A couple of good articles

Hi there!

Here's a couple of good articles from two of your classmates. They can be good examples of what you're expected to do when you write a good composition.

Congratulations, Gloria and Sara!

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Changing role

The role of women and men has changed enormously over the last 30 years. It seems that women have reached the same rights as men, but, can this situation turn over?

Thirty years ago the female world was especially the home; most women devoted their lives to taking care of children and to doing housework. Many women gave up their studies or resigned from their jobs when they got married in order to become wives and mothers. Besides, the Catholic moral had an enormous influence on the behaviour and the relationships between people. There were some strict rules of behaviour and social conventions which used to prevail over individual freedom. Moreover, until the eighties, Spanish women were considered like second-class people. For example, they needed their paternal or husband’s permission to get an account in a bank or to get a passport. But this situation started to change when democracy arrived.

In the last decades, women have changed a great deal. They have gradually become owners of their lives. The effort and the fight of many women together with social and economic changes and loss of power of the Catholic Church have led to Women´s Liberation. Nowdays, the number of female students at University exceed the number of male students even, in studies considered traditionally men’s, such as Medicine or Architecture. At the same time, women have reached a relevant place in public life.

However, some factors such as the economic crisis and immigration, are making conservative stances appear, which could lead to a backward movement, so we should be on the alert.

(Gloria Gómez)

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RECOGNITION OR REQUIREMENT

There is no doubt that the role of women in our society has suffered a spectacular change in the last 30 years, but did this revolution take place as recognition of their worth or simply as a requirement of labour?

As recently as the 1960s in Spain there were some posts women were not allowed to apply for, such as those of judge, state lawyer or notary. There were more appropriate jobs for a decent woman like being a teacher, working in a kindergarten or in a residential home for the elderly in case she wanted a pastime out of her obligations as housewife, provided her husband had given his permission, since marital consent was required for any legal and economic matter until 1976. But we don’t have to go back so far to find that in an Engineering School there were only washrooms for male students.

Fortunately enough, all this is a thing of the past. Today men and women have the same opportunities to do a degree or to sit a competitive examination. More and more women hold an important position in companies or in the government.

Do these changes mean the recognition of women’s worth? To be honest, I think the entry of women into the labour market was only because of the need of manpower to create wealth in society. Day by day they have had to win everyone’s respect working very hard. In fact, there are still a lot of barriers to overcome.

(Sara García)