Fear and Shame: Underpinnings of Women’s Oppression
摘要
Women’s oppressionOppression has been a global issue throughout the history of human civilization in spite of numerous efforts made to eradicate it. It is essential to understand and reveal the factors that keep womenWomen and girls subordinated and oppressed to protect them from oppressionOppression. Scholars have discussed various reasons associated with women’s oppressionOppression: patriarchy—the prime obstacle to women advancement, women’s acceptance of violation, perpetrators’ perception that discriminationDiscrimination is less injurious, and social stigma attached to women. Understanding the underpinnings of women’s oppression requires delving into both social structure as well as individual psychology. This paper delves into the emotional aspect and tries to dig up the reason for women’s acceptance of oppressionOppression in daily life. It has been found that fearFear and shameShame, two negative emotions which are considered as negative for the proper developmentDevelopment of human personality, are hammered deeply in girls’ brain through socialization from early years that force girls to turn into timid women. The psychology of fear and shame which are indoctrinated into girls increases the tendency to accept oppression by weakening an individual’s reasoning capacity and power to fight against it. It can be concluded that socialization produces fear and shameShame which encourages a girl child to be submissive, internalize the oppressionOppression, and transfer it to the next generation.