Women's Struggle

LOCKED INSIDE
By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

She beats upon her bolted door,
With faint weak hands;
Drearily walks the narrow floor;
Sullenly sits, blank walls before;
Despairing stands.

Life calls her, Duty, Pleasure, Gain–
Her dreams respond;
But the blank daylights wax and wane,
Dull peace, sharp agony, slow pain–
No hope beyond.

Till she comes a thought! She lifts her head,
The world grows wide!
A voice–as if clear words were said–
"Your door, O long imprisonéd,
Is locked inside!"

The world has always been male-dominated since time immemorial. Therefore, feminists say that science has always been masculine sphere. Women have been domesticated so that they don’t have power and chance to join the bulk of male scientists.

The emergence of feminist movement is, of course, expected to make science no longer only masculine sphere. Women expect to distribute their way of thinking and their experience in creating new theories, etc. and there is only one way: (now that chances to women are widely open) women must open their own lock to the outside world, to join the public sphere, in all aspects of this life, just like the last two lines of Gilman’s poem above.

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