Earlier Women of the Twentieth Century Essay Example for Free

Earlier Women of the Twentieth Century Essay The essay is based on the examination of discourses concerning the establishment of women and analysis of shifting patterns of child care within households in the opening decades of the early twentieth century, this study argues that although household divisions of labour by gender and age existed in early modern era, a more rigid female specialization in certain types of domestic work in housekeeping and child-rearing as opposed to childbearing and expected participation in more varied forms of productive labour developed during the modern era, especially for young married women. Beginning with the middle-class concern, women started loosing their morals towards family and children. It was due to the changing attitude of women that children that once were considered dependents and consumers became income earners and productive workers in their households. A number of recent studies of colonial Spanish and Portuguese America, for instance, have demonstrated that European notions of family honour and sexual morality were adapted in specific ways to the American colonies. Commoners in early modern Spain who testified before the Inquisition resisted the idea that it was sinful to have consensual sexual relations with prostitutes or non-virgin single women. This attitude was probably common in Portugal as well. Resistance to the church’s moral prescriptions grew considerably in the Americas, where European men frequently considered it their right to take Indian or African women, and equated their status with that of single women, regardless of their virginity, previous marriage, or the terms of their consent. (Caulfield, 2000, p. 5) In contrast, for elite families in Brazil and throughout Spanish and Portuguese America marriage alliances were crucial political and economic strategies up to the nineteenth century and even later in some areas. (Caulfield, 2000, p. 6) Parents chose children’s, especially daughters’, marriage partners with care. Legitimate birth and ‘purity of blood’ which came to mean the absence of African and Indian heritage was essential elements of status, and hence family honour, although ‘stains’ could often be washed away with money. Tremendous value was placed on the sexual chastity of privileged colonial women, who were generally considered white. Elite women’s seclusion not only marked them as morally superior to common women in the eyes of their peers but, also ensured the endogamy of their class and race. Scholars disagree about how to interpret this social reality, for both the colonial period and later. Some point to the high numbers of consensual unions, illegitimate children, and female-headed households to argue that the popular classes developed a set of alternative moral values in which patriarchal notions of family, women’s subordination, and the moral ideals of marriage and women’s chastity were relatively unimportant. An existence passed almost entirely within the confines of the domestic sphere, as was the case for the majority of the women interviewed, favours the recollection of events and deeds associated with that area of activity. So it is not surprising that they supplied often very precise details about daily life, more than their husbands would have been able to do, right down to the price of groceries and their husbands’ wages during the early years of their marriage. (Caulfield, 2000, p. 56) This â€Å"family memory† does not, however, operate according to the same dates or points of reference as does official history. On many occasions during the course of the interviews, the framework of events was reconstructed around the years when children were born, a close relative died or a move took place. The women were questioned more about how they had lived rather than what they had witnessed of the events which took place around them, an approach which, in theory, minimizes the risk of mistakes or oversights. We ought not, however, overlook the fact that respondents generally attempt to preserve the image they have of themselves or of the group to which they belong. This image refers to a socially and sexually oriented construction, but one whose elements may change according to the historical period. Even if these variations alter what was taboo into what is now acceptable, behaviours that were deemed deviant in previous years-premarital pregnancy, for example-can be more difficult to ascertain. Despite present-day tolerance of behaviour of this kind, the person being questioned knows that she transgressed the norm that was in force at the time and may still feel so embarrassed that she seeks to disguise the fact, even if it means lying about the date of her marriage or the year her first child was born. According to Uno (1999) â€Å"Rather than a deliberate and conscious lie, experience reveals that omissions and evasive responses are the means used to avoid an embarrassing question that has revived painful memories†. (Uno, 1999, p. 74) Whether conscious or not, these â€Å"oversights† and â€Å"mistakes† are as significant as the memory of an event and ought to be submitted to analysis when they can be identified. Even if parents were generally content to exercise a discreet and indirect surveillance over the unmarried couple, they rarely found themselves alone with one another, so important was it to preserve the young woman’s virginity, whether or not she was of age. This concern would even grow with industrialization and the appearance of new places for young people to meet away from traditional family settings, since it became more difficult to exercise control over the young. On dates, the parents made sure that the couple was accompanied by a brother, a sister, other adults, or, if necessary, their friends. The revolution in traditions and norms took place in 1930 when domestic labour was in the context of the depression. This involved a sample of women who were already married at the beginning of that decade. The most catastrophic year according to the economic indicators, 1933, was used as a reference point. The reason was nothing other than the emergence of classes in the era, which were the resultant of lack of opportunities. The probability that women who married much after this date would have felt the effects of the Depression on their domestic labour was indeed less great. Nevertheless, in order to be able to establish comparisons, it was necessary to find women who had spent the early years of their marriages before the depression or whose husbands had been working during the first months of the marriage. The influence of the Depression and of unemployment was felt largely in urban areas and it was the men of the working class, especially unskilled labourers, and tradesmen who were primarily affected. These factors thus determined the selection of respondents who had to have lived in a working-class district of Montreal in the years between 1929 and 1939. The residence qualification, while it may seem rather vague, permitted us to enlist women who, because of their partners’ occupations, had shared the living conditions of the working class without necessarily presuming their own class affiliations. It was the factory workers who changed their occupation least often though the majority of them worked for more than one employer. They worked longer than the other women in the sample; it is among this group that is found the four women who worked for more than ten years before marriage. On the other hand, domestic work, generally detested because of its servile character and because of the extremely long hours which it entailed, is where we observe the greatest mobility, as only one informant worked exclusively as a domestic and she did so for a rather short period of time (one year). Domestics’ wages were extremely low, between one and five dollars a week, but according to one informant, â€Å"What our parents counted was the food. You understand, if you have two working, that’s two less to feed†. (Baillargeon Klein, 1999, p. 57) Most of the time, domestic work represented a transitional occupation between the home and the factory, or the office or shop. These jobs, factory worker, saleswoman or clerk, generally involved a noticeable increase in salary, but what was more appreciated were the working conditions, particularly regular hours and the possibility of contact with other working women. â€Å"It was clean, and we weren’t bored. It wasn’t like in the private homes, where the day was never over. The hell with private homes! We were happy enough-we had our evenings free†. (Baillargeon Klein, 1999, p. 96) In this connection, it must be stressed that it was not simply the household tasks or the conditions inherent in this kind of work that put them off, but also, and most particularly, the context in which they arose. Beyond the isolation, the arbitrary employers, the long hours, and the array of tasks demanded of them, what they detested above all else was the idea of being ‘in service to’ someone else, of playing the subordinate’s role in a highly personalized relationship. One major way that early modern women constructed selves, was through social networks, often women’s networks. These women fashioned their identities in relation to salons, convents, family circles, epistolary communities, and social religious groups devoted to particular reading or singing practices. For example, a trend towards devotional intimacy in France travelled through women’s letter writing, and psalm singing in churches established connections across gender and class barriers. (Adele Mikesell, 2003, p. 36) Conclusion Recent trends in women’s studies and feminist theory have influenced the conceptual framework and methodology of the facts explored about the early twentieth century women. While historians have traditionally explored continuities and discontinuities in ideas, institutions, and practices, postmodernism has given new dimension to the exploration of opposition or rupture not only in the facts, events, and ideas being studied, but also in the conceptual frameworks scholars analyse the changes that took place between 1900 and 1945. For some years, however, women’s history and the history of the family have underscored the importance of the domestic sphere and of the work which women do in it in order to understand the totality of historical reality. The work undertaken in these fields has provided evidence of the connections which exist between the family and the world of work and of the central role played in this dynamic by women. References/ Bibliography Adele Seeff Mikesell Margaret, (2003) Culture and Change: Attending to Early Modern Women: University of Delaware Press: Newark, DE. Baillargeon Denyse Klein YvonneMaking, (1999) Do: Women, Family, and Home in Montreal during the Great Depression: Wilfrid Laurier University Press: Waterloo, Ont. Caulfield Sueann, (2000) In Defense of Honor: Sexual Morality, Modernity, and Nation i

Georgian Territory Essay -- South Ossetia, Abkhazia

South Ossetia and Abkhazia Russia’s involvement in conflict settlement on the territory of Georgia had always been the most controversial, even before the events of August 2008. After breaking out in December 1990, the conflict in South Ossetia was ended in June 1992 by the signing of a ceasefire agreement in Dagomys. According to the agreement, Russia was to act as a guarantor of peace and security. In August 1992, there was a further escalation in another conflict on Georgian territory – in Abkhazia. According to experts, in the years prior to this (1991-1992) and during the first month of the war, Russia played a double role, providing military aid both to Georgia and Abkhazia. There was no consensus among the Russian policy-making elites with regard to the conflict. Only after September 1992 did Russia begin to support Abkhazia more actively (Antonenko, 2005). Shevarnadze had no other choice but to sign another ceasefire agreement with Russia, the so-called Moscow A greement of 1994 on Abkhazia. The Georgian leadership acted under the threat of a further escalation of the conflict and a possible large-scale confrontation with their much stronger neighbour. This explains why the Georgian President had to agree to negotiation formats and mechanisms of conflict settlement with Russia in the leading role, although Georgia would have preferred greater involvement of other international actors in conflict resolution efforts. Although the peacekeeping forces stationed in Abkhazia had a mandate from the CIS, they were exclusively Russian troops. For political negotiations, two formats were established: the Geneva process (with the participation of Georgia and Abkhazia and the UN Secretary-General’s Group of Friends of Georgia, involv... ...ssia’s moves to contribute to conflict resolution have been quite reluctant, and have not broken the negotiation deadlock in any of the four cases. Russia constantly felt both the pressure of Georgia and Moldova, which have questioned the legitimacy of Russian peacekeeping forces, and that caused by the interest of other international actors in launching civil and civil-military missions of their own. In sum, it has invested much (both rhetorically and in practice) in defending its right to remain in the zones of conflict. However, as Ivan Sukhov has rightly noted, the presence of a Russian contingent in Georgia should not have been a goal in itself. Unlike the situation in the 1990s, a Russian peacekeeping mission would have made sense only if it was combined with active Russian efforts towards conflict settlement, together with the US and the EU (Sukhov, 2006).

China

In my opinion theses terms would be ‘national' and ;corporate' culture, along with cross-cultural differences. Even within a culture there are many groupings and levels that are present within each Individuals mental outlook. These include cultural layers such as, national culture, regional culture, gender, generation, social as well as corporate culture. I will touch on these all very briefly In the main body of my essay but concentrate mainly on the national and corporate layers of culture. (www. Tama. Du) National Culture can be described as, † The result from one nation attributing characteristics to another, which can exult In stereotyping and prejudice. National culture needs to take account of differences In the groups and communities which all contribute to national culture. † (www. Pearson. Co. UK) If stereotyping and prejudice are occurring in the workplace this can have many detrimental effects on employees and their motivation or ability to work as part of the organization. Will pay more attention to how this could possibly affect business success later on In the essay.Corporate culture can be described, † The basic assumptions and beliefs held by employees about the organization they work for. (www. USC. Com) Corporate culture will affect the Interaction between diverse groupings within the workplace and like national culture, is very likely to have and effect on how the workforce perform. I am going to start the main body of my essay providing an outline of the concept of national culture and move on to the concepts of corporate culture, before comparing all firms are going to view success in the same way and ways can vary differently from firm to firm.For clarity I will touch on how different firms could view the term ‘being successful' and measuring their own success. I will then look at what those aspects that may be considered as a cross-cultural difference and how these factors are going to impede the organizatio n's success. Finishing with a few basic ideas on how to avoid the problems brought about by cross-cultural differences and how to manage these to become a potentially more successful organization. Finally I am going to conclude on any findings from my research and in a short summary, link those findings back to the essay title.A national culture attributes certain specific characteristics from one nation to another. This can be in the from of stereotyping and grouping all members of a action together in the same way. An example of national culture could be that the British drink far too much and have a tendency to become violent, giving rise to hooliganism especially in the context of football. To tarnish all football fans with this presentment would be incorrect as only a small minority are responsible for causing the trouble.On the other hand corporate culture refers to an individuals own personal views concerning the organization they are working for. These views and ideas are li kely to be brought about from the employees own experiences in the workplace and are robbery going to vary and change over time as they work for the organization. The difference between national and organizational or corporate culture would be that national culture is more associated with the nation as a whole and less about the individuals ideas.Where as corporate culture deals more with the individuals personal outlook on things concerning the work environment. The prejudice that comes with national culture may be forced upon the individual which is not the case for corporate culture, which allows the individual to build up beliefs through their past experiences. (wry. Tama. Du) With globalization becoming a much more common factor to consider for many businesses, this poses the problem of cross-cultural differences as barriers that have to be overcome if the firm is to stand the best chance of being successful.Globalization can have huge benefits for a firm's success if it is car ried out in the right way and attention is paid to details such as cultural differences. However the firm could end up paying heavily if they over look the importance and significance of cross-cultural differences for the employees they are working with. Cross-cultural differences may include such issues as the communication used and ethos of transferring information between cultures and departments, the of solving the same problem, also the area within the organization over which any information is dispersed. Www. Tapping. Com) The problem if communication between cultures is a tough one, as the same gestures is likely to have different meanings in different areas and cultures. A good example of this would be the fact that in Bulgaria shaking your head up and down means no rather the side to side in many other places. Along with gestures, words and phrases can have different meanings which could cause confusion when carrying out business across cultural lines. Also different cultur es make different assumptions when faced with the same situation.In international projects these differences could make or break the outcome from the start if processes and agreements are not clear to both cultural sides. Miscommunication is thought of as the largest cross-cultural barrier that has to be overcome by an organization, to achieve potential success. (www. Tapping. Com) The above problems would be made more aware at the national culture level but it is important not to forget the cross-cultural differences will still be occurring at the organizational or corporate level.These differences are mentioned below. An organization is unlikely to be structured in exactly the same way if set up in more than one country and this is going to affect the way in which day to day tasks are carried out in different places. Such things as distributing power and information throughout departments in the workplace are very varied in different countries. An example of this would be the way in which information is passed through a firm in Germany compared to that of an American firm.The German firm is likely to keep information within set departments and only inform those who need to know. Whereas as an American firm is likely to move information across departments more freely. (www. Tapping. Com) When talking about success in business there can be many interpretations and people will view success differently. Especially in different cultures when looking at the emphasis that is put on financial success it is clear to see it varies greatly. A good example of this would be the different outlooks between the Chinese and American culture.America places business as it's main priority with success being seen as achieving wealth. Economics are put first in the American outlook and the culture is very individual based. This places large emphasis on financial gain as being the measurement success. (www. Venturesome. Com) This differs from the Chinese outlook with China placing emphasis on building relationships and respect is given for wisdom and ability. This is not to say that China view no success in financial gain, as this is the baseline for business activity. (www. Venturesome. Mom) Schneider and Barbour state how, â€Å"each country has its unique institutional and point, only to become liabilities when the environment changes. Managers therefore need to evaluate the extent to which national culture can interfere with their many†¦ † (Mullions '07) This shows that if national culture is nurtured in the correct fashion by management then it can most certainly be advantageous to a business' success. However the flip side to this could be that if nurtured incorrectly projects undertaken are likely to be unsuccessful.It is proving to be a very important issue that has to be looked at and approached with care by managed as in the United States the Department of Labor released statistics showing how between 1985 and 2000 only around 15% of ne w entrants into the workforce in the USA were white males. This obviously shows Just how diverse he workforce is becoming and how much of an important factor culture in the workplace is for management. For all businesses success is determined by reaching corporate goals and objectives.Those goals and objectives are very likely to vary between different organizations and could be anything from breaking into a new market and merely surviving at first, to reaching set profits or targets in their current market. Avoiding the problem of cross-cultural differences can greatly help the organization to achieve success. For this to be done attention to those details mentioned above must be taken (communication etc. The main problem for firms may be confusion in communication methods, by paying fine attention to this any confusion can be reduced.Removing confusion can be done by, clarifying what is expected, removing general details, summarizing information and decisions as well as simplifyin g any language used. (www. Tapping. Com) In summary, when looking at the differences between national and corporate culture, it is easy to see that national culture refers to a much larger and impersonal outlook towards a nation, where as corporate culture is more about the individuals feelings towards their employer based on experience. Cross-cultural differences can include such things as communication and information sharing within an organization and how these are carried out.

Welcome Spring With These May Day Quotes

May Day  is celebrated on the first of May around the world. While it is a Northern Hemisphere spring holiday, it also coincides with International Workers’ Day. Whether the beauty of spring season in May or the importance of labor, May Day is a fine  time for celebration and good thoughts. The following May Day quotes will add to your celebratory mood. Share them with friends and relive the best moments of your life this May Day. Helen Hunt Jackson O May, sweet-voice one, going thus before, Forever June may pour her warm red wine Of life and passions,--sweeter days are thine! Denis Florence McCarthy Ah! my heart is weary waiting, Waiting for the May: Waiting for the pleasant rambles Where the fragrant hawthorn brambles, Where the woodbine alternating, Scent the dewy way; Ah! my heart is weary, waiting, Waiting for the May. Charlotte Smith Another May new buds and flowers shall bring: Ah! why has happiness no second Spring? Thomas Bailey Aldrich Hebes here, May is here! The air is fresh and sunny; And the miser-bees are busy Hoarding golden honey. William Shakespeare Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summers lease hath all too short a date. As full of spirit as the month of May, and as gorgeous as the sun in Midsummer. Robin Williams Spring is natures way of saying, Lets party! Hal Borland April is a promise that May is bound to keep. Robert Frost The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day. Virgil Now every field is clothed with grass, and every tree with leaves; now the woods put forth their blossoms, and the year assumes its gay attire. Arthur Rubenstein The seasons are what a symphony ought to be: four perfect movements in harmony with each other. Gustav Mahler With the coming of spring, I am calm again.