Shadowing Practice: Do Women Have Equal Rights Yet? - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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I was recently talking with some teenage boys who heard that I'm a feminist historian,
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I was recently talking with some teenage boys who heard that I'm a feminist historian,
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and they said, name one way that women are oppressed.
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There are no laws that keep women from doing anything they want to do.
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Were they right?
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How would you respond?
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I've had lots of conversations like this,
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and I used to struggle to know what to say,
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but then I learned a few things that helped me see this situation clearly.
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Check this out.
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It's 1931 in England.
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Women in the UK had just gotten the vote three years before,
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and new career opportunities were opening up for women that had never been allowed before.
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Virginia Woolf had been invited to give a talk to a group of young women on the topic Professions for Women.
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Woolf was a celebrity author and a public intellectual,
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so this was supposed to be a super inspiring talk about women breaking into the workplace.
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But when Woolf got there she said,
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I don't think I'm going to be able to give you the talk that you're expecting.
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Yes, we have the vote now.
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Yes, we can work in all of these new spaces,
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but people are acting like that's going to immediately level the playing field
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when it's actually going to take generations upon generations to get
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the patriarchal expectations of the past out of all of our laws and our traditions and our own minds.
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Wolf and her generation had been raised in the Victorian cult of domesticity.
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Queen Victoria herself had been against women's suffrage.
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She, the queen, said we women were not made for governing.
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And she also called the suffrage movement this mad,
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wicked folly of women's rights with all its attendant horrors.
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She said that feminists ought to get a good whipping.
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So, the Victorian cult of domesticity was an ideology where women were expected to take the role of the pure,
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meek, self-sacrificing angel in the house.
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Girls were trained to become that angel,
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and boys were trained to expect that their future wife would be that angel.
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As Wolff said, it is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.
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This concept reminds me of the metaphor of the elephant tied to a stake.
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Did you know that
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if you tie a baby elephant to a stake it will
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obviously only be able to walk in a very small circle but sadly if you leave the elephant tied there long enough,
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you can untie it and it will still stay in the same circle.
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It can't imagine itself being able to leave.
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Its limitations have been effectively mapped onto its mind.
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This was what Virginia Woolf was talking about in 1931.
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She's saying, ladies, look around you.
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Yes, the big heavy stake prohibiting us from voting has been removed,
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but men still don't see us as equals, let alone leaders.
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We've been so tied down for so long,
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we don't see ourselves as men's equals or leaders.
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So that era, the 1920s to 1940s,
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is super fascinating to study and it's still relevant today.
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In many ways, women were breaking free in exciting new ways.
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You can see it in their clothes and in their hair.
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They're shedding the weight of history as they chop those locks and hack those hemlines.
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But in many ways, they were still held back.
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And I'm guessing they had a lot of conversations with men,
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just like the one that I had with those teenage boys,
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where men said, oh my gosh,
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you were whining about the right to vote for 80 years and you finally got it.
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What could you possibly want now?
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So what did they want?
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Well, In the 1930s, there were still a lot of legal limitations.
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In our metaphor, this is the elephant literally tied to a steak.
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And a lot of mental limitations,
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where the elephant isn't actually tied,
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but people are having a really hard time changing the culture.
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Here are some examples of legal limitations at the time.
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Companies could prohibit women from working there blatantly on on the basis of their sex.
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Companies could legally pay women much less than men for equal work.
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Courts did not allow women to secure divorce easily.
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As we talked about last week,
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through the Comstock laws, men prohibited women from using contraception to prevent pregnancy and from obtaining abortions when they needed them.
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Also, if you can believe this,
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state laws designated a husband as head and master of the house with unilateral control of property.
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Women couldn't get credit in their own name.
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Men prohibited women from attending many top-level schools.
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And within religious contexts, male leaders kept women from ordination,
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which meant women had lesser spiritual authority and no vote on matters affecting their own lives.
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This is still a huge problem.
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So what happened between Virginia Woolf's era and the women's movement that took the world by storm just a few decades later?
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A huge game-changer was the Second World War.
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Because World War II represented an existential threat,
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it was what we refer to as a total war,
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which is a type of warfare where even regular citizens are recruited to the effort.
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As part of this total war,
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350,000 American women volunteered, and 19 million women worked for wages,
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5 million of them for the first time.
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The government actively recruited women during this time,
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using all kinds of materials,
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such as an advertisement asking women,
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can you use an electric mixer?
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If so, you can learn to operate a drill.
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Women were flooded with images like these.
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And of course, the iconic poster of Rosie the Riveter.
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A rivet, of course, I totally didn't have to look this up,
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is a short metal pin or bolt used to hold together two plates of metal.
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So a riveter is someone who uses a rivet gun to put metal plates together.
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a factory job for war equipment.
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The idea of Rosie the Riveter originated in a song written in 1942 by Red Evans and John Jacob Loeb.
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She's making history, working for victory, Rosie.
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The Riveter.
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And this song inspired a social movement
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that increased the number of working American women from 12 million to 20 million by 1944.
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These are some of the photos of actual riveters during the war effort.
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And again, these women were being paid for their work,
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which was a huge departure from the Victorian rules of the past.
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In fact, at the end of the war,
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when Eleanor Roosevelt wrote the Declaration of Human Rights for the newly formed United Nations,
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she included a specific women's resolution.
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This resolution urged governments to encourage the participation of women in the economy
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and in the government so that women would keep moving forward and not just revert to their previous angel-in-the-house roles.
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But what actually happened when the war ended and the men came home?
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The men wanted their jobs back,
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so the government launched campaigns to encourage women to return to the domestic duties of the home.
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The percentage of women working went from 36% to 28% in 1947.
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And this ushered in the Cult of Domesticity Part 2.
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So friends, was the work of gender equality done in the 1920s?
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A lot of people thought so.
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Is it done now?
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A lot of people think so,
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including those teenage boys that I mentioned at the beginning of the video.
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My answer to them now is this.
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Think of that elephant.
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Are there any laws or policies in our government,
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in our workplaces, in our religious institutions that are like the stake and the rope restricting women's authority or women's participation?
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Are there any cultural norms that have lingered in our customs and our thoughts,
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like that phantom rope still keeping women in place?
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Let me know what you think in the comments.
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And let me know what you say when people argue that the playing field is already equal.
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Be sure to join us next week on this station at the same time.
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We'll keep you up to date on Women in the News.
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Thank you.
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Context & Background
In the video titled "Do Women Have Equal Rights Yet?", the speaker, a feminist historian, engages in a thought-provoking dialogue with teenage boys regarding the status of women's rights. The speaker reflects on the historical context of women's suffrage, particularly referencing Virginia Woolf's influential talk in 1931. During a time when women had just gained the right to vote in the UK, Woolf highlighted the persistent societal expectations that continued to confine women, drawing parallels between historical constraints and contemporary challenges.
Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication
- "Do you see women as equals?" – This phrase challenges perceptions and encourages discussion.
- "It's important to recognize historic barriers." – Use this to emphasize understanding the past in discussions about rights today.
- "Generations have shaped our views." – A reminder that social norms evolve over time, influencing current beliefs.
- "The fight for equality is ongoing." – A phrase to assert that progress continues to be needed in achieving true equality.
- "Expectation vs. Reality." – A useful phrase to discuss the difference between societal norms and actual experiences.
Step-by-step Shadowing Guide
To enhance your English speaking skills using the shadowing technique, especially with the themes articulated in the video, follow these steps:
- Select a video segment: Choose a portion of the video that resonates with you.
- Listen carefully: Play the segment a few times to familiarize yourself with the speaker's tone and delivery.
- Use a shadowing app: Incorporate a shadowing app to help you track your progress and receive feedback on your pronunciation.
- Speak along: As you listen, begin to speak along with the speaker. Focus on mimicking the rhythm and intonation of their speech. This will be particularly beneficial when practicing phrases related to IELTS speaking practice.
- Record and review: Record your voice as you practice, then playback to identify areas for improvement. This can help reinforce your learning and give you confidence.
By engaging in these activities regularly, you will improve your ability to articulate your thoughts on complex social issues, enhancing both your language skills and your ability to engage in meaningful conversations on gender equality and rights.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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