Feminism and it's impact on women's rights - Essay Example

Through globalization and its psychological effect, changes such as more women in the workforce worked to change ideologies concerning the roles of women. With this, women had more roles available in the public sphere. The Industrial Revolution drew workers of both genders into the cities to work, changing the long-held ideology that women’s roles were domestic. With more women in the workforce, retailers recognized a new demographic. Public women had more need for clothing to designate social class.

By the late nineteenth century, shopping replaced the church as an important activity; “the rise of the department store and of the consumer society providing a highly legitimate, if limited, participation in the public sphere” (Wolff, 1985). “The high point of the nineteenth century shopping revolution was the creation of the department store … this was an environment half-public, half-private, and it was a space that women were able to inhabit comfortably” (Wilson, 1992). This gave rise to sensual identification, which then became a freely marketed commodity.

Women from all social classes mixed within these new acceptable spaces. “Their financial position notwithstanding, women’s independence does seem to have increased when they lived in towns” (Wilson, 1992). “The special provisions to ensure that women felt comfortable” spread rapidly through “ladies-only dining rooms, and the opening of West End establishments, such as the Criterion (1874), which specifically catered for women” (Wilson, 1992), plus the cinema and exhibition hall.

“The cinema proved to offer powerful reflections that lay threadbare the identity, societal institutions and political power struggles that remained as constructed entities in the metropolis” (McKenzie, 2003). The impact of the internet has increased women’s public interaction, but this does not mean women were quick to accept each other or other classes. According to Doreen Massey, “occasionally, too, it has been part of what has given rise to defensive and reactionary responses – certain forms of nationalism, sentimentalized recovering of sanitized ‘heritages’, and outright antagonism to newcomers and ‘outsiders’” (Massey, 1994).

Clothing has always been a means of identifying status and fashion emerged as a dominant force. “A whole range of exciting yarns, new fashion fabrics, protective materials and engineered fabrics became widely available after 1960. New materials and fabric finishing techniques are at first exclusive and expensive. Initially, they are offered to the world of haute couture. A couple of years later they filter to the mass market” (Thomas, 2001). The rapid transit of information demonstrates changing ideologies while easing traditionalists into the new ideas.

“In the comfort of one’s own home, the television monitor scales down the stark newness of an idea … and this makes it easier for us to accept more quickly” (Thomas, 2001). The city propelled women into the public and their new status as public figures. That they were ratified was reflected in the way cinema and fashion continuously change to meet social awareness, preference for functionality and the increasing sexuality of women. These trends helped ease these ideas into traditional mindsets and contributed to the redefining of further ideologies.