Women in the Media
https://www.businessinsider.com/26-sexist-ads-of-the-mad-men-era-2014-5
1940’s Guide to hiring Women Commercial
In this old commercial we can see the blatant display of how women are viewed in the workforce. While this might seem like an outdated issue, it is worthy to note that commercials as such are born from an era that demeaned women as objects that are meant for domestic labor and those stereotypes have wormed their way into our modern societal view on women. ‘Old Habits die hard’ is one proverb that embodies the idea of the effects of commercials like this, where propaganda and messages like this have a domino effect in the future, one symptom of this is the wage gap still evident in 2019.
She’s All That | ‘New Laney Boggs’ Movie Scene
In this movie scene, another problematic gender stereotype is issued. Where the conventionally ‘unattractive’ lead actress is set up by a man to a ‘much needed’ makeover that changes over 60% of who she was. This movie implies that beauty i reduced to how much skin you show, whether you wear glasses or not, have a ‘trendy’ or ‘suitable’ hairstyle desired or not. The woman is pampered to please the sights of a man who is only with her because of a bet. She only gets positive attention when she dismissed all the traits that where part of her personality.
Movies like this set a standard in society in which all women who desire to be ‘beautiful’ must follow. Rather than teaching women that they do not need the gratitude or appreciation of another man and accepting themselves for who they are, it strips the character of all her quirks. While the ending is ‘sweet’ and meant for audience relief when the Jock reforms his old ways and shows genuine interest for the changed girl, it only speaks a message to women that they need to rid themselves of all individuality because that is the only way you can get the attention of the cliche jock.
How did this paradigm come to?
An article by Anil Ananthaswamy and Kate Douglas suggests that Female stereotypes and roles may date back to when humans where still hunter-gatherers. While the patriarchal shift began when humans settled and began agriculture. This patriarchal shift is important, since the society reforms itself to idolize the men and pushes the agenda of all else being weaker. The article compares human societies to chimpanzee’s who else have a patriarchal system. The Male chimpanzee’s often treat their female counterparts as less than and always try to dominate them by exhibiting behaviors such as taking their food or forcibly copulating with the female chimpanzee’s. The reason for such vicious behavior is because the males in power are not only corrupted by that power but feel the need to take drastic measures to remain in power. This relates to the 1940’s commercial where the men are seen ridiculing the women and assuming their lack of skill. The only reason this presumption may hold truth is because of the way gender roles are implemented into females since birth.
image citation: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/style/uk-gender-stereotype-ads-ban.html
Different perspectives
A paper by Edward Glaeser and Yueran Ma dismisses the model of marketers power that target specific audiences and spread inaccurate stereotypes. Rather with a deeper lens into parental guidance and children’s naivety to how altruistic the parents’ intentions often are. Glaeser and Ma attribute the paradigm of gender specific roles to how parents will who were raised with beliefs that women should be nurtured into the domestic life while men should be nurtured into labor and education. This is what causes fields to become male dominated and because of the under supply of women in working fields and education it increases their fertility directly since they have an overabundance of time and few opportunities/choices to an alternative life. This indirectly leads women to believe that they are less capable than men, by simply observing the dynamic of educational fields and the ration of working men to women. Because children are highly susceptible to persuasion, especially from a parental figure, they eliminate all suspicion to how they were raised.
image citation: https://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/08/01/gap-faces-backlash-over-sexist-kids-range-ad-which-also-contains-unfortunate
The Results
The results of sexist portrayal of women in the media is evident in our society. Where unattainable standards of attraction have been set. A sense of being less capable than a man is not subconsciously embedded into our brain s because of the subliminal, or obvious, messages throughout media. Despite the shift of political correctness in our modern day language, there will always be men and women who remain willfully ignorant to the power of these subliminal messages and dismiss them as comedy relief or irrelevant cause to the problem. What they fail to realize is that the power dynamic serves the benefit of men over women and this is only reiterated with such content in the media.
To put this issue into perspective, allow me to provide an example in my home country Egypt. Since Egypt is an Islamic state, the government claims to follow the ‘Sharia Law’. Among the poorly decided laws, there lies one that blatantly displays the disregard and power dynamic of men vs women. To briefly sum up the law, it discuss adultery where if a man commits adultery, with eye witnesses other than the wife, then he may be punished for a period of no more than 6 months. A female adulterer on the other hand, with the husband as witness, would be sent to prison for no more than 2 years.
https://www.quora.com/Why-are-Egyptian-men-so-handsome-and-charming-and-beautiful
The discrimination does not end here, but following this, if a man in Egypt catches his wife in the act of cheating was in his home, in the span of 24 hours or 3 years, and proceeds to murder her then the case is put on under ‘Crime of passion’. However, if the roles were reversed and the woman had caught her husband and murdered him then she would face three to fifteen years or hard labor for life, according to Article 234. The assumption here is that when the man found his wife cheating he committed the crime out of absolute angst and betrayal, his actions were affected by his extreme emotional state and since he is the stronger being and more violent then his actions should be dismissed. While the women, being weaker and more gentle should not exceed her anger limits to violence.
1.Team, S. (2015, September 21). Adultery: Egyptian Men VS Egyptian Women. Retrieved from https://scoopempire.com/adultery-egyptian-men-vs-egyptian-women/. 2.Bethan McKernan Beruit @mck_beth. (2016, October 11). Egyptian MP told by human rights investigator it would be ‘unfair’ to imprison men for adultery too. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/egypt-mp-margaret-azer-adultery-law-sharia-gender-equal-men-women-a7356076.html.
I believe people stereotype because of a lack of better knowledge. An instinct of not knowing something is defining it using empirical data which was implemented within us by nurture. These stereotypes derive from one instance that was generalized to a group of people, sometimes deriving from the government as propaganda against other countries. These stereotypes can hurt individuals in a society by being applied to the laws as a means of logic or demean a community’s livelihood.
Eliminating stereotypes is near impossible but one effective way would be to embody the true sense of your people yourself. In order to create a widespread change, the change must begin with an individual that shows racists that Muslims can in fact be compassionate or a woman that excel in all fields above a men and still maintain a healthy domestic life. Integrating more minorities and women into the judicial system can be effective in the sense that more representation would be guaranteed, but could still be counterproductive, like the women politicians in the United States that approved of the extreme anti-abortion laws. Or the women politicians in Egypt that dismissed sexual harassment in Egypt a a minute and uncommon problem. Stereotyping is inevitable and so are its negative effects unless each individual strives to break down the generalizations.
Batool's Blog 