Review Of Okin s Vulnerability By Marriage - 1264 Words

Within Okin’s â€Å"Vulnerability by Marriage† article her thesis is similar to Beauvoir’s idea in previous readings that the oppression of women in contemporary liberal societies is primarily continued by the gendered division of labor (GDL) in a family, for the most part the fact that women are assigned responsibility within the home and are not paid. Also, Okin believes that women’s oppression is caused by feminine gender socialization but she also adds that she believes that a major contribution to the oppression of women in liberal societies is due to women’s role inside the home. Even if women do work a full time job, they truly aren’t done working when they get home after work, they tend to do necessary things around the house such as laundry, washing dishes, taking care of children, etc., and women on average work more hours per week than a man even though they may not be paid for it. Even though I think that Okin’s view is tru e and her arguments are acceptable, I do think that there are some additional arguments she could have made that would have made her case better. In this paper I will address Okin’s arguments as well as present some of my own additional arguments that I feel could have beneficial. Okin argues that the consequences of gendered division of labor within a family comes in three different stages, vulnerability in anticipation of marriage, vulnerability in the marriage itself, and vulnerability in when marriage ends and divorce happens. Within the first