Essay about women’s
emancipation from Niaré
If you don't like
something, change it.
If you can't change it, change your attitude.
Don't complain.
~ Maya Angelou ~
But how has the emancipation movement
changed that she can claim such a thoughtless thing today? In my opinion, there are three different
classification areas of the emancipation of women. This is important to say
because the division of the three areas influenced the development of women’s
emancipation. The first classification area is the woman in the society. In the
second are the woman and her profession. The constitution says that women and men
have to be equal. I think for this it is important to
say that the girls have already surpassed the men in the education. The last
classification area is the woman and the family. By now the legal equality of women
and men in marriage has been fixed in several law steps. A hundred years ago
the women dreamed of this.
I write about the development of women emancipation
until the 12th and 13th century until now to come closer
to the history and for the understanding. There were three different
emancipation movements which are significant and still on our mind. The first
was between the 12th and 13th century. The movement is
still famous with the name Beginen-movement. But it didn’t have many followers
or supporters-they didn’t question the church and had really religious views on
the world. The second movement was after the French revolution at the beginning
of the 19th century. The movement had at only male supporters and followers at
first. They found fast female supporters who deployed themselves for freedom
and equality. The movement was named Suffragetten (like the name says-they
deployed for the suffrage) It was the first movement which tried to remove
themselves from the church. The third and last big and famous emancipation
movement was after the Second World War. It was a result out of the industrialization
and the consequences.
The women triggered a revolution in which
they fight for their rights. They were fighting for: civil rights, suffrage,
rights to education, right to private property, right for employment work, for
equality between men and women, equitable distribution role, social equality,
strive for education, they want to be note like a Like-minded and not like a typical
housewife and they wanted to have self-regulation about their bodies and their
mind. Sounds like a lot but it is only human. The first women movements were in
America, England and France. As recently as the Weimarer Verfassung had the
power in Germany, the movements came there. Important time marks were 1940 and
1960. 1940 is famous for the Résistance which began at this time mark. 1960 is
popular for the worldwide student riots. The first woman who does something big
in Germany was Louise Otto-Peters. Another woman that caused a stir 1949 was
Elisabeth Selbert. And not to forget Alice Schwarzer who is one of the best
known representatives of the German women's movement is. She gets on as a
feminist and is a founder and publisher of the women's service magazine Emma.
In other countries women like Betty Friedans and Mary Wollstenecraft support
many feminists and women with the book „the female Mystique” and with a
pleading what the rights of the women contained. And not to forget Maya
Angelou, who support and affect women worldwide with sentences like “How
important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!”
Many women and also men support the equal rights meanwhile but the earth is
still far away of complete equality.
Today, the women still must prove much more
than the men. The women are put into a certain drawer much once in a while. As
a known example: if a woman is fair-haired, she is stupid. Many men and
unfortunately also women think so about her like-minded and even if it sounds
not taking seriously.
But it is much more serious in the eastern
part of the world: Asia. There exist great prejudices in large portions of Asia
opposite little girls today certainly, too. Abortion of female fetuses and the
neglect of female babies are the result of it. Asian women suffer excessively
from the cruel business with sex, the woman trade, a modern manner of the
slavery. Deeply rooted views restricted the life of a woman to having a baby
and other female duties. Large portions of the female oppression nevertheless
cannot be explained by poverty but by general principles: Values, convictions,
habits and traditions which are passed on by generation to generation and
stress is given by persuasion, group pressure and force. We can only following
the motto: Against the oppression-for the equal rights. How John Stuart Mill
also wanted to say with a statement of his book, the bondage of the woman: “No
slave is a slave to the same lengths, and in so full a sense of the word, as a
wife is.”
Biography
about Maya Angelou
Dr. Maya Angelou is a remarkable
Renaissance woman of our time. Dr. Angelou is a celebrated poet, memoirist,
novelist, educator, dramatist, producer, actress, historian, filmmaker,
best-selling author and civil rights activist. She is named as a powerful
creative genius-and not without reasons. This is her story.
Dr. Maya Angelou was born on April 4th,
1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. Dr. Angelou experienced the brutality of racial
discrimination. But she also absorbed values of traditional African-American
family, community, and culture.
As a teenager Maya Angelou won with her
passion for art, dance and drama a scholarship. In the age of fourteen she
dropped out of school to become San Francisco’s first African-American female
cable car conductor. She later finished high school. Maya Angelou became her
first son a few weeks after graduation. As a single mother she supported her
son with part-time jobs but her ardor for dance, performance and poetry took
the upper hand soon. In the 50’ she toured Europe studied and in 57 she
recorded her first album. Afterwards she moved to New York and lives there for
2 years. Then she moved to Cairo, Egypt where she served as editor of the
English language weekly The Arab Observer. After one Year she went to Ghana.
There she wrote for The Ghanaian Times and worked as a feature editor for the
African review. During her years abroad, Dr. Angelou read and studied
voraciously, mastering French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and the West African
language Fanti. While in Ghana, she met with Malcolm X and, in 1964, returned
to America to help him build his new Organization of African American Unity.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. asked Dr. Angelou to serve as Northern Coordinator
for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King's assassination, falling
on her birthday in 1968, left her devastated. Thereafter Maya Angelou worked on
the book “In Know Why The Caged Birds Sing“, which is published in 1970, with
the guidance of her friend, the novelist James Baldwin. She has more than
thirty bestselling titles. Her script, for the film Georgia, was the first by
an African American woman ever to be filmed, and was nominated for a Pulitzer
Prize. She continues to appear on television and in films including the
landmark television adaptation. In the age of sixty-eight, she directed her
first feature film, Down in the Delt. In 2008, she composed poetry for and
narrated the award-winning documentary The Black Candle, directed by M.K.
Asante.
Maya Angelou won numerous prices like three
Grammys. She had the great honor to read her poem "On the Pulse of the
Morning" on President Clinton’s inauguration in 1993. This was broadcast
all around the world. Dr.
Angelou has received over 30 honorary degrees and is Reynolds Professor of
American Studies at Wake Forest University.
Dr. Maya Angelou does not only touch and
inspire the human, she tries also to opening our thoughts and minds to steer
the world fundamentally.
“…Live your life…”
(8.50 min)
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
The
free bird leaps
on the back of the win
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed for still
and is tune is heard
on the distant hillfor the caged bird
sings of freedom
The free bird thinks of another breeze
an the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn
and he names the sky his own.
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
Maya Angelou
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