1. Identify Structure
Identify where the rules are coming from. Where would people look to find out what they are supposed to do? To find out what is possible?
How is gender constructed within this culture?
What are the prescriptive elements that influence women’s lives?
Is Isabela learning boundaries in church, society, school, etc.?
What kind of cultural messages is Isabel getting in the time and place in which they live?
Under what gender system do African American women live? Time, location, culture? (Explain the ways in which individual(s) worked within or without the structure). How does a woman come up with ways to operate within this structure and accomplish whatever it is she/they wish to accomplish goals (political, economic, social, community)?
2. Intersectionality
How does gender intersect with race, sex and class within this milieu? What are the messages about race and sex? Class? Ethnicity?
What other factors are at work within the culture that shaped this woman’s life?
What makes these elements oppressive to women? Race, class, sex?
(Other elements may include age, ability/disability, religion, etc.).
How does all this create an oppressive gender system? How does all of this intersect within the life of this woman to create an oppressive gender system?
Please use these sources for the paper:
“A Black Women’s History Of The United States” by Daina Ramey Berry & Kali Nicole Gross
“Black Women in White America: A Documentary” by Gerda Lerner
“Women and the First European Settlements.” The American Women’s Almanac: 500 Years of Making History, Deborah G. Felder, Visible Ink Press, 1st edition, 2020. Credo Reference, https://libproxy.howardcc.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/vipwomens/women_and_the_first_european_settlements/0?institutionId=248. Accessed 08 Aug. 2021.
