Adrienne Rich and equal opportunity

Adrienne Rich is a feminist who feels very strongly about educating women beyond their secondary status and creating equal opportunity for all races and genders. In her essay, “Taking Women Students Seriously,” she discusses her personal problems along with the problems society was facing. She begins by focusing on her history of education where she explains how women were bred to become education majors despite the degree they earned. Believing education was far from “co-educated,” she wanted to give women the equal education they were being deprived of when she went into teaching. Education was teaching that “men were the shapers and thinkers of the world, and that this was only natural,” (Rich p97). Women were also at a disadvantage in her eyes because they were constant victims of rape, sexual harassment, and were “perceived not as sovereign human beings but as prey,” saying men were hardly the targets of pornographic magazines (Rich p98). Although Rich backs up her...