The Main Purpose and Nature of Operational Management

The Main Purpose and Nature of Operational Management Introduction Operations management is an area that deals in managing the processes involved in production and distribution of goods and services. This means that it deals with management of business processes. It can also be defined as the field concerned with managing and directing the physical and technical functions of a firm or organization. The firm or the organization must be relating to development, production, and manufacturing (Weiss Gershon 19).Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on The Main Purpose and Nature of Operational Management specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Operational management is involved with many activities some of which are product and service management. The product and service management activities include creation of the product, development, production and product distribution. Other activities are purchase inventory control, quality control, storage, logistics and evaluation of processes. T he main purpose of operational management is to ensure that these business processes and activities are carried out efficiently and effectively. Operation management is therefore concerned with the internal processes of a business. However, the nature of how operational management works in an organization depends on the product and services that the organization deals with. Operation management is the centre of all the changes that occur in the world of business. Some of the changes are changes in customer preference, changes in supply network caused by technologies and also changes in the quality of the product to suit the customer (Weiss Gershon 21). Quality control is one of the very crucial activities of an operations management. It should be very effective so that a continuous improvement on the quality is observed. Safe Kids Organization This is an organization that aims in preventing accidental childhood injuries in the United Arab Emirates. The organization is one of the gl obal networks of organizations called Safe kids worldwide. The organization has noted that accidental childhood injuries are the main causes of death in children. Accidental injuries take more children’s lives than diseases, violence or other causes. This mostly affects children of 14 years and below. Most of these injuries are caused by motor vehicle crashes, falls, fire, bicycle accidents and other sporting related accidents. The organization believes that the injuries are preventable. This is possible if safety equipments are used and if the environment the children play is modified. Change of behavior can also help in preventing accidental injuries in children. Safe kids have come up with significant progress in reducing the risk of accidental injury to children. Some of the progresses are provision of more advanced equipment in the hospital. It has also offered education to parents on how to prevent accidental injuries from occurring to the children. Safe kids also advoc ates for laws that protect children. They also provide safety device measures to families who need them.Advertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More The organization has brought together health and safety experts, educators, corporations, foundations, government and even volunteers. These people help the organization to effectively achieve its objectives. Matching Operations Management and Safe Kid Organization Operations management has helped Safe kids in achieving its goals. Setting up hospitals which take good care of injured children is one of the goals. The organization is also providing advanced equipments to hospitals which are specialized for children cases. The operations management wants Safe kids’ organization to effect its operation of ensuring that all the kids are safe. That is why, the operation managers are always passing and strengthening child safety l aws and regulations. Such laws make the whole country to take the initiative of ensuring a child safe. It also leads to a responsible country as no one wants to be fined or taken to court for breaking the law. Education to parents and children is also an idea from operations management. Parents are taught on how to prevent children from getting injured. Children are also taught on how they should take care of themselves. The teachings have proven to the parents that prevention is better than cure. Since the accidents are unintentional, they can therefore be prevented. Operating managers of Safe kids have also started conducting research. The research involves visiting different hospitals and collecting data of how many children have visited the hospitals due to injuries. This research will help the managers to know which area needs to be taught about children safety. They are also able to know which hospital need the specialized equipments for children safety. Safety devices are als o provided to some families. Most of the families given the devices are those with many children. Also, families living in a risky environment are provided with these devices. This keeps the children safe, even in the unfriendly surrounding. Some of the lifesaving devices provided are smoke alarms, helmets and safety seats. How Safe Kids Operates Safe Kids operates by teaching parents on how to prevent injuries to their children. This is done in hospitals, church and even in schools, where most parents are gathered. The organization also has experts who move from home to home talking to parents. Parents are taught on how to transport children safely in cars. They should check car seats and booster seats for proper installation. They are asked to first teach them how to ride motor bikes before buying them the bikes.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on The Main Purpose and Nature of Operational Management specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Le arn More Children are also taught about their safety by the organization. They are taught what they should and should not do when around or in the vehicle. They are also taught on how to walk on the streets, especially when going or leaving the schools. Safe kids programs are ongoing activities which get the members of community involved in child safety initiatives. One of the programs is creating safe environment. It is the work of every member of a community to keep the environment safe. A safe environment must also be clean. Community members can ensure a safe environment by not littering dirt around. This dirt is dangerous to the children as it can make them fall or hurt them. They can also get poisoned, especially young children who go eating anything they come across. Assessments Operations management has always been very effective in every business. Its results are always positive in every business enterprise where products are produced or services are provided. In ou r case Safe Kids organization offers services to the children. Operations management has helped the organization provide the service effectively. The rate of children injury has reduced especially in the United States, where it has reduced from 78% to 30%. There are also very rare cases of children injuries in different hospitals all over the world. Suggestions Introduction of complex and complicated equipments need qualified personnel. The organization should first train some of its employees on how the equipments are operated. This will ensure that the equipment performs its function effectively. The safety devices provided to families should be more advanced such that they can protect a child from getting poisoned. This is because; most of these devices are about physical injury. This will help reduce the poisoning cases. Poisoning is even the most dangerous of all the injuries because it can even kill a child. The number one cause of deaths of children in industrialized countrie s is the unintentional injuries. Therefore, Safe Kids Worldwide should ensure that the more advanced equipments are readily found in those countries. Operational managers of safe kids should send qualified and health experts in the area. Educators are also needed to educate parents and children in industrialized area. Children need to know how they should carry themselves around and while in the industries. Many well equipped health centers need to be established near the industries for emergency cases.Advertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Organizations should also promote corporate leadership. This can be achieved through effective and sustainable partnership. Corporate leadership will help in ensuring that the organization’s employees are carrying out their duties effectively. This will lead to a good relationship between the customer and organization. Conclusion There are two main functions of an organization. One is to provide a product or a service and the other function is to sell the product or service. However, Operations management mostly focuses on the first function of providing product or service. Operations management plans and controls all activities necessary for the provision of the firm’s product or service. Since the aspect of Operation management emphasizes on the product or service provision, it has some ways to make this possible. It gives advice on the best techniques and equipment to use to make the goods or provide a service. It emphasizes on work force management, training of emp loyees and measurement of quality assurance. Operational managers who adhere to the above ideas and technologies are able to improve productivity and reduce cost. They are also able to enhance the quality of a good and customer service. An organization is also able to meet the rapidly changing customer needs. Weiss, Howard, and Gershon, Mark. Production and Operations Management. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999. Print.

The Pre-Columbian Era essays

The Pre-Columbian Era essays Cuauhtmoc, meaning "one that has descended like an eagle" was born February 23rd and died on February 28th,1525, at the age of twenty-three. Cuauhtmoc was the last leader during the arrival of Cortes. One thing that stood out to me about Cuauhtmoc was when the Professor Luna spoke about him September 9th in her lecture. She said that he was captured and his feet were to be burned. And to Cuauhtmocs luck this did not affect him because he was accustomed to walking on fire and feeling the pain and the burning of the flames. Cuauhtmoc bones were found in Ixcateopan, where he was also born. Cuauhtmoc's life has already been a huge remembrance in the Mexican community. On his birthday there is a traditional celebration. On February 23rd every year there is a dance, that goes on the whole day in remembrance of him. There is also a ceremony called the Mali Nalco, which is a ceremony where young men that are coming of age. It stands for the eagle and the jaguar. I also enjoyed in the lecture how something that Cuauhtmoc said can be carried on into todays time. When his feet were being burned I recall professor Luna saying that Cuauhtmoc was quoted about saying that he wasnt doing the pain for pleasure, and that is where the saying Do you think I am in a bed of roses came from. It is so interesting how something can be dragged out for so many years. One other thing that I found really interesting about Cuauhtmoc was when professor Luna showed us all the different pictures of him. Each picture was not the same. What made it even more interesting is how we can take what Cuauhtmoc has done and keep it alive and have celebrations on his birthday of him but the images of him are so different. What makes it seem right that the celebration and the rest of the information is really true about Cuauhtmoc? Mexico culture and the pe...

The Concept of Human Resource Management Assignment

The Concept of Human Resource Management - Assignment Example All these careers relate to the training, developing and managing an aspect of the labor force in an organization. They cater to an extensive application of all the theories and aspects of the human resource knowledge in a broader aspect. Many organizations require a good personal, professional and academic profile in order to recruit people for the position of any skilled job in management designation. For less skilled job or fresh graduates with less or no experience, initial level jobs are offered. On the other hand, those candidates, who possess more experience and have the great qualification, are normally offered managerial level jobs in the human resource field. In this case, the Training and development Specialists are required to have basic knowledge of HR, a bachelor’s degree in the required field, and diplomas or certificates in the fields of training and developing the people. This is also performed by the individuals who are specialists in the field of managing people. Compensation and benefits in this designation are on an average level, while the job may be on a contractual basis only. Compensation and Benefits Manager is the position of a senior or managerial level. This position requires a Master’s degree in the relevant field, an acquaintance of candidates with the subject of accountancy and finance, and a good amount of long experience. The candidates with extra qualification and certificates are usually preferred for this post. The compensation and benefits may vary from organization to organization; however, the managers are normally given higher salary packages and good non-cash benefits too. These include car, cell phones, laptops, and other things.

The Moral Issues Of The Animal Testing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The Moral Issues Of The Animal Testing - Essay Example The debates stemming from animal rights are one of the major issues being discussed in medical symposiums and environmentalists. In my opinion, animal testing is not justified. Animal testing is not only morally wrong, but also the results of the experiments are not hundred percent accurate. It has been estimated that over 50 to 100 million vertebrate animals are used in experiments and trials; the figure of animals used in testing is even greater. The animals that have not been weaned and invertebrates are not included in the aforementioned figure. A major fraction of the animals that have been tested upon is killed. Although many of the researchers are being conducted on the safety of animals, it is not justified to use animals for the purpose of human safety. It is not off beam to know more about animals and to study them in more detail like there is nothing wrong in furthering our research about planetary bodies. However, it needs to be noted that the researchers being done on an imals can be misleading. It is with experience and researches conducted in the past that have made us realize that some drugs may fail to elicit the same response as they did in animals. It is such failed researchers that attest to the fact that animals are different from humans. Using rats for cancer research was one such example where torturing animals were the sake of human good was pointless (Pakistan Politics Journal). Scientists had resorted to rats as test subjects until 1993 when it was reported that the genetic makeup of the rats renders them vulnerable to cancer, and so research on them ca never yield accurate results. Cohen adheres to the view that animals are not like humans and this is why he believes that they can be used for animal testing (94). Right is fundamentally a claim that one individual asserts over the other. A right encompasses the elements such as who holds the right and to whom it is against.

Reflective Paper Research Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Reflective - Research Paper Example On the other hand, controlling describes a means of ensuring that organizational performance does not diverge from standards. Controlling it establishes standards of performance, compares real performance against organizational standards and takes necessary corrective actions. Planning as a core management function in Starbucks commercial takes both command groups and self-managed teams in the concept of individual versus group decision making. In Starbucks Company, the human resource department has been planned as a self managed team to set its own goals, develop strategies and outline schedules of evaluating and hiring new employees to supervise delivery and storage of coffee by customers. Starbucks executives are organized as self-managed teams to work in their departments and directly report to the managing director in the main office (Galloway, 1998). The implication of using this concept is that it allows use of group decision-making methods like dialectical inquiry, brainstorming and nominal group technique that improve the process of decision-making in Starbucks Company. Coffee customers are involved in brainstorming groups to verbally suggest good ideas of improving the performance of the company. Organizing, a core management function in O*NET website takes a good organizational culture as a concept to give a detailed work descriptions to the world for workforce development by human resource professionals, researchers, job seekers and students. Managers of O*NET website have put shared principles, values, ways and traditions of job analysis and career exploration to influence the way organizational employees act. The strong organizational culture has influenced the structure of O*NET website in which the major values of the organization are widely shared and deeply held. The implications of organizing a strong organizational culture in O*NET website has attracted high-level employee talent. Talented

Research and development Essay Example for Free

Research and development Essay The Human resource management department of the business is responsible for the hiring and firing of the staff that work in Boots PLC outlet stores and any other jobs that are related to the company. Their main aim to make sure that there is the right amount of workers in the specified place at the right time in order to contribute to the maximum output that the staffing effort can help towards. The hiring and firing is very important as it makes sure that the right people are hired for the job that are in appropriate situations to fulfill vacancies. On the other hand however the firing is just as important. If staff are not pulling their weight or are incapable of carrying out the jobs they are meant to they may be fired. Also if there is no need for all staff then they may be laid off. This is a way of maximizing profits as less go on output of wages which is a great percentage of the businesses output. The HRM is also responsible for the training of staff. It is their responsibility to make sure that all staff is fully trained for the job they are employed for. These increases the customer reliability and satisfaction as when staff are asked questions they will hopefully know they answers and also that they are capable of approaching customers comfortably and in a good fashion. This adds to customer satisfaction and this is important to Boots it is also one of their objectives listed previously in the report. HRM are responsible for forecasting labour amounts and the amount of man power that will be needed at different times of the day week and year. If manpower is low in rush hours or periods such as Christmas then the company may not reach its maximum out put through mistake of their own. Staff receives appraisals when they work for Boots. This lets them know if the business is happy with them and if they are considered a valued member of the work force. The appraisals are again responsibility of the HRM department and they help to maximize business by insuring workers are reaching their full potential within in the business. Boots recently proposed to train up 7000 people to become more knowledgeable about technology so that the business will benefit from this. Boots PLC also employ a further 45% of their workforce on top of their usual numbers to help in outlet stores over Christmas period with tills, stock rotation and demonstrations. This shows the business has been planning the workforce amounts according to potential times of increases in demand. This area of the business can be very economical and save the business money when it comes to hiring and firing staff. This is however also very beneficial to the staff also. When jobs in the business become available instead of employing new staff they promote current staff. This saves money as described in management styles later on. The HRM area of the business works towards the organization and in turn globalization objective of the business. The statement of we aim to develop staff and provide them with the right skills and attitude in order to achieve the organizations goals suggests that it be aimed at all the objectives of the business, which will reflect on the globalization and expansion conclusively. The fact that more staff was hired acts on the objective of improving customer satisfaction as more staff means that there are more hands to deal with the tasks needed which leaves more staff to be available to help customers and aid them with their shopping needs. The Marketing section of the business is responsible for satisfying customers needs at the right prices and once again as in Boots objective consumer satisfaction. To do this the marketing section of Boots PLC is responsible for researching what the target markets want and interpreting what their future needs would be and how they will change. They persuade the customer to buy products by advertising. They either increase awareness by advertising to all on TV or radio, or advertise specifics. These include in store adverts for particular products, which they make the customer, think they need. Free demos of some products also help to draw in custom and Boots does this in its make-up and its perfume range where there is always trained staff available to recommend and advice. The marketing aspect of the business has lead to the birth of the Boots Advantage Card. Boots customer services is an outstanding department as they have been able to established customer loyalty by the use of this Advantage card. Referring back to Boots objectives the wish to increase customer loyalty is proven as the Advantage Card is used by more than 70% of all key customers. Boots objectives on marketing were to increase promotion and stature by globalization. This has been attempted by opening several firms in Taiwan. A strategy that separated them from their competitors and attracted thousands of consumers over the Christmas period was the three for two-mix and match strategy which was introduced after a market research poll into marketing strategies return the mix and match as a popular suggestion. This was reflected by the feedback it returned. It is very important to be able to forecast and predict what will happen to the market. In order for a company to success in the long term it must have an idea of where it is going. One of the best ways to do this, which also show the success of the business, is to look at its accounts. This will show if there is a gradual increase or decrease in profit and it will show what products sell, how they sell and in what quantity are they likely to still be required as the majority of tangible inessential goods reach saturation point and are no longer needed. The finance section of the business is the area that looks after the accounts and the money flow forecasting. The Financial area of the business makes sure all the finances of a business are properly recorded. This involves keeping detailed accounts either manually or on a computer of all the money that comes in, and how it comes in to the business and how and where it goes out. The financial information is used by Boots and published in the yearly reports to show how the business is getting on. Boots PLC uses computer technology to record all the information and trained staff regularly analyzes it to spot correlation in output or product relationships. This is done to try and find out where Boots could benefit from altering the market and changing product ranges or increasing product base. This section of the business is also capable of raising finance when the business needs to raise capital for an investment or expansion. There is only a small aspect of the objective system that it appears the financial function touches on. This is the objective to act towards modernization. Boots keeps its financial records in the form of computer files as apposed to storing them manually. This shows that Boots keeps up with the development of technology, which was a specific objective. This shows that an objective has been worked towards and met which has been beneficial as now the financial function is a lot less time consuming in storing data and retrieving it. Although there is always more problems with modern technology it is likely that in the long run it is less time consuming. Production is another one of the functional areas but as there is little that Boots actually produce due to the fact that they are in the tertiary sector this function does not really affect them. The only way it does affect them is that Boots must keep in touch with the production (secondary industry) business to ensure that they can meet the demands that they need in order to increase customer satisfaction. Coinciding with this the staff at Boots must check produce that is received from the production companies to make sure it is correct. This section does not really affect any objectives that the business has directly. However indirectly it does regard the objective of wishing to increase the proportion of their own brand. There is little evidence I can provide of this objective been carried out but they do have their own cosmetic range that goes by the name of No7. This appears to have been doing very well. The main cogs of the business are the Administration section. This keeps the day to day workings of the business going. Again these are skilled staff trained in their field and Boots pride them selves on the level of training and standards that their staff operates to. The administration maintains the business premises and equipment and if anything goes wrong they are responsible for fixing it of finding someone to do so. Anyone who works for Boots doing photocopying, printing (stationary jobs) catering, computer services, data storage, all these types of jobs come under the job description of Administration. As boots is expanding it is relying less on its own workers to carry out some of these tasks and it calls in people from out side the business, this is called outscoring, these people are usually found by the administration team. The administrative function as it is a necessity in the business and keeps it flowing hardly relates as a contribution to any objective at all. The only objective I can see that the administrative function applies to id the modernization of the company. This is due to the fact that in order for the administration staff to act efficiently they need to be modernizing as technology such as computers develops. This will benefit all areas of the business. As the target markets demands are forever changing and new fashions are coming in and the months of the years come in and out the products that Boots supply are always changing. It is hard to keep on top of the supply for goods, as there are so many aspects that alter the product demands it is hard to be aware of where they will go next. The research and development of the business is responsible for trying to find out where to go next. They keep the other parts of the business informed about changes as much as they can. This is a main part of the marketing for the business. The research and development sector look at sales figures, accounts, customer trends and spending and try and deduct where the majority of the money goes and also where it doesnt. They do not look to replace products all the time but also to look for new products that would be beneficial to bring into the product range to increase sales or attract new business. It was the idea of the research and development of Boots to open the optician section of the business, as this was an area that they had not yet spread into and would be beneficial. The people in the research and development part of boots also look at other businesses and see how they operate, what they sell and how much they charge. All this contributes to the smooth running of the business. As Boots main objective is to produce a well-established firm that caters for the consumers needs research and development is a major part of decision making. Diversification is also reliant on this department as in order to diversify research needs to be carried out to find out which areas it would be beneficial to divert into in respects of the customers and the company as a whole. Boots has got a large research and development department. The paragraph below shown what affects the research and development has had on the companys expansion. The first Health and Beauty Experience store opened in Kensington High Street in September this year. It moves Boots into new areas of the expanding health and beauty market. Services include physiotherapy, osteopathy, homeopathy, herbalism, aromatherapy, reflexology and nutrition. These sit alongside beauty services including facials massage, false tan, ear piercing, pedicure, manicure, nail bars, and make-overs, plus lifestyle advice on weight management, smoking, sleep management, relaxation and stress management. All combine to offer a total wellbeing offer. This paragraph gives list of some of the new products and services that have been introduced. These expansions in the business would not have been the result if research and development had not taken place. This shows that research and development has also contributed to the firm expanding, which was another objective of Boots.

Social construction of male and female identities

Social construction of male and female identities To understand gender analysis in a historic context, it will be important to start off by defining what gender is and gender analysis. Gender refers to the social construction of male and female identities. It is more than the biological make up of the two sexes. It deals with how the differences between men and women, whether real or imagined, are valued, used and relied upon to classify men and women and to assign them roles and expectations. The effect of this categorization is that the lives and experiences of men and women occur within complex sets of differing social and cultural expectations. Gender analysis therefore examines the differences in mens and womens lives and applies this understanding to policy development and service delivery (Zastrow Kirst-Ashman 2009). In history, the current understanding of gender as a category of historical analysis can be traced to the late twentieth -century feminist political mobilization that occurred in Europe and the United States which led to the development of the field of womens history both as a product and practice. Many of the early women historians in many cases employed the category women when talking about womens roles, perceptions of women or myths about women as opposed to the analytical language of gender as we know it today (Parker Aggleton 1998). Most of these embraced the concept of gender closely akin to Gayle Rubins classic early formulation that stated that in every society, there is a set of arrangements by which the biological human sex and procreation is shaped by human, social intervention which is actually gender (Shepard Walker 2009). The work of the feminists was primarily to expose those gender systems and redress their injustices to women. In this context therefore the work of the womens historians was to discover and bring into the public domain such patterns in the past, to return women and their activities to the historical record and to bring out ways in which women in the past tried to resist sexual oppression in the societies within which they lived. Despite the fact that distinction between sex and gender remained common in feminist history, its framework had many critics especially among theorists who questioned if physical bodies were not in a way socially constructed and whether they ever existed apart from culturally fashioned meanings about them (Shepard Walker 2009). Early women historians equated gender with sex. This meant that the physical body is what they used to classify gender. This was the bone of contention with other scholars who rightly asserted that it would be simplistic to equate gender with sex. However, since the field of womens history originated in social history, and so because the early womens history did not seriously interrogate bodies as a historic subject, most of the early women historian did not confront the dilemma of the sex/gender distinction which continued to inform the assumptions of their work (Shepard Walker 2009). Theorizing about gender increased from the 1970s through the 1980s among women historians but their emphasis was more on the relation of gender to other categories, more so class and patriarchy but not on so much on the gender itself. According to Shepard Walker (2009) efforts of this sort continued in many ways to conceptual gender, class and other social processes as distinct which made it difficult to capture the complexity and particularity of their unified processes in a specific historical circumstance. In absence pf a standard definition of what constituted gender, historians continued to write about gender from the Western cultural view of what constitutes gender. However by 1980s other issues had come up that challenged this position calling for a more inclusive approach. An analysis of gender and history has also focused on the position of the woman during colonialism in Africa and elsewhere. The woman was seen first as a daughter, then as a woman and finally as a prostitute. Any woman who stayed alone was seen as a prostitute. Women were seen as safe when within the confines of their home in the countryside. Those in towns were stereotyped as being of loose morals and rebels. Although the fuller investigation of these points would follow in the studies of gender and colonialism of the 1990s, scholars of race and slavery in the Americas and Europe were zealous in pointing out that the bodies of colored women had been socially constructed to meet the interests of Europeans since the first colonial contacts. Still in the 1980s the field of womens history was thriving. By this time it supported influential journals in Europe and in the United States. Works in womens history were beginning to appear on the lists of major publishers and also in prominent general historical journals. It was however not all rosy. Critics within the profession questioned the legitimacy of the field of women history and its practitioners. Women history was described as narrow, over-specialized and immaterial to the truly important matter of history (Downs 2004). Womens historians were accused of trying to fashion their own life frustrations into a respected field. A more unifying concept of gender free of activism might as a matter of fact provide legitimacy for the field and its practitioners (Shepard Walker 2009). If gender could be argued out as a key field of experience for both all persons, then gender is a subject of universal relevance. Joan Scottss (1986) article titled Gender: A Useful Concept of Historical Analysis, which appeared on the American Historical Review, December 1986 issue, was written in this political context. This was a no mean achievement for a prestigious conservative journal. Scott noted that the proliferation of case studies in womens history called for some synthesizing perspective and the discrepancy between the high quality of the work then in womens history and the continued marginal status of the field as a whole pointed up the limits of descriptive approaches that do not address dominant disciplinary concepts in terms that can shake their power and transform them. The articles purpose was to examine the implications of feminists growing tendency to use gender as a way of referring to the social organization between the sexes and to offer a useable theoretical f ormulation of gender as a category of historical analysis. Scott found the feminist theorizing of the 1960s and 1970s limited because they tended to contain reductive or simple generalizations that undercut both historys disciplinary sense of the complexity of social causation and feminist commitments to analysis that would lead to change (Scott 1986). According to Scott, historically gender has been used as a primary way of signifying relations of power (Scott1999). The power in question is the power of domination and subordination; differential control over or access to material and symbolic resources. Emphasis is laid on the difference as a characteristic of power derived from the oppositional binarity of gender, but it also defined and limited the concept of gender which having been defined could not operate other than as a vehicle for this power. Women in most societies have been dominated by men. However this proposition is challenged by a number of non western scholars who argue that not all societies organized on the basis of gender as implied in the work of most Western historians. Oyeronke Oyeyumi (2005), an African Historian from Nigeria is one of them. Oyeyumi argues that Western work on gender has been and continues to be preoccupied with the oppositionally sexed body, which in inhabit the category gender and invests it with a rigid corporeal determinism. This she argues is not universal but specific to the western cultures and history. If gender is socially constructed, then it cannot behave in the same way across time and space. Therefore if gender is a social construction there must be a specific time in each culture when it began and therefore the time before this beginning it never did exist. Thus gender as a social construction is also a historical and cultural phenomenon which may presumably have not existed in some societies. In a similar view, Ifi Amadiume (1987) criticized the use of Western gender concept as a category for analyzing Africa history of gender. She argues that the ethnocentricity of gender of early feminist anthropology does not have a bearing on African societies. To these groups she argues the social and cultural inferiority of women was not questionable. In her work among the Igbo culture in eastern Nigeria, Amadiume did identify a gender system through which numerous mythical, social and culture distinctions were articulated according to a binary of masculine and feminine. But she also did establish that in this binary the attributes associated with females did not necessarily lead to economic or political subordination of the social group women and that the social institutions, especially those of male daughters and female husbands permitted individual females to enjoy those privileges of social positions gendered masculine. In the United States, intervening decades have given birth to a rich and expanding scholarship on the history of colored women. The colored slave woman owed his master and the men his master had selected for her sexual favors and reproductive services on top of the labor (Gerald, N.G., Billias, G.A 1991). The work written on the colored woman history is however minimal compared to what have been written on white women. Furthermore much of the work done on colored women still subordinates them within the history of white women. What that means is that American historians, until very recently, have showed little interest in identifying differences between West African and colonial Euro-American ideas of the social and cultural relations of the male and the female or giving interpretive authority to evidence of differences between African American and Euro-American communities over time in the United States. Of greater importance is the construction of colored women as negative markers of a Western concept of gender and the pressure borne on colored women to conform to those to that concept. To greater extent this centers the story on Western concept, not on African American women or on the understandings of gender that may have characterized their communities (Collins 1989). To illustrate further the problems in the use of gender as a category in historic analysis, North America can be studied. The early republic provides vital information because that is where U.S womens history began classics like Carroll Smith Rosenbergs Beauty, the Beast and the Militant Woman, Kathryn Kish Sklars Catharine Beecher and Nancy Cotts The Bonds of Womanhood (Cott 1997).These works sought to understand the origins of the late twentieth century trope of gender in the nineteenth-century. This was not unusual because like other historians, these women historians studied subjects in the past that were of continued relevance to their day. They focused on the social and intellectual life in the early American Republic that resonated in the female struggle. This majored on familial, political, legal, and economic subordination of women as a group by men as a group. The works continued to organize the field as it developed with works such as Women of the Republic by Linda Kerber, Daughters of Liberty by Mary Beth Norton and Good wives by Laurel Ulrich. The wives in the seventeenth and eighteenth century played a greater role in the management of the family resources. It was taken as the duty of a wife to defend and take care of the husbands investments. Wives were supposed to be aggressive in this. However during the nineteenth century, the womans role in the management of the husbands wealth diminished significantly (Cott 1997). Another milestone in the study of gender analysis is the entry of women into public jobs in the 20th century (Scharpf Schmidt 2000). This brought profound change to the woman. She got financial independence and her dependence on the man diminished. This entry into the job market went hand in hand with increased education attainment, increased civil rights like the right to vote and increased participation in the political process. These were great milestones for women that changed completely the relationship with the man. With it too came increased divorce rates, and choosing not to get married. When gender is treated as a question of analysis, it encourages the researcher to regard the sources of information more critically and more creatively. To some extent it is true that historians have been able to establish gender as a category of historic analysis. This is because the circumstances human beings operate in have expectations of behavior and conduct based on ones sexuality. These are either classified as masculinity or feminine. A man is expected to act and behave in a masculine way while the woman is supposed to portray a feminine behavior. These expectations have over the course of history shaped the relationship between the males and the females. Not only that but also within a sex, treatment is different. In America for example, An African American woman, a white woman and a native Indian woman were all treated differently.