What Do You Think About It?

Posted on October 17, 2007

I read a quote today:

“Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex.” - Karl Marx

Very profound. And kind of weird because about an hour before reading the quote, I found that after clicking through different links on different pages that I had gotten myself on the Karl Marx Wikipedia page. Funny. What started from a story about a Wagner opera turned into my trying to see if I could get an understanding of what communism is all about. Of course, all of that was too heavy to deal with while at work. Maybe one day, I’ll get a book on it…

Anyway, back to the quote.

“Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex.”

What type of social progress are we making? As a human race? As a country? In the Black community?

How are women viewed? Treated?

I’m interested in any reader’s insight about this quote.

Images of women in society

Comments

2 Responses to “What Do You Think About It?”

  1. thembi on October 17th, 2007 1:53 pm

    Women still make 75 cents for each dollar a man makes for the same work so I’d say no…not much progress there.

    I also think that the underlying premise of this quote is that society is only doing as well as the least valued members of that society. Since race wasn’t an issue in Communist Russia (black russian? nah…) I think maybe women were on the lowest rung.

  2. Don Thieme on October 28th, 2007 10:30 am

    I think that our media portrayals of women and female role models have gone downhill in terms of status since the 1960s, with the possible exception of athletes. I am not really in a position to judge the actual status, but I think that it might be a bit better. We have a woman in strong contention for the presidency and have seen women become CEOs of Fortune 500 companies such as Hewlett-Packard.

    @thembi - It is not appropriate to identify Karl Marx with Russia in any way. He spent his youth in Germany and his old age in England. He definitely never thought of Russia as a country where socialist revolution would be imminent. He was certainly aware of discrimination against minorities, being Jewish. Marx and Engels wrote about the American Civil War and recognized that political rights such as voting were not going to provide them with complete liberty.

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