Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
portrayals of women in media
portrayals of women in media
portrayals of women in media
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: portrayals of women in media
Before we are born and actually take that first breath of air into the world, Society and our family prepares us to play our role as a male child or female child, leading into adult hood. When the parents are told by the doctors whether or not it is a boy or girl; we as a society plan for our showers, to coordinate with the sex of the baby. If it is a female child, the decorations for the shower are mainly pink, and if the sex of the child is a male child, the decorations are of course mainly blue. Female children are given dolls, tea sets, and pretend kitchens. Little girls are trained to nurture, take care, and be beautiful. Little boys usually receive sports equipment, toy cars, and Incredible Hulks. They are trained to be strong, and powerful.
When we start off as children unconsciously knowing what type of colors, toys, and stories we should be interested in, we are working hand in hand with society preparing ourselves for the roles we are made to believe are right for us as we enter into adulthood. By age five children can understand their modern gender roles they are expected to embrace throughout the rest of their life. Typical parents are not going to go out and purchase their five year old daughter a brand new football, Saints jersey, and helmet. We are talking about the same five year old child, who has just as much love for the sport (if not more) than the five year old little boy. Parents often get their children what makes them happy, but society portrays that five year old girl to be playing with baby dolls, or cooking up a meal in her pretend kitchen, asking her daddy to sit down and have some make believe tea with her. Why should society be the one to make that call, and determine what role a female ...
... middle of paper ...
...ur society is that we must perform these roles we are assigned and trained to play in order to fit in comfortably with the rest of the human race. A stereotype confirms that if you are a woman or a man, you should act as such, and perform these specific roles, and do them well. These beliefs take away from our originality and self esteem by allowing us to deny our interests and skills. It also discourages men from participating in “women’s work” (such as cooking and cleaning) and restricts women from choosing roles that are traditionally “male” (such as basketball and football). Women are expected to participate in sports such as tennis, volleyball, and of course ice skating; which allows the public to view this woman as being beautiful, graceful, and non aggressive. Their uniform for this sport does not come with knee guards, or shoulder pads to protect themsel
Women and men play various sports because they as Americans want to experience the excitement of playing for fun, and doing something they love. The idea of what men and women can do for fun in sports has been shaped by the American society in many different ways through the media, schooling and education, and professional sports organizations. America portrays women playing field hockey and doing synchronized swimming while men do boxing, and body building. If a woman chooses to do boxing because to her it is fun and if a man chooses synchronized swimming because he likes it, they face many cultural costs and benefits of choosing this sport. Society does not like change and holds female athletes up to ideals such as being beautiful, graceful, and healthy. Male athletes are held to ideals such as strong, aggressive, and powerful. People who choose to play non-traditional sports risk being judged by society as unnatural and homosexual, instead of being viewed as an athlete who is special and unique, they are often subjected to unwanted sexual advances and assumptions. The benefit of doing an untraditional sport is that you are able to do something you love. As a result of people who do non-traditional sports, they open the doors for future generations of women and men who might want do play an non-traditional sport.
From when a baby is born they are either identified or told to be “feminine” or “masculine”. For many decades, females have been associated with raising children, wearing frilly dresses, responsible for all the house work, to keep passive, pure and to maintain themselves physically. Due the traits put on to not only girls but also boys it leads to their definition of what femininity should be or, in other words the “weaker sex”. These expectation put on by society onto the boys and girls of femininity often results in women being discouraged from doing activities such as sweating, being aggressive and, competing in sports and physical activities. It also results in boys thinking that it is okay to suppress women and make comments such as “She throws like a girl” or “This isn’t the kitchen”. The main reason for this is because society puts the expectation on women to be “ladylike,” and not to demonstrate any characteristics defined as being masculine. Even though these social norms are still evident today, there are legislations that I could say “try” to promote gender equity in sports, such as the Title IX which is “a comprehensive federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex ”. Even though the U.S have implemented the Title IX, it still does not create equal opportunities or protections under it for women. For example the Office of Civil Rights had a report saying that “it received more than 1,250 complaints over a four-year period from 2009 to 2012. The number of sexual violence complaints increased from 786 during the three-year period ending in 2011 to 854 in 2013-2014 ”. How can there be equity in sports when the laws implemented aren’t doing enough?
Evidence still shows that as a society we are still far more comfortable with women being involved in the traditional sports such as field hockey rather than boxing and men participating in sports such as rugby rather than synchronized swimming this is because they are pre conceived as “ NORMAL” for a specific gender.
Alana Young is from the University of Ottawa and wrote an article on how women and men are being treated differently in Skateboarding and Snowboarding. In “Being the alternative Subculture: Gender Differences in Experiences of Young Women and Men in Skateboarding and Snowboarding”, it talks about the challenges of gender logic. The article focuses more on the behaviors and the fact that there are a few levels of equality missing from these sports. For example, “In her 1995 study on social resistance among skateboarder, all female skateboarders reported being placed in marginal roles or having been discouraged by males from participating in skateboarding” (young, 2004). At a professional level the women get treated differently than men and it is wrong. They are seen as fragile, should be constantly watched over when they can do a man’s job and this is shown in the graph below. “Gender roles dictate, through socialization, that female participation in sport is restricted on the basis of female inferiority in society” (Young, 2004). Even though they are being treated wrongly, the women still decide to continue to skateboard due to passion and motivation. In this article, they show two graphs showing the difference in how women and men are being treated. It seems that people are more cautious with women than men. Since skateboarding came to existence, society always thought it as a man’s sport, but
Young children are typically raised around specific sex-types objects and activities. This includes the toys that that are given, activities that they are encouraged to participate in, and the gender-based roles that they are subjected to from a young age. Parents are more likely to introduce their daughters into the world of femininity through an abundance of pink colored clothes and objects, Barbie dolls, and domestic chores such as cooking and doing laundry (Witt par. 9). Contrarily, boys are typically exposed to the male world through action figures, sports, the color blue, and maintenance-based chores such as mowing the lawn and repairing various things around the house (Witt par. 9). As a result, young children begin to link different occupations with a certain gender thus narrowing their decisions relating to their career goals in the future. This separation of options also creates a suppresses the child from doing something that is viewed as ‘different’ from what they were exposed to. Gender socialization stemming from early childhood shapes the child and progressively shoves them into a small box of opportunities and choices relating to how they should live their
From the day they are born, parents play a huge role in socializing gender by giving their children toys to play with based on their gender. Boys are expected to like and play with toys such as trucks, cars, trains, and gross things like bugs and mud. Girls are expected to like anything pink, dolls, kitchen sets, and playing tea party with their dolls and stuffed animals. It is acceptable for girls to occasionally play with toys meant for boys but not vise versa. As they grow into their teenage years they are taught to like more things based on one’s gender. Kevin Macdonald writes, “boys like guns, boxing, wrestling and karate, team sports, and fixing things. Girls prefer dolls, sewing, cooking, dancing, and looking after younger children.” In their teenage years girls are not really suppose to like boy things and if they do they are seen as a tomboy. Through time though it has become more acceptable for girls to like a few guy things such as sports. As they become adults their expectations on what they like stays pretty much the same as teenage years. Men like things such as sports, cars, outdoor activities like hunting and fishing, and work. Women are expected to like things such as fashion (makeup, nails, clothes, shoes, etc.), cooking or baking, and doing
The first major question that should be answered is why does society believe that people entering non-traditional roles as such a negative occurrence? I think that the root of this belief is buried in the past and has matriculated down through the generations. In the early history of sports it was believed that women were too delicate to participate in sports. The thought was that if women participated in strenuous activity that they would damage their reproductive organs, which would ultimately not fulfill an absurd belief that the primary role of women in society was to have children and care for the men. Back then sports were also used as an arena for men to test and publicly display their masculinity. Open acceptance of women in sports at that time would have posed as too much of a threat to the men's masculinity, therefore many years went by which allowed the practice of only traditional roles being witnessed and accepted.
... women, but especially athletic women, and is socially constructed to dictate women’s appearance, demeanor and values (Krane et al, 2004).” Females, for example, are expected to look and behave in a feminine way in order to satisfy heteronormative practices such as marriage. However, to participate in a sport, a traditionally male dominated realm, female athletes must acquire more traditionally masculine characteristics like strength, aggression, competitiveness, and assertiveness; characteristics that betray hegemonic gender and societal norms. Issues pertaining to feminine behavior and appropriate gender roles continue to be the root cause of discrimination not only in sport, but also in modern society as “sport is a sub culture within a larger society, therefore nothing typically occurs in sport that does not occur in the larger culture (Vodden & Schell, 2010).”
Often when a couple becomes pregnant and finds out the sex of the infant, stereotypes begin to form. If the child is female, their room will often be painted pink with cutesy borders. The crib will have pink blankets with ruffles on them. The baby girl will be presented with soft toys and cute stuffed animals, as well as perhaps a baby doll or two. At the baby shower, the mother will typically be presented with pink and purple clothing, the colors of choice for a female child. When the baby finally comes along, she will typically be treated as a gentle princess. When it comes to girls, adults are often more careful, as if the baby girl will break.
Children learn the differences between men and women’s roles in society from a young age. It is not something that is biologically instilled; rather it is something it is taught by observing the roles each gender partakes in their respected fields. When it comes to employment, children distinguish jobs like nurses and teachers are usually for women and firefighters or presidents are for men (Jacobs 2008). This may because they see members in their family holding these positions or being taught in school that certain genders usually hold certain positions. The same is true for children and associating gender roles in sports. Men usually become basketball, football, or soccer players. Women are not the first gender children think about when it comes to being athletic in competitive sports. Boys start to understand what masculinity is because of participating in sports and do not want to be called “fag” or “sissy” (Douglas Hartman 2008). They may kick the ball around with a male family figure, like a father, who instructs and criticizes...
There are a lot of ways for us to learn about gender roles and expectation. Family has the most important influence on how we learn about gender roles. There are some reasons why we figure out this. First, family is the initial socialization place. We contact to family when we were born. Because of this, family has a vital role in the stage of how we think about gender roles. Secondary, we will mimic the gender roles that parents unknowingly perform to us. We focus on parents’ behaviors, for instance, mother dose the house chores and father goes outside for work. And our thinking will be inserted with the idea which gender role should do what. Lastly, parents’ thinking about
Gender roles and gender stereotypes greatly affect men and women sports. They affect men and women sports so much that men sports are far more popular than women sports. Gender roles are what or society expects of us, and gende2r stereotypes are fixed and oversimplified beliefs. The difference is that gender roles are what we observe in society, and gender stereotypes are what we assume about certain individuals (Rathus, 2010, p.447).
Girls are supposed to play with dolls, wear pink, and grow up to become princesses. Boys are suppose to play with cars, wear blue, and become firefighters and policemen. These are just some of the common gender stereotypes that children grow up to hear. Interactions with toys are one of the entryway to different aspects of cognitive development and socialism in early childhood. As children move through development they begin to develop different gender roles and gender stereotypes that are influenced by their peers and caregivers. (Chick, Heilman-Houser, & Hunter, 2002; Freeman, 2007; Leaper, 2000)
Under the pressure of the unequally, the stereotype that woman is always the supporters rather than the main finance of the family. Through the feminist lense, Chopin creates the female character who is powerless oppressed by her husband individually, but the woman 's expectation and the society generally. By contrasting Edna thought with each different characters, Chopin portrays Edna transformation through the adversity around her and how it affect her mind of state in which implying society has the effect to how people behave, acts and thinks.
The expectation of gender role in society causes insecurities and depression because sometimes we are not able to do or to be what others expect from us. This is something men and women have to battle everyday and as much as we can agree that time has changed, gender roles expectation is something we still see today and we are still subjected to obey whichever gender role we were born with. Women need to follow the demands of beauty and to become housewives while men needs to grow muscle and make money. Today we may not live like the ancestral ways but the oppression of gender roles is still a big issue. It is like there is this set of rules for each gender since they are born even though they are not written they linger