"I am woman, hear me roar/ In numbers too big to ignore and I've been down there on the floor/ No one's ever gonna keep me down again" say the lyrics of the song "I am woman," by the singer Helen Reddy. This song demonstrates the position women are submitted into and advances a notion of having the women's role as an instigator for change. In the novel Anthem by Ayn Rand, the woman figure is Liberty 5-3000 and the male figure is Equality 7-2521. The novel maintains that "women are forbidden to take notice of men" (Rand 38). The role of Liberty displayed throughout Anthem restricts and limits the viewpoint that men have on women.
The restrictions on the individual in Anthem are advanced to such an extreme that the members of this society are robbed of personal decision-making processes. The people do not get to choose their career, for the teachers tell them "dare not choose in your minds the work you would like to do" (Rand 22). The council, who is in charge of making decisions, tries to make "all men alike" (Rand 19) and what has been engraved into their minds is that these actions which they cannot think or do are "base and evil" (Rand 17). The people of this society are literally handicapped in way as to not have their own independent intelligence.
As harsh as the restrictions are for the men in this novel, just imagine the limitations thrown onto the women. Liberty, as well as the others, does not have a say in anything, nor does she have the ability to think and do without restraint. Men have the varied living styles and jobs, even if they do not get to choose, where as the women "have been assigned to work the soil" (Rand 38). Females are not even allowed to live in the city. They reside "beyond the City" where they rest in "the Home of the Peasants" (Rand 38). But once Equality sees Liberty for the first time, his perspectives begin to change on how the views on women should be altered.
