The Womans Role as the Helper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Womans Role as the Helper - Essay Example As the religious experience within the Judeo-Christian cultures has been founded on a philosophy of the inferiority of women, the role of women has been to take a secondary position to men or launch a battle to fight through the stereotypes to become leaders. In a book published in 1917, Helen Bennett wrote that â€Å"Every demand is made upon the secretary’s imagination, her ingenuity, her versatility, her adaptability, her genius. That her shorthand must be rapid and accurate, her typing correct and artistic, her office methods modern and efficient, her knowledge of detail and of her subject matter endless† (167). Bennett wrote of nurses, newspaper women, and secretaries, giving them all the roles of helpers, but with an understanding that in those roles they would do the work that made the difference. Women have been working in roles that were defined conceptually as helping roles throughout history. These roles have included those of wife, secretary, nurse, elementary education teachers, and as love interest. All these roles have had a cultural insinuation as being roles of support to the male needs so that the male could be free to rule the world in whatever capacity his vocation would deem. This role, however, has been always seen as inferior. This has led to lower wages and lower levels of respect for work that has been done. Sexuality-based theory in regard to the work place suggests that â€Å"the main engine of misogyny is the way in which intercourse has been constructed so that the man is the aggressor and is on top, (while) the woman is passive and is beneath the man† (MacKinnon and Siegel 162).