Rayanna Gender Roles

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Further to gender, Rayanna has a difficult time convincing Bishop and his crew to let her in due to the fact that she is a female. Gender inequalities within the films dancing are expressed through characters’ dialogues on two accounts . Firstly, a male in Bishop’s dance crew says “They’ll never give top dollar to a girls crew” (Rashid, 2008). This quote supports the common stereotype that women are unable to win or succeed without men and therefore need them in order to accomplish something. In this case it would be Rayanna having to join a male dance team as a female one would not be successful. Secondly, Bishop’s dance crew also mentions when attempting to reject Rayanna from the team, that mixed gender teams are seen as a joke, which do not win (Rashid, 2008), reinforcing gender segregation, defined by the separation of sexes enforced through rules and/or laws (Blackburn, 2002). …show more content…

The most common argument against gender integration is that women’s abilities and biological distinctions are nowhere near as good as men’s, unable to take on the best of them (Joseph, 2016). Rayanna is able to prove the opposite when her abilities exceed most of her male team members. The unfortunate truth is that within society, systems like to maintain the dominance and superiority of males through reinforcing the ideology and implying that breaking down such a binary could cause women physical harm. Although, Rayanna was dismissed from Bishop’s team and forced to make her own step dance crew, preliminary studies actually show the opposite of what the film portrays, displaying that within integrated teams, men often view women as equals and respect their abilities (Love,

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