The connotation of the word “power” varies from person to person.  It’s often said that knowledge is power.  And as for some, it’s how strong an individual is, or an individual’s control over something or someone.  According to the articles that we read and my own experience, I understand that knowledge creates power.
Men have power over women from the articles of Salleh and Hammonds. In a 1993 article, Ariel Salleh stated, “The import of tractors to Sri Lanka forces women to pick cotton twice as fast in order to keep wages at the same level.”  When I first read this article, it really touched me and took me back to the Civil Rights era. Ariel used the power over to understand how power was used over others.  However, this article’s main issue is about women and not people of color.  Women are more likely to be a slave of sexism or a slave to public labor than men.  Similarly to Evelynn Hammonds in “Never Meant to Survive”, women could not do what they wanted to do.  In class, whenever her teacher took role, they always skip her name.  When she raised her hand up for questions, she was ignored. Then she would wait for an answer at the end of the class, when no one was there.  This type of aggressive power had so much impact on her life.  Her teacher made her powerless by not give her the power to ask questions.  Teacher thought of his/herself full of power.  He/she might have the knowledge than other because he/she was a teacher in the classroom.  Then Evelynn would look like trash.  She tried to overcome these obstacles even though her parents told her to give up when things became too difficult for her.  She tried to push herself to the limit in order to get though her masters degree, unfortunately at the end she failed to achieve her goal.  The sexism toward her and other females were too great at the time.
     Knowledge provides us with power.  In “On Power” Foucault believes that an individual power over another individual comes from knowledge.  He brings up the example of being a boss in an industry.  From my understanding, in order to be a boss, a person must be skillful; in other words, the person must have great deal of knowledge in order to lead other.  Power has so much to do with out lives.  Powers revolve around us like fresh air.  Everyone and every thing that exist in the world crave for power over one another.
    Also their were the power of strengths, for example, people (often men) want to see who can overpower whom by arm wrestling, or intellectually challenging one another by playing game such as chess.  Most of the time people choose to exercise these powers or not.
     Foucault wants us to understand that having prison is a way of scaring people (power of controlling) in order to reduce chaos.  If people do bad things, they will get arrested. The government understands this and uses this power to maintain a civilized society.  So they use the power relation of punished people by force. I believe that punishing people by putting them in the prison is not a good idea.  For example, some young adults and teenagers are doing drugs.  When they get arrested and they get back from prison, they are still doing it.  The prison does not do enough to stop them.  So if these criminals want to do something regardless of punishment, they will try their best to do it anyway.
 Lydia Fillingham article, “Foucault for Beginners” strongly wants us to be proud of women.  Long ago women were not allowed to work, except for household chores.  Men had jobs outside the house and it seemed that they had so much power over women because women had no way of bringing home food.  But as the years went by, women’s power steadily grew as they struggled to rise from a male-dominated society.  When women been through the difficult lives, they thought that they were full of knowledge. Now they tend to use wild knowledge to work on their bodies.  It is similar to the movie “Killing Me Softly.”  Women had developed their bodies in order to be more popular.  So they tended to change how they looked; they wanted to be sexier and more attractive.  Then a lot of them lacked a proper diet (which led to eating disorders).  Movie stars, singers and commercialized women usually have skinny bodies and very attractive looks.  Every woman wants to be the same as their ideals.  When women think this way, they are absolutely wrong because woman’s body was not meant to that way.  Their bodies should be natural looking (what they were born with).  Despite this, women that are not skinny or do not have attractive looking bodies think that they are just taking up space in the world, while the skinny ones try to achieve the looks of a star.  This is a negative power that constructs the women to a negative way of themselves in the society.
Women have the power to themselves and the society.  Women want to look good because of men, and men want to look good for women.  So some women are now killing themselves without knowing it by starving, in order to obtain society’s ideal body of women.  Women should accept and appreciate who they are instead of trying to be someone they are not.  In this new era, many women tend to follow these rules.  I think it is not a big issue anymore because women in general are more educated than before. Moreover, women are becoming more equal to men in today’s society.  Women have come a long way, however, and those who did not live through the suffering tend to take things for grated.  Women should know and learn how unhealthy it is when they starve themselves.  They do not have the power of knowledge; they did not see how it would affect them in their future.  From what I have read, it made me feel that women in the past went through a lot in order to make a difference for us.  In the past, society was not fair at all toward women, regardless of the fact that society is made up of both men and women.  However, all these flaws are being changed little by little.  In order for women to obtain power like men, women need to be educated and stand up for their beliefs.

    Fillingham, Lydia Alix. “Foucault for Beginners”. Writer and Reader Publishing. N.Y. 1993
    Foucault, Michel. “On Power”. Michel Foucault; Politics, Philosophy Culture: Interviews. Lawrence Kritzman Ed. New York: Routledge. 1988.
    Sands, Aimee. “Never Meant To Survive” The Racial Economy of Science. Ed. Sandra Harding. Indiana U. Press, 1993.
    Salleh, Ariel “Working with Nature: Reciprocity or control?” Chapter in Environmental Philosophy. Ed. Zimmerman. Prentice Hall: N.J. 1993
    Whittacker, Stephen, dir. Killing Me Softly. Prof. Maggie O’Neil, Peter Howilt Julians