Woman Between Islam and Western Society
3. Western Woman
~ 104 ~
3. WESTERN WOMAN
The “New Woman” has been proclaimed with a
certain regularity for a century or more,
Time
magazine reminded its readers in a 1972 special
edition devoted to an exploration of the status of
women in America.
1
In 1989 the Scots traveller
James F. Muirhead observed that it was man who
was subservient in American life because he was
“the hewer of wood, the drawer of water and beast
of burden for the superior sex” (i.e. females). The
feminists disagreed, insisting it was they who were
dominated.
In 1920 American women won the right to vote, and
in the 1920s and 1930s began to go to college in
considerable numbers, with the expectation of
entering the professions. Women believed that “the
battle had been won.” But, after the vicissitudes of
the Great Depression of post-World War II
economic boom, the feminist movement was
reborn. It was a time of turmoil in American society:
President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in
1963, and the U.S. engagement in the Vietnam War
prompted radical protests and widespread
