Amaan Syed Week 2

Gender and Society Assignment

Week 2

“For many purposes, the law does and should treat racism and sexism as equivalent forms of bias, and theories and remedies developed in considering one form should ordinarily extend to the other” – Paulette M. Caldwell 

This can be seen in the article, “A Hair Piece: Perspectives on Intersection of Race and Gender”, which talks about the case of Roger v American Airlines. In this case, a black woman was banned to work in the airlines because she had a “braided hairstyle”. The court upheld the decision of Airlines to not give the job to the black woman. The author states that she has seen these kinds of cases at many places where black women are not allowed to keep their hair braided. Black women generally have very curly short hair, which makes it difficult to maintain when they grow long. However, in an article in a newspaper of Hyatt’s grooming policy showed an attractive black woman with long in “All American” hairstyle. The women generally don’t want to mess their hair up with chemicals and straighteners, which can cause danger to their unborn babies. The Rogers Perspective can also be seen in the TED talk shown in the class in which the concept of intersectionality was explained. A black was denied a job at a car shop, but the car shop argued that they hired both blacks and women. What was observed by the speaker was that the blacks who were hired were mostly male for mechanical jobs and the women hired were white who were for the office job. The black woman was at an intersection of discrimination but the judge upheld the decision of the company.

Much of this society, especially in India, have a certain standard of beauty, which demotivates young women because they think they are not as qualified as the girls who look more “attractive” than them.