are women.
