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Global Issue- Gender Inequality and Gender Politics

The global issue I have decided to focus on is gender inequality and gender
politics. This has been an issue for the past couple of decades now, there has been
improvement related to this issue recently but it still does exist, especially against
women in our society. According to me gender inequality takes place due to lack of
education and people’s “old generation” mindset in today’s time. People who are
uneducated generally don’t understand the difference between right and wrong and
often follow what the old generation use to follow, especially in a country like
India where women are thought to be “weaker” and less capable than men. For my
literary work I will be using the drama “A Doll’s House” by Henrik Ibsen and as
my non-literary work I would be using Emma Watson’s speech in the UN
“HeForShe”, using these two texts I would like to discuss the issue of Gender
Inequality and Gender Politics in our world.
Literary Work: A Doll’s House (by Henrik Ibsen)
Literary Extract Analysis- 40 Lines
Thesis Statement: Ibsen used symbolism and various forms of irony in the extract
to showcase the issue of gender inequality and politics in the drama.
"A Doll's House" by Henrik Ibsen is a contemporary drama set in a house in the
suburbs of Norway in the 18th century. The plot revolves around a housewife
called Nora Helmer and the challenges Nora faces living a life appropriate to
society. Nora, having grown up in this culture, formed a shell, hiding who she
really is: a self-reliant woman. Conforming with the prejudices of society against
women.
Henrik Ibsen utilizes sensational and situational irony to feature the differentiation
between Nora's actual autonomous character and her slavish veneer around
Torvald, showing the limitations of a commonplace Victorian marriage that hinders
ladies' distinction. At the point when Torvald inquires as to whether she has been
cheerful here or not she says "No; never. I used to think I was. Be that as it may, I
haven't actually been happy." This shows how she has consistently been an adoring
and whimsical spouse to Torvald while covering her autonomous self. Nora
remained tucked away in man-controlled society, enhanced like a doll and
appreciating life from inside the doll's home. Negligent of the target truth of
man-controlled society, Nora neglects to perceive the primary issues that make
precise abuse until Torvalds self-focused upheaval. The utilization of emotional
incongruity uncovered Helmer as egotistical, grandiose, and uninformed of a few
issues occurring around him.
In this extract, Nora understands the wrongs that have been done to her by her dad
and Torvald. She discloses to Torvald that "I've been your doll-wife, just as I used
to be papa's doll-child, and the children have been my dolls" Henrik utilizes
Symbolism by utilizing an item (A doll) that has a significance in itself, indicating
how it addresses something past its exacting importance. On account of A Doll's
House, dolls are significant images, addressing both Nora's relationship with her
better half and her own relationship with her kids. A doll is a toy, an idle toy
lacking feelings. This is actually how Torvald sees Nora: He accepts she has no
psyche of her own and uses her severally, both to show her off at get-togethers and
as an object of want in private. He can't understand that she is troubled or
unfulfilled. Also, Nora sees her own youngsters thusly, calling them "carts".
Torvald has regarded her as a doll to be played with, masterminding everything to
go for whatever he might prefer and constraining her to live just to engage him.
Therefore, she has not made anything of her life and has never been genuinely
glad.
All in all, Henrik Ibsen's play the doll's home underscores the contentions ladies
face in a male predominant world. The generalizations and presumptions made in a
dolls house are uncovered in the way Torvald treats his significant other. These
suppositions manage the manner by which the male characters see the female
characters, on a totally cliché, sex related level. Ladies are normally positioned in
jobs that don't empower ladies the opportunity to get mindful or free. Much the
same as how Nora forfeited her longings and training to play out her job of the
homemaker who deals with the kids, cooks, cleans, keeps an all-around kept
appearance, and in particular never challenges their significant other. This drama
showcases how women are treated unequally, however the female gender is no less
compared to the male and should be treated equally by society as they have the
ability to do things which men in the world may not be able to do.
Non-Literary Work: Emma Watson’s Speech (HeForShe)
Thesis Statement: Emma Watson used personal pronouns, emotive diction and
asks rhetorical questions in her speech to showcase her opinion towards the issue
of gender inequality and gender politics.
Emma Watson’s speech given in the UN focuses on the campaign HeForShe which
focuses on the global issue of gender equality. Emma focuses on how men and
women both are treated unequally in certain situations. Gender equality issues
come up all over the world may it be lower salaries due to the gender difference for
women or may it be father’s given less importance towards the child compared to
the mother. Emma uses such as real-life examples in her speech to showcase how
the word “feminism” has become a negative one whereas the importance is the
meaning of the word and the actual “word” itself. This speech caught my attention
for two very important reasons, the first reason would be the gender equality issue
being the most important issue amongst humans and not only towards women but
towards men as well in today’s day. Emma Watson explained this point of gender
equality being an issue for both genders so perfectly that I fell in love with the
speech that instant as many people only talk about how women lack gender rights,
whereas there are very few people who also talk about men’s right in gender
equality and Emma Watson being one of those people. The second reason I chose
this speech is because many people over the globe may or may not always agree
and listen to political leader’s speeches because of the basic mindset of corruption
and politicians being “cruel” or “manipulative” people however, when movie stars
and celebrities have the power to change people’s mindset due to the popularity
and the respect of the people which is why I was so impressed and convinced by
this speech. Emma’s use of personal pronouns, emotive language and rhetorical
questions helps her portray the issue of gender equality through her speech for the
United Nations.
Emma Watson uses personal pronouns and selective diction throughout her speech
to portray the issue of gender equality throughout the world. Emma’s use of words
such as “I” and “We” helps her connect to her audience very easily. The word “I”
signifies her point of view towards the problem and her personal experience,
moreover it gives the audience a sense of confidence about the different statistics
and research Emma is putting forward towards the audience such as “it will take 75
years, or for me to be nearly a hundred before women can expect to be paid the
same as men” or “15.5 million girls will be married in the next 16 years as
children”, The word “We” would bring unity among the audience and the other
feminist all over the world. This personal pronoun would help the audience realize
how Emma is not talking about one or two people alone but is talking about
everyone in the world supporting this cause as a whole. Moreover, Watson
continues to use words such as privilege, reclaim, freedom and equality throughout
her speech. These words are used by Emma continuously to talk about gender
inequality which raises the thought of men and women being treated equally and
completely vanishing the thought of difference between male and female. Emma
Watson’s use of specific diction and personal pronouns helps her to showcase her
intended purpose on completely vanishing the issue of gender equality throughout
the globe.
Emma focuses a lot on her personal experiences throughout her speech as well
which raises a sense of emotion in the audience’s mind. In her speech she talks
about two past incidents, “When at 15 my girlfriends started dropping out of their
sports teams because they didn’t want to appear “muscly.” and “When at 18 my
male friends were unable to express feelings”. She focuses on issues she has
witnessed while growing up in both genders. This would lead to the audience
realizing the fairness between both genders and how both genders suffer with their
own problems throughout the stages of life, it imposes a sense of unity between the
male and female gender. Moreover, when Watson adds her personal memory in the
middle of her speech it adds an emotional touch to the speech with the audience
being able to relate to the speech as well leading to self-realization that the problem
of gender equality hasn’t been dealt with since the past many decades. With the use
of these emotive language techniques Emma is able to bring out the intended
purpose of gender equality to her audience in an emotional manner
Hand in hand with emotions Emma also asks her audience certain question through
her speech such as “Why is the word such an uncomfortable one?” where she is
referring to the word “feminism” and “If not me, who? If not now, when?” where
she is questioning her audience on who and when will the change in gender
inequality prevail if we don’t start the process and practice by ourselves. Asking
questions, the audience not only makes the speech somewhat interactive but it
makes the audience question themselves and their actions since the past years of
their life. Rhetorical questions which are repeated such as “If not me, who? If not
now, when?” puts the audience in to a sense of personal reflection/thinking and
leads to the individual getting more motivated to support this cause as he/she
would end up realizing how gender equality is a matter that should be dealt with
first as it impacts everyone’s life negatively. Rhetorical questions helped Emma
engage the audience and helped the audience question themselves and
understanding the actions that should be taken towards gender equality and how
the campaign of HeForShe would help prevent this issue, these various and
repetitive questions helped Watson portray the importance of gender equality and
how her campaign would help the world improve and possibly get rid of this issue.
According to me Emma Watson’s use of Emotive Diction, Rhetorical Questions
and Personal Pronouns helped her speech to be conveyed in a manner that people
understand how important gender equality is to the world and the exact reason as to
why people should support her campaign of HeForShe to get rid of the issue of
gender inequality. Personally, in a country like India gender bias is a huge issue but
it is not given a lot of importance to due to the Indian stereotypes about a man
should be treated and how a woman should be looked down upon. Its disgraceful
on how people can genuinely think like that however, there are many organization
and support groups in India which are working towards solving this issue of gender
inequality. I personally support campaigns such as HeForShe as I believe that
humans are already facing a lot of issues related to survival and if we humans
separate ourselves between male and female then it will not be far when humans
will be the next to go extinct, until and unless humans, Female and Male get
together to solve any problem together.