Different Views on Gender Issues Liberal feminists argue that our society holds the false belief that women are, by nature, less intellectually and physically capable than men, it tends to discriminate against women. In order to challenge the inequality, liberal feminists work hard to emphasize the equality of men and women and trying to achieve equal opportunities. At work place, liberal feminists aim to eliminate inequalities such as vertical and horizontal segregation and unequal pays. The segregation is mainly caused by the structural functionalists’ view that women should work in the traditional female dominated industries forever to remain the current social structure and continue to be the subordinates of male. Structural functionalists fail to catch the trend that more and more women are entering the previous male-dominated industries and structuralists should not view females as puppets who do not their own wills.
A common gender stereotype is naturally, that office work should be left to the males, and females should focus on household chores such as looking after the children and housework. Those who express any desire to enter the workforce are generally discouraged if not frowned upon. The community, or in this case, the country’s workforce is greatly affected by such a stereotype due to the following reasons: Firstly, having an employee or colleague of a different gender might not be such a bad thing as a woman would be able to offer alternative viewpoints to male workers. Particularly for companies that cater to the general public’s needs. An entire workforce of men would definitely consider the male’s needs over the females, resulting in unbalance and discontentment from the female public.
They have found that there is increasing family diversity and that women are not equally exploited in all types of family e.g. matrifocal or lesbian families. Nicholson (1997) believes women are often better off outside the traditional idea of family and Calhoun (1997) explains women cannot be exploited by men in lesbian families. This perspective is not easy to criticize because it recognizes differences in family life however it can be criticized for losing sight of continuing inequalities between men and women within the family. Radical feminists believe that the family plays a major role in maintaining the oppression of women in a male-dominated society.
Discuss the issue of gender bias in psychology Gender bias is looking at one particular gender and considering it as the normal gender. There is a large problem with psychology being seen as gender bias in favour of men, often devaluing women or simply ignoring them in their studies. An example of this is Asch, who only looked at male students, meaning that his findings can’t be generalised to women. Aristotle viewed women as a deformity in terms of both physiology and biology. Kitzinger (1988) believes that questioning whether women can do certain activities such as going to university or having certain positions in government are often used for political reasons to save men’s jobs or protect them from losing face to an inferior woman.
Gershuny is another argument to prove a change in positions between men and women. Gershuny is basically the debate that when women work full time (which they didn’t use to), they do less housework. Although it doesn’t prove equality,
Nevertheless, it seems that he could not escape the dominant philosophy of his own society that women were the weaker sex. The question is why? Why did More believe that giving more rights and power to women would contribute to the creation of a perfect society? Also, why, yet giving women more rights and power than they usually would be given, he still maintained the patriarchal values of the sixteenth century? Even in the perfect Utopian world of Thomas More, the social status of women, the role they played in society and the general way they were treated, were influenced by the dominant view of the society at that time and by his own personal values.
In Two ways a Woman Can Get Hurt, Jean Kilbourne points out that ads affects us in potentially damaging ways than helping us informing us about the product. She says that advertisements are used to depict power than passion. It uses gender identities/roles to show the power the men have over women. In the attached ad, the woman is underneath the man, which suggests that man have more power and therefore, woman are mere objects that man “use” in a daily life. The ad is supposed to promote the jeans by Calvin Klein.
August 7, 2011 JUS 110- Crime and Criminology Critical Feminist Theory VS Grauwiler and Mills A critical feminist views gender inequality as stemming from unequal power of men and women in a capitalist society, which leads to the exploitation of women by fathers and husbands. Under this system women are considered a commodity worth possessing like land or money. (Siegel 2010) In knowing this view we know that men feel that they have power over women since they are generally stronger they take advantage of this and try to control the women in their lives. Many times the control that they have over women is abusive. It is a known cultural difference that men usually dominate the world.
The first wave of gender role theory assumed that society and its differentiated gender roles exists in harmony. But the second wave feminist approach of the seventies undermined this take on gender roles and viewed socialization and the internalization of gender roles as repressive. Gender role study thus became political, arguing that gender relations are (and should be) transformable. At that time a new wave of writing began to emerge arguing that masculine gender roles are also repressive, calling men to free themselves from society's expectations of how they should behave, appear and conduct themselves. This approach held the men, and not only women, are subjected to social pressure and repression, with Pleck holding that the perception which anchors identity in gender role prevents individuals who breach their traditionally allocated gender role to challenge this role, or otherwise they are doomed to feel inapt.
Such views demonstrate a fixed ideology that the roles between couples are that the women should have the sense of responsibility in doing domestic work and childcare. This is supported by Oakley as he does not agree with the march of progress towards symmetry as Young and Willmott do, but instead states that it is evident in the 20th century that an increasing number of women are working however, their housewife role is still women’s primary role. Decision-making and paid work make a difference within power relationships and labour of division and there may be inequality not just within who does what at home but, also with who gets what and how the resources are shared between men and women. A reason why men take greater shares of family’s resources is because they have