The Feminist Movement and WorkingClass Women翻译 英语泛读教程3高等教育出版社.docx

1、The Feminist Movement and WorkingClass Women翻译 英语泛读教程3高等教育出版社参考译文1. 课文一2. 课文二Text 1 The Feminist Movement and Working-Class Women by Dina Wills The modern Womens Movement first started in America in 1964 has changed the thinking of women and the attitudes of men towards women. But even today there s

2、till exists a conflict of values between the feminists and the working-class women. The following passage discusses the issue. Im not a womens libber, but. is the opening line of many conversations in which women talk about not getting fair pay, an equal chance for a job, decent working conditions,

3、or the respect given to male workers in the same job. Even in 1989, 25 years after Betty Friedans The Feminine Mystique signaled the start of the modern Womens Movement, many still believe these are their own personal problems, not the result of our economic and social systems. They dont want to be

4、called feminists or womens libbers. Yet, their anger at not being treated fairly means that they do expect to be given opportunities and responsibilities equal to those men get. All women who called themselves feminists could agree on some points. The personal is political meant that womens inequali

5、ty compared to men was not just an individual problem, but happened because the U.S. social, political and economic systems were stacked against them. Legal restrictions, such as laws forbidding women from lifting more than 30 pounds, kept them out of lucrative jobs considered mens work. Women found

6、 it hard to get credit in their own names or to obtain loans to start a business or buy a home. In community property starts, a husband could manage the family finances alone, while his wife could not. Women often were not admitted to law and medical schools; if they did get in, they faced stinging

7、discrimination from teachers and fellow students. The cultural norm insisting that a woman should take a mans name when she married often was enforced as though it were a law; few considered the tremendous psychological shift that occurs when a name is changed. Many women began to recognize that the

8、ir struggles in relationships and jobs were not just their own personal failures, but were related to a cultural system designed to keep them in their place. Their reaction was anger at the patriarchal3 system. The click was a feminist term for that moment of sudden insight when a woman realized tha

9、t she was, indeed, oppressed. For one woman, it happened when she was told by a solicitous male supervisor that in order to succeed in her job she would have to be at least twice as good as any of the men. Click! With the fervor of the newly converted, feminists in the early 1970s believed that, if

10、the feminist message of liberation from patriarchal oppression were heard, it would be accepted by any woman. However, exposure to the ideas of the Womens Movement wasnt enough to make every woman a feminist. Some working-class American women were antagonized by the attitudes feminists expressed tow

11、ards the family, traditional feminine styles of dress and speech, womens paid work, and sexual freedom in relationships and childbearing. Part of this problem was a matter of class. In those early years, the Womens Movement was a middle-class movement, as it often was accused of being. It was begun

12、by women with education who understood how the system worked and could take the time to try to change it. The values expressed were middle-class and often clashed with the realities of working-class womens lives. Besides misunderstanding the importance of truly equal job opportunities, some working-

13、class women had good reason to be cynical about the cries of liberation and equality they heard from the Womens Movement. The issue of paid work for women versus volunteer work and unpaid work in the home was a highly divisive one in the early days of the movement. The vocal feminists quoted in the

14、mass media sounded as though they believed that a woman who didnt work for pay wasnt realizing her full potential. Many of them also argued that some way should be found to pay women for housework, but that idea wasnt given wide coverage in the media. The concept of women having a choice about wheth

15、er to work for pay or not was a middle-class idea; working-class women usually worked, from necessity. To them, not having to work sounded more like liberation. The tone feminists used in delivering the message that women should work for pay bothered some people. In 1973, Social Research, Inc., of C

16、hicago surveyed 410 women in eight cities; one of the areas they probed was the womens response to the Womens Movement. (They referred to it as Womens Lib, a term usually used by opponents of the movement, showing either their ignorance or bias.) SRI found the working-class women in their sample (tw

17、o-thirds of the total) had a stronger sense of being oppressed and victimized than the middle-class women, but didnt believe the Womens Movement offered them any help. They saw it as a contributor to the problem by putting pressure on them to have a job, when they had very little choice in that matt

18、er anyway. They did have jobs, which they would have given up gladly if they could have afforded to stay home without making money. The working-class women in this study resented what they considered to be the authoritarian attitude of leaders of the Womens Movement, an attempt by Lib leaders to tel

19、l other women what they ought to do, feel, be proud of, or ashamed of. Similar attitudes were found by the writers who interviewed individual women. Louise Kapp Howe interviewed several beauticians for Pink Collar Workers. One became very upset when Howe asked if her husband ever helped around the h

20、ouse. No, and I wouldnt want him to. Id rather do my own cooking and my own housekeeping. I dont believe in womens lib. And I dont believe in all that crap-making a husband do half the work. She was typical of other interviewees who believed that a womans role was to stay at home, if possible, and t

21、ake care of the children, though the overwhelming odds were that most of these women worked outside their homes at repetitious, boring, and sometimes dangerous jobs. They usually regarded their husbands jobs as the primary ones and their own as secondary to their vocation of homemaking, no matter ho

22、w important their income was to their familys economic well-being. Oppression didnt mean the same to these working-class women as it did to an academic Marxist feminist or a member of NOW. To working-class women, oppression was what the system did to both women and men, not just something men in a p

23、atriarchal, capitalist system did to women. They saw the mens role as harder than theirs, even when they worked outside the home, too. Therefore, they found it hard to join the Womens Movement in anger directed at men in general.Feminist values and working-class women It was in this area of family,

24、relationships with men, and childbearing that the strongest discrepancies were found between feminist values and those expressed by the working-class women who were interviewed by the writers. The working-class woman gave her family much higher priority than her job it was her major source of self-e

25、steem. Many early feminists considered the family a trap that kept women in bondage. Some, such as Shulamith Firestone in The Dialectic of Sex, suggested alternative ways of rearing children collectively. These feminists did not seem to value children, and the working-class women resented it. The fe

26、minist preoccupation with not being seen as a sex object was another point that led to misunderstanding. A feminist in the early 1970s might refuse to wear skirts or other traditionally feminine clothing, wear a hair style she could care for herself, and never wear make-up. Working-class women lived

27、 in a culture where such unorthodox dress could send an unpleasant message. As one woman put it, A liberated working-class woman may be considered a slut. Beauticians interviewed by several writers pointed out that they had one of the best jobs for a working-class woman. One said, You dont understan

28、d how many of us go into beauty work because we want to be independent. We can have a shop at home be our own boss, be there when the kids come home from school, and keep ourselves together if the old man cuts out. Another told Howe, You cant tell me its bad for a woman to care about her appearance.

29、 I do, and I think Im as liberated as anybody. For these women who rarely had a choice about whether or not to work for pay, equal pay for equal work could have been an idea they shared with feminists. Why didnt they join with the Womens Movement to demand employment equality with men? Two reasons e

30、merge from the interviews. Equal employment opportunity first was mentioned at a union rally in 1887; the idea has been part of working womens lives for more than 100 years. Low-income women have gone on strike and asked for better wages and working conditions for many years. They didnt see this as

31、an issue the Womens Movement could claim as its own, but as a separate one with a long history of rebuffs and setbacks. Second, while they could agree with equal pay for equal work in the abstract, there was a strong feeling expressed that, given any problem with the number of jobs available, a man

32、always should be given a job so that he could support his family. They recognized the hardship this worked on a single woman, but, with their emphasis on family relationships, they believed the policy of giving men preference for jobs and better pay was the best course for society as a whole. They saw little chance the system would change so that women could get and keep jobs paying enough for a family to live on; they had been fighting that system for a long time.