Sexism in The 21st Century

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Starting from the 1920’s with women receiving the right to vote women's suffrage has come a long way. Women are more independent now in 2014 than ever before and it's becoming more and more common to see women succeed as doctors, lawyers and CEOs. According to the U.S. Department of Labor the percentage of women has increased by about 40% from 1950 to 2010. Even though it is still not equal, Government action such as the Equal pay Act in has closed the gap between pay differences with genders since the 1950s. With that being said, can we say that sexism is a thing of the past?
America has taken great actions towards equality over the last century. Affirmative action and the Equal Pay Act have been major steps forward towards equality, as a nation we are evolving. However sexism has evolved as well. One of the main causes of perpetuating sexist ideals in the 21st century is media. While women have made tremendous gains towards independance, media has created gender inequalities by portraying women mainly as complete dehumanized sex objects. While we have gone a long way in terms of womens rights, media is doing the most damage to women. More specifically within the media, one of the main offenders of this is music. Not only do music videos show women scantily clad and being treated as sexual objects the majority of the time, but the lyrics themselves are degrading to women. These artist treating women as sexual objects as well as having an underlying message of violence towards them. This has the potential to be extremely dangerous for our society by forming attitudes of apathy or even evoke violence towards women by men, as well as women thinking that this is ok and that girls should expect this behavior and t...

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...can get away with these lyrics is because they are catchy enough for the general public to not notice its actual content. Society has been immersed in a culture that values women for their bodies and physical appearance as well as an apathy or even encouragement towards physical violence and the media is exacerbating these ideals. The first step towards changing societies perception will be bringing awareness to these issues.

Works Cited

Lieb,Kristen. ( 2013) Gender, Branding, and the Modern Music Industry . New York: Routledge

Parker, Kim,Taylor, Paul, Wang, Wendy. (2013) Breadwinner Moms. Retrieved from http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/29/breadwinner-moms/ Rogers, Anna. ( 2013) Sexism In Unexpected Places: An Analysis of Country Music Lyrics. Retrieved from
http://caravel.sc.edu/2013/09/sexism-in-unexpected-places-an-analysis-of-country-music-lyrics

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