Zakaria and I did our Elizabethen Paired Project on “Elizebethen Women”. We created a key note using research we got from the websites http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/elizabethan-women.htm and http://www.elizabethi.org/contents/women/. Here is what we read in our project.
“Even though there was an unmarried woman on the throne in Elizabethan England, the roles of women in society were very limited. The Elizabethans had very clear expectations of the role of men and women. Elizabethan society was patriarkal , meaning that men were considered to be the leaders and women their inferiors. Women were regarded as “the weaker sex”, not just in terms of physical strength, but emotionally too. In general men were expected to be the breadwinners and women to be housewives and mothers. On average, a woman gave birth to a child every two years, but as a lot of babies and children died from sickness, families were not always large. Childbearing was considered a great honour to women, as children were seen as blessings from God, and Tudor women took great pride in being mothers. “
“Women were not allowed to enter the professions of law, medicine, politics, but they could work in domestic services as cooks, maids, etcetera. However, many women in this period were highly educated. Although they were not allowed to go to school or to university, they could be educated at home by private tutors. Elizabeth was tutored by the famous Elizabethan scholar Roger Ascham. Women were allowed to write works of literature, providing the subject was suitable for women, and they were mainly translations or religious works. Women were not allowed to act on the public stage or write plays for the public stage. Acting was considered dishonourable for women and women did not appear on the stage in England until the seventeenth century. In Shakespeare’s plays, the roles of women were often played by young boys.”
“In today’s society women are fairly free to wear and do what they want in North America. Girls can preform, sing, work thousands of jobs like medicine, lawyers, engineers, and many more. On the other hand, in countries like the Middle East, women don’t have much freedom. A lot of the Middle East girls aren’t allowed to go to school, wear certain clothes, have the right to vote, and much more. Feminist groups and other human rights activists are currently trying to change this so that women around the world have freedom.”
Here is how our keynote looks.
