Where the female convicts worse that the male convicts Essay

Where the female convicts worse that the male convicts - Essay Example Other historians emphasize that the events that took part in Australia at that particular point in time cannot be forgotten not in the decades to come since the suffering that the Australian women went through is almost unheard of. This work shall aim at conducting an intense research on the sufferings that women went through in the era of colonization; thereafter comparing it with that of men, and taking a stand that the women actually went through immense suffering. In the research conducted by Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand Conference, Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand (2001) the period of colonization in Australia saw the breeding of slaves in the form of women, as compared to wives, as nature depicts. Additionally, a huge percentage of women at that time were reduced to prostitutes especially in the first fifty years of colonization. In specific dates, the period between 1788–1840 marked women as mere prostitutes to the colonizers (Daniels, 1998; Robson, 1993). This was based on the fact that all women that had been transported to Britain were mere slaves and objects of the colonizers. In light to this argument, therefore, the colonizers justified themselves as having the full right and obligation to do what they wanted with the women of that particular period of time. Under the punitive colony of the time, the white women were categorized as convicts of the time; as well as the social stratification of the time subjected the women to such tough circumstances. In fact, the concept of women being slaves and objects of the time became a stereotype. The same was applied to a great percentage of women who were transported to the colony at that particular time. With this change of status of women being free beings to objects, the extent of suffering on them under the punitive colony can simply not be interpreted in words, but in the feeling one gets as they browse throug h the films and works of historians of the time. In the research conducted by Barker and Chalus (2005), the convicts that were transported to Australia comprised 11% of women. The women have been indicated to perform numerous jobs like needlework, worked as maids for the masters, servants amongst other factors. The conditions in which these women worked were not appealing at all. Having been conversant with these skills, the women were expected to work at odd hours of the day and night so as to always please the colonial masters. Worse still, the women were expected to adapt to the environmental conditions in their new homes, no matter how difficult it was for majority of the women. In contrast to 89% of the men who arrived in Australia, the 11% cannot be ignored especially being the women subjected to hard labor and torture (Damousi, 1997). Generally, the women were simply stacked together like boxes and regarded as whores who were useless. The term being stamped and repeated in th e history of Australia means that the extent of torture and degradation of the women was indeed not to be ignored. By 1841, studies indicate that the number of female convicts stood at over three thousand as compared to that of twenty eight thousand. In comparison to the 188 convict females in 1788, and 529 males, it is evident that the number of women convicts increased as much as that of the men (Daniels, 1998). The women are indicated to suffer twice as much as that of the men, with the demand for their services augmenting. In the colonies, there existed factories run by women. This is yet evidence that explains women