Women, Subordination, and American Society

                Women are a subordinated subject class in American society. According to Evelyn Glenn in her article "The Movement to Reform Women's Caring", Glenn examines women and their historical chastisement in American society. Women have always been the issue of "gender assimilation". Thus women have always maintained a place as subordinated subjects of the dominant male population. Glenn brings to light this injustice when she states that "Gender was a central organizing principle of assimi1ation programs. As noted previously, men and women would have to be trained to assume specific gender-appropriate duties and obligations." (Glenn 46). In those obligations, women are expected to always make way for a male when considering positions of social power or control. I believe that women used to strictly serve the male population. One of the best examples of this subordination is the Native Americans' Boarding School System of the late 19th century.
                  This Boarding School System that absorbed the Native American girls of the United States were being subordinated as soon as they were placed in the system. Glenn researched into the administrator of this program, a fellow by the name of Captain Pratt. This Captain Pratt is said to have "saw the education of native girls as supportive of the more important work of Americanizing native boys: "Of what avail is it, that the man be hardworking and industrious, providing by his labor food and clothing for his household, if the wife, unskilled in cookery, unused to the needle, with no habits of order or neatness, makes what might be a cheerful, happy home only a wretched abode of filth and squalor?"(Glenn 51). These civilized schools actually were abusive prisons for the boys and girls interred there. Helen Sekaquaptewa, who attended a Phoenix boarding school starting in 1915, reportedly remarked that "Corporal punishment was given as a matter of course, whipping with a harness strap was administered in a room to the most unruly." While boys were subject to more severe physical punishment, girls were as likely to be subject to humiliation as
boys by having to stand in the corner or dress in boy's clothing." (Glenn 55, 56). These schools main purpose was to "civilize" the Native American into American society and culture. The Native American boys were taught duties that pertained to their status in society much like how the women were forced to perform their duties as maids and servants. I believe that these injustices is but one of many throughout our short American history.