Empowerment

Gender Roles in A Streetcar Named Desire Throughout history empowerment and marginalization has primarily been based on gender. In the play A Streetcar Named Desire, this idea of empowerment is strongly flaunted. Tennessee Williams’ characters, primarily Stanley, Blanche, Mitch, and Stella, conform the expected roles of men and women at the time. Although World War Two temporarily allowed women a place in the work force, they were dismissed from such empowerment when the war came to a close. Characters in A Streetcar Named Desire are accurate representations of the social historical context of that time.

The power struggle between Stanley and Blanche conveys dominant ideas about gender such as the primitive nature, aggression, and brutality of men and the vulnerability and physicality of women. The establishment of traditional gender stereotypes is almost instantly provided when Stanley is highlighted as the ‘provider’. His physical masculinity and power is conveyed through a package of raw meat he ‘heaves’ carelessly at Stella and his abusive nature is shown at once through the use of blood imagery involving the ‘red stained package’.

This immediately associates Stanley with brutality, foreshadowing his violence and cruelty in the play. Although Stanley is empowered by his gender, he feels threatened when approached by Blanche, who is of higher class than him. Due to Blanche’s social standing, Stanley is unsure of controlling her. As the play progresses the struggle for power between the two becomes increasingly obvious. At first, Blanche appears victorious in the struggle.

The physical proof of the tragedies in her past stop Stanley from arguing. Here all of them are, all papers! I herby endow you with them! ” His failure to exert power threatens his pride and he is inspired to reject Blanche. Segregation between men and women is clearly defined during the poker night in scene three. “Poker shouldn’t be played in a house with women. ” This reflects the social norms and the dominant belief that women should be disassociated from masculine activities. Stella and Blanche are excluded from this form of masculine boding, and their early return causes chaos in the house.

In addition to segregation, dominance is seen once again when Stanley is unable to prevent Mitch’s desertion of the game. His violent outbursts are desperate attempts to exert his dominance. “Stanley gives a loud whack of his hand on her thigh. ” it becomes apparent that his threatening words are not enough, and he begins using violence as a physical means of controlling Stella and frightening Blanche. Although Stanley’s power works mainly to downgrade Blanche, his violent and aggressive nature also disempowers Stella. She is abused during poker night, a moment of masculine bonding.

Following the poker night she is made powerful when she retreats to Eunice’s Flat. However, she returns to disempowerment when she leaves Eunice’s flat and Stanley ‘bears her into the dark flat’. Stella’s decision to stay with Stanley is not based on choice, but rather on the fact that she must. This enforces the dominant belief that women are unable to support themselves, emotionally and financially. Similar to Stanley, Blanche also faces a power struggle. Her ultimate downfall is a result of Stanley’s cruelty and lack of understanding for human fragility.

Comments about Stanley’s ‘animal habits’ and ‘sub-human’ nature act as the agent of Blanche’s downfall. Stanley cannot deal with her mocking him in his own home and is fed up with her lies. During the final scenes his behavior conveys the male dominant ideas of cruelty and brutality. Blanche’s refusal to deal with Stanley’s rough nature causes her to retreat further into her fantasy world where she becomes increasingly vulnerable. Stanley violates Blanche in the most personal way and initiates the ultimate act of cruelty and abuse of power.

His final act of brutality acts as the climax of power struggle between Stanley and Blanche as well as all males and females. This leaves the male empowered and the female lowered and completely destroyed. Blanch Dubois’ empowerment comes purely from her class. Her southern tradition and wealth made her a woman of importance and propriety. However, in Elysian Fields her traditions and former wealth hold significance. Although her wealth was lost with the death of Belle Reve, she desperately attempts to hold on to remains of her previous life and creates a fantasy world.

Her ‘incongruous appearance’ and ‘southern tradition causes Stanley to reject her, as he cannot relate to her in anyway. The lack of impact on Stanley reflects the context of time, when tradition was being overpowered by industrialization. As Blanche begins to understand that her class has no impact on Stanley she assumes the role of a temptress. “I was flirting with your husband Stella! ” In order to gain some form of authority, Blanche uses her sexuality and physicality in effort to control Stanley.

Blanche uses her sexuality frequently to overpower others. She ‘depended on the kindness of strangers’ regularly in Laurel and her use of physicality landed her in trouble on various occasions. Following her encounter with the paperboy she states, “I’ve got to be good and keep my hands off children”. This foreshadows her frequent use of physicality as means of empowerment. Although Blanche is notorious for her use of physicality, she has no authority over Stanley and is constantly reminded of this through emotional and physical abuse.

As a representation of all females, Blanche is completely disempowered after Stanley rapes her. She creates a fantasy world to escape the harsh realties of Elysian Fields Her marginalization and downfall reflects vulnerability and reliance of females on males for stability. The dominant ideas and beliefs about gender, such as the reliance of women on men and the primitive nature and brutality of the masculine are conveyed by Tennessee Williams’ in A Streetcar Named Desire through the empowerment and marginalization of Stanley, Blanche, Mitch and Stella.

Stanley’s role as the ‘alpha male’ empowers him in almost all situations. Blanches’ tradition and social status empowered her past but her physicality empowers her present. Williams’ characters accurately portray the gender stereotypes in the time they were created, and function today to convey the dominant ideas about gender and how they work to empower and disregard people in our society today.

Since January 2011 till now I am working under direct supervision of Engineer Habib Khan the Director of the Irrigation Directorate for the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock.
Mr. Khan is a honest, trustworthy, self-motivated, Competence, committed and straightforward person of whom I really like to be my supervisor.

Foster Initiative and Responsibility

I really remember the date and was just January 2011 when Mr. Khan joined the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock whereat we were stuck with the project work and world bank the donor for the project decided to close the project work since the target given to the donor was not chased by our management even we didn’t achieve the 10% work of the target at almost 2 years, due to lack of management.

In the competitive world of participations, the leader must delegate the power and authority to downwards for achieving the organizational goals in more efficient and effective manner also in order to compete successfully, managers must encourage creativity and innovation among all of the employees in their organization.

The previous project Manager was doing all tasks by himself and was not assigning works to other team members therefore, the sense of accepting of the responsibility among the team was very weak.
Mr. Khan started encouraging of initiative activities and giving the sense of responsibility to our team and he was conducting meetings and delegating tasks to the team members. In a short period of time the team gained a strong sense of responsibility and number of innovative staff in the project was increasing day to day.

Link Work Activities to Organizational Goals

The project is designed in four components which conveys the project goal, but prior to his joining some of the project activities were irrelevant to the project objectives, along with his assigning to the project he started eliminating those activities which was not aligned with the organization goal, for instance a large number of the project team was working to support private sector which doesn’t have any link with the project and he stopped them and aligned them as per the project papers.

Allow Group Members to Choose Methods

In the past a group of people was to intervene in the task of each department and the project staff was not that much dependent, but while he joined the project, during a conference he asked the team about the methods how to carry out the project works and he consulted how we can solve all these problems thus the team proposed the methods and ways of doing project activities which was very effective in betterment of the project condition. For example, Mr. Khan asked the technical survey team regarding the survey method to maximize the number of schemes to be surveyed during one year and the survey guys proposed a method in which they became able to survey around 30 schemes in a year which was a remarkable number in comparison with the past years.

Encourage Self–Leadership

One of the main cause of his success is that he is appreciating the self-leadership which is the heart of empowering the project staff. For instance, among the procurement team there was no manager and subordinates and the whole team was working powerfully together.

Implement Team-Based Human Resource Policies

During his work in the project he developed the MIS system which was an outstanding system and in the main page of the system he is selecting one of the departments as employee of the month and he is displaying that his human resource policy is team based policy where the credit goes to the whole member of the department and he always give appreciating letters to the whole department and as well as increments in their salaries.

Establish Limits to Empowerment

He defined the boundaries within which team members can make her or his own decisions and asked them not to cross the limit which may cause disharmony and dysfunction in the team, for instance he warned and terminated the finance guys who took action without taking his vision about additional financing and he mentioned that the team has more authority then before, but they are not supposed to cross the limit also, one of the Regional Managers hired one of his family member in his team which caused conflict of interest and he warned him and dismissed the hired person.

Continue to Lead

His assignment to the project team caused a strong change in the project condition and he was always with the team and was guiding them how to carry out their tasks and was instructing them how to work harder which leads to their more success.

Provide Ample Information

Despite the previous Management Mr. Khan has provided a wide range of information to the team members and his office was open all the time for any one and he was encouraging open discussion regarding project activities also in every meeting he was motivating team members by validating their works and effect of their being as team member on the project success.

Specific Areas that he needs to improve

Although he is consulting the team in selection of the work method, when Mr. Khan is delegating the tasks to the team he is expecting the team members to do the assignments in the way that he is performing, and some time he thinks that he has the best answer, I think that performing of a task is important to have a good result, but I don’t think that the leader might insist on his way of performing the task if the result is the same on the other hand we must not know all things and we shall say that I don’t know this answer instead of having the answer for all questions which can be a sign of mutual trust.

You are accountable and responsible for each and every word you said to your team. For that reason, it is critical to always be mindful of promises you made I mean some time he is promising that he will do these things for you, but after a time he is forgetting those things and you need to remind him again and again.

Some time when something goes wrong he is blaming the person that why this went wrong, what I think is that none of the staff as human being is complete and makes no mistake, in fact if you are working you are making mistakes, if they make mistakes the leader shall find the cause of this failure instead of blaming the person.

Assignment # 2 Team Building Stages

Forming

At April 2017 a petition was submitted by Afghan Global Construction Company the contractor for the construction of Matakhail Irrigation dam located at Farza district of Kabul Province subjected to the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock. The contractor claimed that during the first hand over of the project the assigned committee for the hand over, have not estimated the additional work he has done in this project therefore, he asked the Minister for the Ministry Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock to assign a second delegation for the investigation of this project, hence we received a commandment regarding our assignment for the study of this difficult case.

The team was wrought form 7 members and the goal of the team was estimation of the project and audit of the work done by previous assigned committee during the first hand over.

The team was led by two Engineers from the Irrigation Directorate and I was also member of this team. After showing my satisfaction I have received a call from the Irrigation Department and asked me to attend the first meeting of the committee.

When we reached there the Irrigation Directorate Engineers introduced us to each other. We were positive and polite to each other and our duties and responsibilities were not clear and we didn’t have trust on one another. Our messages were transferred to the members by the ID Engineers and the focused persons in this meeting were these two Engineers that all members were accepting their authority. We were excited and some of us were worried about the tasks a head also I thought how we will start work and how I can work with this team whom I don’t know and can’t trust as the project was very much large, complex and required more technicality on the other hand the contractor was attempting for the corruption among the team members to estimate the additional work he claimed in this contract.

Storming

After introduction, the team was briefed by Irrigation Directorate Engineers regarding the case and asked everyone how to start the work, how can we put in, and which work method shall be selected to have a good result and gain the trust of the top management of MAIL. Every member has expertized regarding the case and criticizing the idea of each other. We were experiencing stress and I thought we will not be able to carry out this task if we all have such behavior with each other as everyone in this team wanted to be respected and was battling individually in this stage.

Norming

After intervention of the Irrigation Directorate the conflict between the team members has reduced and we decide to share the responsibilities among our teammates and we found the procurement law to start our work in the light of this law.

Project contract, MAIL specification, Site Journal, Approved drawings and some other reports were printed and shared as valuable documents for the case investigation.
We found out that some of the ideas given by our teammates were not for the pickup of the task assigned to our team and they forgave and remitted from their opinions and respected the constructive ideas of our friends.
We agreed on a structure and in this structure my responsibility was to review the approved design of the project and a Senior Engineer were to assist us in design, estimation, reporting and other activities.

Performing

Now we know each other and we started socializing each other. We started our work during this stage when we faced any problem it was very easy to ask one another for help.

I started reviewing the design and comparing it with the actual work in the site and my teammates who were assigned for other tasks were starting their works accordingly.

After reviewing the design, I found out that the approved design for the project was complete and there is no missing part in the design that the contractor claimed in his allegation.We went many time to the site to make sure that the design is completely implemented by contractor. After comparing the design with the site work we found out that a major variance exists in the site and no approval was made from MAIL top management.
In this stage we were discussing many issues among the team members in a trusty, professional and friendly environment also it was very easy to be part of this team in this stage. We were exchanging the data and asking each other for any type of help required.

To achieve the goal of our team we were struggling very hard without any friction also we were very happy within the team and the structure which was made was very supportive to the achievements.
The leader was delegating the tasks among us and very conveniently we were performing the given tasks and were giving our feedbacks to them.

It is worth mentioning that the team carried out the job with honesty, respect, authenticity and creativity and these efforts resulted finding a fruitful solution for the allegation of the contractor and we came to a conclusion that there are many defects in the implementation of this contract.

The main problem in the implementation of this contract is critical low quality, considerable variance between the actual work and approved design, and nonexistence of the approval for the additional work.

Adjourning

When we performed the task, the reporting committee was, to compile the reports and convert the data into uniform shape and during a meeting we submitted the final report to the MAIL Minister and he was really grateful for the efforts we made during this assessment, defiantly this was the time to celebrate our success and MAIL top management validate our work by admiring us with appreciation letters in the other hand, the Minister asked us how do we feel after working too long with each other in fact, there was no negative idea regarding working together in a team.

This assessment for me was a good experience and I enjoyed too much working with divers people in a close- friendly atmosphere also it was very difficult to be a part from these friends.
The team finally disbanded and each of us rejoined their esteemed offices with the gained experiences from this project.