Why Political Texts

According to one definition of oxford advance learner’s dictionary, “politics is the activities involved in getting and using power in public life, and being able to influence decisions that affect a country or a society”. That mean whatever activities are done to get power and use power in the society is politics. And political texts are written to bring forth the issues and hurdles for in making a better politics and solving the problems. Amartya Sen writes her article More than 100 million Women missing with the aim to find a reason to find the reason for the missing women in Asia and the issue of low ratio of women to men. This article thoroughly rebuts the two views about the reasons of neglecting women in Asia: cultural contrast between East and West and the economic development. He says that these both do not support the concept of missing women very well as there are places in the world and Asia where these views are not applied. In this way the whole essay shows that these two views are excuses for the missing women. The women are missing only because they are not given equal rights and are discriminated in the societies and the societies where there is less discrimination women are lively hood, survival rate and the ratio of women to men is much higher.

In the same way in the article Women’s Capabilities and the Right to Education in Bangladesh by Mary Arends-Kuenninng and Sajeda Amin bring forth the reason and issues related to the women’s education. One concept about women’s education according to this article is the instrumentalist view where women’s education and women are taken as a source for the economic development of the society. The other concept is the capabilities approach is considers women education as a way to empower women, to enhance their agency and to insure their well being. However instrumentalist view is more prominent in Bangladesh, most of the parents consider as a marriage capital. This article concludes that education might have given the women benefits, but the women in Bangladesh still don’t have the capability to have control over the environment, they still don’t have the right to decide for their life and still they cannot challenge the society for the discrimination and inequality against women. In addition if women’s education is considered as a way to empower women most of the parents won’t let their girls to get education, which will challenge the status quo of the society and the country. Thus there are issues regarding to the women’s education in Bangladesh as it does not contribute well in empowering women, but largely enhances the capital interests.

Works cited

Arends-Kuenning,Mary and Amin,Sanjeda, “Women’s capability and right to education in     Bangladesh .” International Journal of Politics and Society, Vol. 15, No.1,September 2001. Print

Sen, Amartya. “More Than 100 Million Missing Women.”Nybooks Archives. Dec, 1990. Mar 4, 2013.

A paragraph from More than 100 Million Missing Women

Amartya Sen in third paragraph on the second page of his article “More than 100 Million Missing Women” claims that the number of missing women we estimate by comparing the ratio of women to men in countries like china, India, and Africa and the ratio in the countries where women and men are given similar rights, reveals that these countries—China, India, and Africa—have terrible gender inequality, which leads to low survival rate of women.

To support his claim Amartya Sen uses two hard evidences: the ratio of women to men (0.94) in South Asia and the ratio of women to men (1.05) in countries where women and men get similar rights. These two claim strongly supports the main idea of this paragraph that women’s survival rate is low because of the discrimination of women. He further deduces logos by calculating the number of missing women—6% deficit—first by considering equal population of both sexes and comparing the ratio of women to men 0.94. Then by comparing the ratio 1.05 he finds that the number of missing women increased to 11%. The number he calculated of missing women in China—develop  country—that  is 50 million, supports one of his claim that only development in the society does not affect on the women survival rate. Further the 100 million missing women in India supports the claim that discrimination of women regarding the basic rights can cause fewer women survive.

This paragraph specifically discusses the reason of the missing women and gives logical evidences and facts in support. It is the directly related to the main purpose of the article: finding the reason of the missing women in countries like India, Africa and China. This paragraph shows that the one of the largest reasons for the missing women is the unequal rights, and the strong logos helps the readers to believe the author’s claim.

 

Work cited

Sen, Amartya, “More Than 100 Million Missing Women.” Nybooks Archives. Dec 20, 1990. Mar 4, 2013.

Education Is Important for the Empowerment of Women ( More than 100 Million Women Missing and A Room of One’s own)

I am a student of a women’s university. Women education was not given importance in past. People like Amartya Sen and Virginia Woolf struggled for women education in past and made my studying in a women’s university possible. Without education women cannot be powerful in today’s world. In the same way it was the only reason for the women’s being inferior, suppressed, unintelligent, unimaginative, and were not able to write poetry and plays like Shakespeare in Shakespeare’s age, according to Woolf. She says that even if any woman of that age was genius like Shakespeare she would not be able to write like him as she was the suppressed creature and was not allowed to get education. She further says that to be genius like Shakespeare women of his days needed education and genius could not “have been born among women whose work began, almost before they were out of nursery”(42, Woolf). Likewise Amartya Sen also emphasizes on women’s education for the raise of life expectancy of women. To get an employment, which can empower women in many ways, education is one of the important things. He says that the status of women in her home also depends on her employment. Employment further provides women with income on which she can rely, social status will be increased as an earning person and she will have experience being involved in the employment. To support this Amartya Sen, gives the example of Kerala India where the literacy rate is remarkably high so is the rate of their life expectancy and ratio of women to men.

Both the texts stress on the less power, failing, and vulnerable to discrimination of women due to their illiteracy. Both of the writers strongly believe that to be mentally, socially, and economically strong women need education. Without education women can never be genius minded, never be socially, mentally, physically strong. In order to make them strong, genius, earner, having high life expectancy they need education.
Works cited
Sen, Amartya. ‘More than 100 Million Missing Women.” Nybooks Archives. Dec 20, 1990. Mar 4, 2013.
Woolf, Virginia. “A Room of One’s Own.” Fort Washington: Harvest Book. 1981. First published 1929.                                                                                                                        

My Mom, a Feminist

It has been only some months I became aware of the term feminism. I was aware of women rights, but never thought there would be a group fighting for women’s rights equal to men. But when I think of feminism now, I believe that my mom is a great feminist, even though she has no idea about word feminism. For me feminist is a person who does not individually support the stereotypes, being a strong woman and making yourself equal to the men of that society. According to a feminist teacher feminism does not necessarily mean to stand against the society and fight for the rights of women (Smith).

My mother is the best example of my definition of feminists. When she got married after her matriculation, she did not stay at home like other women in my family. She applied for teaching post and became the first female teacher in my area back in Pakistan. Of course my granny and other family members were against this, but mom did not care for what they said. She was from a town and married to a village man where girls were not educated. When the people saw my mom teaching in a school with male staff, the people spread many rumors. She had to ignore all those and continue her job, because she did not want to suffer like other women.  She became a role model for other girls and parents who wanted their daughters to be educated.  And due to the society they could not send them to school, they started to send their daughters to school. Now almost every girl is getting education. Our culture does not want women to go beyond the boundaries of the culture. And if any one does that they have to face consequences, may be they would be punished or they will face problems in their married life. The only thing needed is to stay calm and continue what we are doing if we really want a change.

In developed societies some of the feminist have grown into anti male. They have brought disturbances in those societies. If women grew anti male than women will not be different from the stereotyped men, who still consider women as their properties. On the other hand my mom didn’t do anything like that, she just persuaded her dream of being a teacher, regardless of the oppositions from our family.  If my mom had gone against men or tried to bring any change by challenging the society, she might have had ended in a divorce which at that time many of our relatives wanted my father to do. What my mom did was, not supported the stereotype and started working like the male members of the society. She did not persuade anyone to send their daughters to school, but gradually the people around started to see the benefits of educating girls, especially my family member supported her as she was earning for the family.

Therefore, to bring a change, an individual should try to bring change in themselves and than in the family, before changing the society. There are people who want change in the society; they just do not want to be the first one to take the initiative. If we demand for equal rights for men and women in my society, and do strikes, come on the roads, then men will not support and without the support of men we cannot insure women rights. Everything which is abrupt and sudden is not benificial and that only leads to disturbance in the society.

Work cited

Smith, Madeline. “Feminism.” Asian University for Women, Chittagong. 19 Feb. 2013

If Plato was not a feminist then tell me who he was?

If we look back to classical Athens we will find the epitome of suppressed women. They were more or less considered as the properties of men: first the properties of their fathers and after marriage properties of their husbands. They were considered very weak and unfit for any profession and they were working in the houses thorough out their lives like slaves. We will find very few women who got chance to get education or in general women had very few rights. There were very few people who spoke up for the welfare of women and one of them is the great philosopher, Plato.

Eventhough Plato supported a group of female, we cannot say he was a feminist as it is a very modern term, we can say he stepped up towards the formation of feminism. I have read one of his writings “Symposium”. When I first read it I found it an anti feminist text. There are lots of points where the speakers constantly discriminate women. The last speech, which is delivered by Socrates, somehow changed my mind and it made me juggle around with the whole Symposium. I felt that Plato wants to show the status of women of Athens through those speeches and in the last part he shows what he actually thinks of women. Plato uses Socrates voice to convey a woman’s (Diotima’s) thoughts. People who do not consider Plato as feminist say that if he was a feminist he would have made a female (Diotima) one of the main characters. However, he probably wants to show that a woman can be more intelligent and can be intellectually stronger than men and he points this out by Socrates’ speech where he is delivering Diotima’s thoughts and shows that Socrates was inspired by Diotima. The question arises here that if Plato was not supporting woman and like other Athenian men was considering women as worthless, than what could be his intention of showing Socrates speech (Diotima’s) thoughts as the more considered and thoughtful speech of all the speeches?

Opponents also argue that Plato did not actually respected women, he only respected the talent they were having, but we should keep in mind that Plato was in a society where even those women who were talented had no importance only because of their gender. Giving credit to the talent without being gender biased can ascend female’s status to some extent. Nancy Vanheerst in her article “feminism and Plato” says that going against what his society taught him that the women can never be equivalent to men, Plato stood up for those who could not stand for their own rights. So, it will be unfair to compare Plato’s thoughts with today’s feminism theory; rather we should give him credit as a feminist of that time for raising his voice for the privileged community.

Love (the Harmony of the Opposites)

“Where there is love there is life” (Mahatma Ghandi). Gandhi Jee, a famous politician of India thinks love is important to be alive. In the same way people throughout the world have defined love according to their insight. Love is one of the favorite topics to define since ages. It is part of literature in the form of poems, novels, articles, debates etc. Plato has given different definitions of love in his symposium. The one which got my attention is the speech of Erximachus (a doctor), who gave the definition of love he learned from his job. His definition was different from all other speakers because he gave the definition which is not restricted to only human beings and according to him “love occurs everywhere in the universe” (470). If we ponder upon his saying we will find it true. People feel the strength of love in nature; there are thousands of examples of people praising the beauty of moon, clouds, gardens, singing birds, shining stars and the waves in the sea.

Farther more Erximachus is telling about the two types of loves we possess in our body, noble love and ugly love. Noble love is the one which a healthy body possesses and the ugly one is the love unhealthy body possesses. As other speakers in symposiums praised the heavenly love and repudiated the common love, Erximachus also says it is the duty of the physician to discriminate between the noble and ugly love and deal with them accordingly. He said healing can be done by establishing mutual love between oppositeelements.  For example if a part of body is unhealthy our brain and other parts struggle to make it healthy again by secreting enzymes and hormones, the two opposite parts comes together and fighting together for the single reason. It is not only in medicine the harmony of opposite elements is needed in music and poems and seasons too. Without the high and low notes used together music cannot be formed and a poem will be a monotonous if we will not use different types of words. If Seasons of the earth those include hot and cold, wet and dry will not be in proper harmony that means that are not controlled by the noble love, they will destroy the life on the earth.  Erximachus’ speech about the harmony of total opposite things for the creation of love, made me think was he supporting the male female love unlike other speaker, who consider man/woman love as vulgar love.

The essence of love “The Looking glass” By Kamla Das

Looking Glass by Kamal Dass is a lyric poetry. It is a short poetry, having twenty four lines, and there is no break in the lines and every line is linked to the proceeding line. It has no rhyme scheme and no rhythm. And every line is capitalized. Though the poet has used simple words, they are actually giving beauty to the poem. Poet has not made it verbose using several metaphors, similes and other contents of poem. It is simple and that is the beauty of this poem.

Author herself is the speaker in this poem and her intended audience are the women who are logging for love. In the first line she is ensuring all women that they can easily find a lover. From second to seventh line she is giving tips to women how to get a man to love her. She is actually showing what a woman can do for her lover. The most precious quality of a woman is her modesty, but in front of that man she become “nude”, only because she wants her man to believe he is much more “stronger” and she is more “softer, younger, lovelier”(3-5). She becomes happy by offering her whole life to her beloved.By doing so woman is accepting that whatever she has is his now, there is no more secrets and privacy form him. In lines seven to twelve she is telling to enjoy every moment with that person. Observe and feel his every action and share his very private moments of life and these are “the details that make/ Him a male and your only man” (12). It is not only about sharing the man’s private life; it is also about sharing her own private life with him. Gifting him everything that is unique and beautiful about her and which makes her woman. So the man will be all hers and in line seventeen she is again repeating that “getting/ A man to love is easy”(16-17)

Though the poet has only talked about love and happiness till seventeenth line, form line eighteen to twenty four she is writhing about imagery horrible world, without the lover. She is using “living without life” for that life. Every part of the body is in a state of nostalgia. The eyes become tired of searching and his last words always echo in her ears (20-22). In the last line poet is using metaphor “burnished brass” for the body which was healthy and full of life when she was with her lover, but now it is life less and has no destination (23-24). After losing dear ones a person loses his/her individuality. The only thing which stays the same is as the topic suggested “the looking glass”. It is still there staring at you, which was with you when you were spending the most beautiful moments of life. It reminds you that how bland is life without him.