For example, cultural feminists look to the different values associated with womanhood and femininity as a reason why men and women experience the social world differently. Other feminist theorists believe that the different roles assigned to women and men within institutions better explain gender difference, including the sexual division of labor in the household. Existential and phenomenological feminists focus on how women have been marginalized and defined as the “other” in patriarchal societies. Women are thus seen as objects and are denied the opportunity for self-realization. Gender Inequality: Gender-inequality theories recognize that women's location in, and experience of, social situations are not only different but also unequal to men's.
In other parts of the world sexism is more prominent because males have dominant roles over women and therefore look down upon them. Not only is there sexism, but there is ambivalent sexism which is defined as sexism directed against women based on both positive and negative attitudes (hostility and benevolence) rather than uniform dislike. To better understand ambivalent sexism I took a test that would rate my hostile and ambivalent sexism. The Ambivalent sexism inventory measure how sexist you are towards men and women. My scores from this test were quite surprising to me.
Sierra C. Nesmith Mrs. M English 3 2/11/14 “The inferiority label imposed upon those female sex is frequently intended to be a totalistic notion encompassing almost every aspect of women’s being – physical, mental, and emotional.” (Brennan, William, Ph.D.) (www.fnsa.org). Throughout history, women have been victims of dehumanization. Dehumanization is defined as the act of depriving a person of qualities such as individuality, compassion, or civility. Realistically speaking, women were not looked upon as individuals but as products within man made organizations. Men were known to be superior species that were defined by power, however, in many aspects this ideal has proven to be false.
Magazines, advertisements and television create and promote stereotypical images of females. Females are represented as sex objects with nurturing, motherly instincts, only focused on beauty, house hold chores, politically and professionally inferior. Males are depicted as the bread winners, career orientated, professional, political and important. This is in stark contrast to the truths of reality, where women in both Australia and America are professionals, and do infact hold numerous powerful positions in the workforce. This shows the immense influence the media has over western cultures, and how this can influence popular understandings of females.
Stereotypical advertisements portray men as powerful and women inferior to men. These stereotypes reflect the notion that women are in “need” of men, degrade women and dictate their worth in American society. To begin with, these stereotypical roles are something we, as little girls, are exposed to from the time we are born. The biggest culprits of exposure are the Disney Princesses. The Disney brand and stories are a well-established part of our lives.
In an analysis of two works, the epic poem “Beowulf” and the more recent film that shares the title, it becomes apparent that gender stereotypes are still alive and well today. Despite showing female characters with greater active agency and different influences on male roles, the film version of “Beowulf” still succumbs to putting females in second-class roles designed to enhance the male lead. Female characters in the movie have a much greater active agency, the ability to take control of one’s life, than they do in the poem. For instance, in the film Wealhtheow[->0] obviously controls the sexual relationship in her marriage to Hrothgar, saying such things as “[he] has no sons…he never will, for all his talk” and showing open aversion every time Hrothgar suggests intimacy. In contrast, women are considered to be property of their clan or tribe first, then their husband in the original epic.
The film accurately depicts the cultural status of that time and the confusion over the roles of men and women. For it’s accuracy, the film is regarded by some to be pro-feminism while anti-feminism by others. It hails to the new feminist ideals of the 1970’s while at the same time showing the dominance of masculinity. There are several feminisms that can be applied to the film. First, of which is considered to fall under the philosophical position of being an “essentialist” form of feminism.
Most of the ads focus on having beautiful women or “sexy” women in them to show how men can possibly obtain them. Those businesses take advantage of women in a degrading manner and abuse the privilege of advertisements. When it comes to the topic of sex in advertisement, most will agree that it places a negative connotation on women, where this agreement usually ends, however is on the question of who it affects. Whereas some are convinced that men and women are both portrayed negatively, others maintain that it degrades women and negatively influences our next generation; still others argue that not only does it degrade women but also affects the way men view women. There are three sources that each back up one of these views.
And that the Male Gaze expresses an unequal power relationship, between the ‘viewer’ and the ‘viewed’, for example, that men impose their unwanted gaze upon women. Feminists say that some women however don't conform to the male gaze and are represented in the media by showing they are strong and powerful women without men or males. Some feminists argue that whether or not women welcome the gaze, that some women might merely be conforming to the norms established
Therefore, in recent films, female roles have comes to include the traditional household, motherly role. Yet this is mainly in contemporary films about periods in the past, in the modernistic films out at the moment women's roles in the films were more dominant and masculine and all the while maintaining there feminine qualities that have always been represented in films. The genre can affect the role of the female character as for example in film noir there is always a femme fatal get in a science fiction there maybe no femme fatal iconology get there maybe a sci-fi connection to a femme fatal yet the genre of it alters it completely. This can be seen in the modern film, Kill Bill, where the lead was an aggressive, strong and powerful character and yet this aggression and revenge was steaming from the lose of her child thus the feminine mother aspect can be seen clearly in comparison to a film from the 1980's such as Little Shop of Horrors in which the leading lady was