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Cont Thesis topic Reseach | Heer Mandalia | 2020
tent Research Questions
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Abstract
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Literature Review
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Thesis Proposal
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Bibliography
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Research Questions
Thesis topic Reseach | Heer Mandalia | 2020
What action, habits, and surroundings motivates or demotivates people to be homemakers? 4
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Has feminism changed the perception of homemakers ?
Thesis topic Reseach | Heer Mandalia | 2020
How are women homemakers and male homemakers perceived in societ y? 6
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How are homemakers perceived in different cultures?
Thesis topic Reseach | Heer Mandalia | 2020
How can design help in communication and redef ining the perception of homemakers?
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Thesis topic Reseach | Heer Mandalia | 2020
bstract The role of women in society has shifted remarkably over the past 100 years. Many women have moved out of homes and joined the workforce. The development of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) played a significant role in the growth of working women. While the fight for gender equality in the workforce continues, there are some women who chose to participate in traditional gender roles, who are often overlooked in the conversation of women empowerment. The definition of homemaker has been loosely translated over the years with this shift of women’s role in society. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the perception of a homemaker in society. To study the psychology of homemakers and why they choose it. I want to study different perspectives of homemakers from a cultural, religion, political, and economy point of view. I want to explore the definition of women empowerment within homemakers. More importantly, I aspire to use design to explore, and redefine, the word homemaker.
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Literature Review
Thesis topic Reseach | Heer Mandalia | 2020
WHAT IS FEMINISM?
Women’s empowerment has been talked, discussed, and interpreted differently over the years. It originated about 400 BC, where Plato, a Greek philosopher, spoke about equality in the ancient Greek period. Feminism in dictionaries is defined as, ‘advocacy of the claims of women’. After the post-feminism movement, “feminism” was a position adopted by particular groups, who called themselves ‘radical feminists’ or those groups and individuals who represented the more initial struggles of women. Both groups were often portrayed as fierce. It was then implicitly adopted by women’s organizations and used as a blanket term to cover all women’s activities[1]. There have been active Feminist movements around the world with people from all races, languages, religions, cultures, and lifestyles. With the changing regions, the motivation of the feminist movement varies. Rosalind Delmar, in “What is Feminism?” raises the question “Does feminism have any necessary unity, politically, socially, or culturally?” Delmar explains the idea of unity was observed during the contemporary women’s movement in Britain. The unity in the movement was derived from the shared experiences amongst women, which created a perception of sisterhood between them. As the women’s movement started developing, many women expressed the difference in analytical and political views, which created division in the women’s movement. “Unity based on identity has turned out to be a very fragile thing. What has been most difficult for women’s movement to cope up with has been the plethora of differences between women, which have emerged in context to feminism”[1]. Even with this division in ideology within women, there is a shared idea that, very least, a feminist is someone who believes that women suffer discrimination because of their sex, that they have specific needs which remain neglected and unsatisfied, and the satisfaction of this would require a radical change in the social, economic and political order. A further aspect of the same paradox is that the different forms of women’s politics, fragmented as they are, have been increasingly called by the same name: feminism[1].
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WOMEN
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According to the International development of buzzwords, empowerment has become one of the most elastic word, due to its extensive use in corporate culture and nongovernmental organization, which results in many interpretations of this word. Andrea Cornwall, in “Women’s Empowerment: What Works?” states that the word empowerment originated from power. “Power is defined by two central aspects: control over resources (physical, human, intellectual, financial, and the self), and control over ideology (beliefs, values and attitudes).” If power means to control, then empowerment, subsequently, is the process of gaining control[2]. Thereof to create greater equality between men and women, they should be given equal control of decisions in their surroundings. Women empowerment can be formed by challenging existing systems of power to gain greater control over their life. Cornell explains that empowerment is not something that can be given to women; it has to come from the ‘power within’. Helping women in creating consciousness of self can be as effective as economic empowerment. Economic independence plays a notable role in women empowerment “[...], but the enabling environment that confirms the right to work, to property, to safety, to voice, sexuality, and freedom is not created by sewing machines or micro credit alone.”[3] Women should be educated about the existing policies, institutions, and new consciousness which will enable them to create change. The perception of empowerment can diversify from woman to woman, but liberating them from the attitude of being weak, inferior, and limited beings will enable them to challenge existing power structures and gain control over their surroundings. This is explained by the case study Chapeu de Palha Mulhe, which took place in Brazil.
Thesis topic Reseach | Heer Mandalia | 2020
EMPOWERMWNT
During this case study, they provided female sugar cane plantation workers of Northeast Brazil between long harvest months, with vocational training courses, including non traditional jobs like welding, soldering, electrical work, and taxi driving. Additionally to the course they taught them about public policies of feminist consciousness raising, gender training, and popular education practices. Most striking result has been the impact of the public policies course on their sense of entitlement as citizens and rights as women, which also affected their decisions in the vocational training class. “It is when women recognize their power within and act together with other women to exercise power with, that they gain the power to act as agents; when they act in concert to tackle injustice and inequalities, this becomes ‘power for’ positive social change.”[3] In this essay, Cornell fails to explain different factors like religion and politics on empowerment, she also overlooks the male perspective . If women were to gain the power to control their surroundings, this would lead to other people (including males) losing their power. The understanding of both males and females should be analyzed to create equality in the power structure, and ultimately, establish gender equality.
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RELIGIOUS BELIEF
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Thesis topic Reseach | Heer Mandalia | 2020
Equality between men and women in social, political, and religious aspects are directly proportional to women’s empowerment. There were many distinctions in the United States of America’s Constitution, which did not give equal rights to both genders. In the state of Michigan, women were legally forbidden from working behind a bar, as they believed that female bartenders would create more moral and social problems. The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) came into action to solve this issue. ERA seeks to end the legal distinctions between men and women in matters of divorce, property, employment, and other issues. It was initially introduced in the 1970s, which did not obtain success as many states did not support it. The amendment was reintroduced in 1982, and is slowly being accepted by many states, currently, 38 states in the USA have passed this amendment.
& EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT
Val Burris in “Who opposed the ERA? An analysis of the social bases of antifeminism” analyzes the data from the 1980 National Election Service and says that variables like race, religion, and residence characteristics are the significant variables that affected the attitude towards ERA. In “The Social Basis of Antifeminism: Religious Networks and Culture.” Jerome L. Himmelstein states a similar opinion that supporters of ERA are not primarily based on Socio-Economic status, but religious ideology plays a significant role in it. He points out that opponents of ERA attend church more often than their counterparts. According to data from the 1980 National Election Service, only 45% of women and 37% of men who attend the church every day supported ERA, and 69% of women and 56% of the male who attended church 1-3 times per month support ERA. Himmelstein says many religious people oppose ERA as they belong to a traditional family and believes that women should follow the traditional role in the family. Their life is integrated around religious beliefs, which makes that relatively accessible to anti movements. Some church attendance who commits themself to Christian doctrine, which generally stresses beliefs and gender roles conducive to antifeminism.[5] Their beliefs and ideology are also influenced by the people who they meet in church. Himmelstein, in retrospect, casually questions that people who are antifeminist tend to attend church more often. In either case, there is no scale to measure the exact effect of religious beliefs on antifeminism. The bases of feminism and antifeminism come a lot from the shared culture of each person, which may affect personal psychology.
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FROM HOUSEWIFE
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Thesis topic Reseach | Heer Mandalia | 2020
“Housewives were wedded to husbands, whose name came from hus, an old spelling of house, and bonded,” says Ruth Schwartz Cowan in “More Work for Mother”. Over the years, the meaning of husbands evolved to married males, but the word housewife was attached with many positive and negative connotations. Glenna Matthews in “Just a Housewife” talks about how domesticity evolved with the introduction of the Women’s rights movement. With the shift of women’s role in society, many women felt alienated, as they were questioning the culture of domesticity, which was represented by their own mothers. “The loss of this history as well as the widespread contempt for housewives in the culture made it difficult for feminists to build bridges to their potential housewife constituency.”[7] The history of the word housewife was related with pride and dignity, which is not translated well in contemporary society. Women doing various household chores appeared in the number of advertisements after the industrial revolution. Consumer culture demoted homemaking from a craft tradition to the mindless occupations of primping the house, which played a significant role in stereotyping the role of housewife. During the same period, the word homemakers began to appear instead of housewives, to attain a neutral word for the occupation of homemaking, which failed to fulfill its objective. Many activists like Betty Friedan, author of “The Feminine Mystique” believed that to change the conventional images of women, they must participate in mainstream society, which was to join the workforce. Whereas, Matthews believes that this ideology influenced women themselves in devaluating domesticity. Which might have resulted in influencing Women’s unpaid and unacknowledged participation in household activities.
TO HOMEMAKER
Post Industrial Revolution, the importance of society shifted from inside the homes to the outside of homes. Matthews questions the understanding of homes that, with the loss of importance of homemakers, will home, the site where many of the emotions that make us most fully human are nurtured, will suffer. Though women traditionally performed domestic duties, it does not mean that they are only ones entailed to perform housework. There is a need to redefine domesticity, which can survive and prosper without causing the exploitation of women. There is nothing wrong with gaining economic independence and asking for fair decisions in workplaces. Where the workplace is to gain profit and merit, home is a place where love and nurturing counts, both spheres have their own essential value. There should be a balance of importance in both these spheres, shared between both genders.
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Thesis Proposal In this thesis, I want to observe how the use of different words like homemakers, housewives, or stay-at-home parents, play a role in the understanding of homemakers or how people perceive them in society. I would like to understand the role of a nurturer in society and the effects without any nurturer (homemaker). I want to study the perception of homemakers in contemporary society as they have been an integral part of various cultures for centuries. But, in modern society, women seem to drift away from that occupation. Homemaking is mostly not viewed as a profession, which may have led to the loss of dignity in being one. I want to study the social and psychological aspects of homemakers and why they choose to take this occupation. And understand their viewpoint towards empowerment and gender equality. I want to study the difference between female homemakers and male homemakers and how they are perceived in different cultures. I want to examine the effect of social, religious, or political orientation and viewpoints toward homemaking. I would like to observe this topic from the different lenses of class, race, and residence. I aspire to look at the history of being homemakers and how that connects to the present time. I want to understand feminine and masculine traits in people, how it affects the role of homemakers.
Thesis topic Reseach | Heer Mandalia | 2020
Plan Of Action
Literature Review: -On male homemakers, and their psychology -Comparison between male and women homemakers -Masculine and Feminine traits in people Experiments: -To conduct an experiment that can measure happiness in female homemakers vs. working women. Research study: -Plan interview research of homemakers across different races, gender, culture to learn about external (society) and internal (family and friends) influence on their occupation. Design: -I would like to expiriment with different design ares (Visual language, transformation) to better understand understand and reassess the common understanding of “homemakers�
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Bi bliogra phy 1] Delmar, Rosalind. “2 What is Feminism?.” (1986) 2] Batliwala S. 1993. Empowerment of Women in South Asia: Concepts and Practices. Asian South Pacific Bureau of Adult Education: Mumbai. cited in Cornwall, Andrea. “Women’s empowerment: What works?.” Journal of International Development 28, no. 3 (2016): 342-359. 3] Sholkamy H. 2010. Power, politics and development in the Arab context: or how can rearing chicks change patriarchy? Development 53(2): 254–8. cited in Cornwall, Andrea. “Women’s empowerment: What works?.” Journal of International Development 28, no. 3 (2016): 342-359. 4] Cornwall, Andrea. “Women’s empowerment: What works?.” Journal of International Development 28, no. 3 (2016): 342-359. 5] Himmelstein, Jerome L. “The Social Basis of Antifeminism: Religious Networks and Culture.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 25, no. 1 (1986): 1. 6] BURRIS, Val. 1983. “Who Opposed the ERA? an Analysis of the Social Bases of Anti-Feminism.” Social Science Quarterly 64 (2): 305. 7] Matthews, Glenna. “Just a Housewife.”. New York, NY.: Oxford University Press, 1987. 8]Ahmad, Farhan, and Saira Batool. “Examining Empowerment: Narratives of ‘Homemakers’ from Rural Pakistan.” (2016) 9] Warhank, Murry. “” Women Who Want To Be Women”: The Social And Political Antifeminism Of Phyllis Schlafly.” (2004). 10] Tursunova, Zulfiya, and Chantal Shivanna Ramraj. “On Radical Homemakers by Shannon Hayes.” Storytelling, Self, Society 11, no. 1 (2015): 153-158. 11] Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. More Work for Mother: the Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2008. Cited in Hayes, Shannon. Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture. New York: Left to Write Press, 2010. 12] Hayes, Shannon. Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture. New York: Left to Write Press, 2010.
Thesis topic Reseach | Heer Mandalia | 2020
Thesis topic Reseach Instructor: Gillian Lau Heer Mandalia
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