FEMINISM
FEMINISM
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Feminists seek to challenge the unfair and
unequal distribution of power and wealth in
patriarchal society.
A patriarchal society is one based on male rule
and domination.
Feminists are particularly interested in the
contribution made by the media to society’s
dominant ideas about gender roles.
GENDER ROLES
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The mass media play a crucial role in
socialisation – teaching us how to behave and
think in ways that our culture finds acceptable.
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Sex is biological, gender is CULTURAL.
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What does it mean to be a woman/man?
GENDER STEREOTYPES
Femininity
 Caring
 Nurturing
 Emotional
 Domestic
 Sensitive
 Passive
Lower
 Soft
status...poorl
y paid work –
 Gentle
childcare,
nursing,
teaching
Masculinity
 Tough
 Providing
 Rational
 Public/work
orientated
 Thick skinned
Higher
 Active
status...Influenti
 Rough
al roles...well
paid
 Hard
Imbalance of power
jobs...political
leadership
STEREOTYPING
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Feminists have made great progress in eroding
those stereotypes.
However, some may argue that they have been
replaced by equally disempowering stereotypes...
 Vicky Pollard clip
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FIRST WAVE FEMINISM
Mid 19th – early 20th century.
 Fight for social and political equality.
 Struggle for women’s suffrage (right to vote)
 Key concerns included education, employment
and marriage laws.
 Successes – higher education for women, married
women’s property rights and the widening of
access to professions such as medicine.
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SECOND WAVE FEMINISM
Liberation movement of 1960s and 1970s.
 Characterised by struggles for equal pay, equal
rights at work and better representation in public
bodies such as Parliament.
 Access to contraception.
 Highly publicised activism.
 Miss America 1968
 Stereotype of humourless, dowdy, man-hating
feminist.
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Made in Dagenham clip
LAURA MULVEY (1975)
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
 The ‘male gaze’
 The main source of visual pleasure in the cinema
is the voyeuristic make viewer enjoying the
image of the female body,
 Much of our media output assumes the spectator
is male or constructs reality from a male POV.
 Women see themselves through the eyes of men.
 In order for a woman to experience pleasure from
the film, she has to position herself in a similar
role to the male viewer enjoying the spectacle.
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THIRD WAVE FEMINISM
1980s and 1990s
 Less emphasis on battles for equality
 More emphasis on the positive nature of
ambiguity and difference (not all women are the
same, it doesn’t matter)
 Spice girls and girl power
 Empowering heroines – Buffy and Xena.
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NAOMI WOLF (1991)
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The Beauty Myth
“Beauty is a currency like the gold standard. Like
any economy, it is determined by politics and in
the modern age in the West, it is the last, best
belief system that keeps male domination intact.”
Images of ultra thin
supermodels and the
‘perfect bodies’
glamourised by the media
are indications of a
patriarchal attack on
women’s bodies.
Women’s bodies and female
sexuality have become
commodities and the
consequences are
mental/physical illness,
starvation diets and eating
disorders.
ANGELA MCROBBIE (1990)
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Girls’ magazines
Magazines work alongside other socialising
influences to reinforce an obsession with
romance.
They work ideologically to define for their
audience the domestic roles of wife and mother
that they should accept and embrace.
POST FEMINISM
Celebrates the diversity of identity available to
women.
 Positive endorsement of consumerism
 Sometimes seen as ‘anti feminism’
 If women know that femininity is a construct,
then they can play with its signs, symbols and
identities from a position of power
 Semiotic guerrilla warfare – meaning of signifiers
such as high heels/lipstick/designer clothes can
be shifted from powerless to powerful.
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GAUNTLETT (2002)
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“Men and women are seen working side by side,
as equals, in the hospitals, schools and police
stations of television land. Movie producers are
wary of having women as screaming victims, and
have realised that kick ass heroines do better
business. Advertisers have now realised that
audiences will only laugh at images of the pretty
housewife, and have reacted by showing women
how to be sexy at work instead.”
CNN clip
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
Liberal Feminism
Socialization is the origin of gender differences.
The goal: Gender Justice.
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) & Harriet Taylor Mill (18071858)
Betty Friedan – wrote The Feminine Mystique in 1963.
Critique – some flaws that seem to come from this way of
thinking:
1. The claim that women can become like men if they set
their minds to it.
2. The claim that most women want to become like men.
3. The claim that all women should want to become like
men, to
aspire to masculine values.
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
Marxist Feminism
Class accounts for women’s status and function in
society.
Monogamous marriage is about private property.
The family is a microcosm of society’s larger class
relations.
Socialist Feminism
Class and gender intersect.
Both patriarchy and capitalism must be analyzed.
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
Cultural Feminism
There are fundamental differences between men and
women, and women’s differences should be celebrated.
There is an attempt to recover lost or marginalized
women’s works and traditions and create a culture that
nurtures and supports women’s experiences.
What is meant by “essentialism”? A belief in the real,
true
essence of things. (Sexuality and/or gender is
determined by an individual’s biology or
psychology).
GENDER ROLE SOCIALIZATION
Consider common agents of Gender Role Socialization (e.g.,
family, schools, peers, media)
Theories:
Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory – The key is the process of
identification (the process by which a person internalizes a
set of behaviors, attitudes, and characteristics exhibited by
someone very close to the individual). Children
unconsciously model the behavior of their parents.
Object Relations Theory – Humans are fundamentally
relationship-seeking. We form relationships with people
and with things. We gender-identify with our same-sex
parent.
GENDER AND CULTURE
Verbal Rituals – do we see differences in language patterns
and use by gender?
e.g.,
“report talk” vs. “rapport talk”
use of “hedges” and “tag questions”
Popular Culture – Those elements of culture that are
widely accessible.
Think about the portrayal of women and men in pop
culture.
What messages are relayed?
GENDER AND CULTURE
Media Theories
Cultivation Theory – Television is a homogenizing agent in
culture. Because television is a shared experience of most
everyone, it causes all of us to view the world in a similar
fashion.
The Reflection Hypothesis – Reality shapes what we see in
the media.
Role-Learning Theory – Viewers internalize what they see
in the media.
Organizational Theories – Women and people of color are
absent from the power positions where ideas and images
are produced.
Cultural Studies – An approach that studies the meanings
that consumers actively construct from popular culture.
WHAT IS FEMINISM?
Feminism is a diverse, competing, and often opposing
collection of social theories, political movements, and moral
philosophies, largely motivated by or concerning the
experiences of women, especially in terms of their social,
political, and economic inequalities.
“IS FEMINISM DEAD?”
(7-15-98)
TYPES OF FEMINISM
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A diverse, competing, and often opposing collection of
social theories, political movements, and moral
philosophies
Three main differences
Emphasize unique qualities of women?
 Integrate issues of culture and class into viewpoint?
 Advocate for rejection of masculine or patriarchal
models?
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TYPES OF FEMINISM
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Liberal Feminism
Emphasis on equality of women & men
 Aims to change current legal structures and
interventions to promote access for women
 Criticized (by other feminists) for trying to be like men
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TYPES OF FEMINISM
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Cultural Feminism
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Emphasizes differences between men & women
Values unique female qualities
Gender interacts with race, social class, and other factors
“We found that one important source of healing emerged when we
got in touch with all the factors in our lives that were causing
particular pain. For black females, and males too, that means
learning about the myriad ways racism, sexism, class exploitation,
homophobia, and various other structures of domination operate in
our daily lives to undermine our capacity to be self-determining.”
-- bell hooks
TYPES OF FEMINISM
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Radical & Socialist Feminism
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Oppression based on gender is the most stubborn form of
injustice (Hillary Clinton heckled)
Capitalism is oppressive
The whole patriarchal, capitalist system needs to be abolished
Advocates separatism
Questions heterosexuality
Left
Right
Radical/Social
Cultural
Liberal
HISTORY (HERSTORY)
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Karen Horney (1966)
•
Psychoanalyst who rejected “penis envy”
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Women envy men’s power and social status
Phyllis Chesler (1972)
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Criticized patriarchal male therapist-female client relationship
(therapist is expert, woman submits to his wisdom)
•
Said that refusal to conform was labeled as mental illness
NOW (National Organization for Women)
Betty Friedan, 1966
• Political issues/discrimination laws and hiring processes
•
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Consciousness raising groups (1970s)
Bring about social change
No leaders, open discussion
• Personal is political (gender role stereotypes in workplace,
•
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DIFFERENT MEANINGS IN DIFFERENT
CULTURES
HISTORY CONT.
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Lenore Walker (Contemporary feminist
therapist)
Four stages of feminist therapy development
1.
Challenged traditional therapies
2.
Integrated some positive aspects of traditional
therapy
3.
Advocated for all other therapies adding gender
sensitive components
4.
Feminist therapy can stand on its own
THERAPY FROM A FEMINIST
PERSPECTIVE
 Developed
out of dissatisfaction with
traditional approaches to psychotherapy
 The
practice of therapy informed by feminist
political philosophy and analysis, grounded in
the multicultural feminist scholarship on the
psychology of women and gender.
 Feminist
therapy contends that women are in a
disadvantaged position in the world due to sex,
gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, age
and other categories
PATRIARCHY
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Masculine behaviors and
thought patterns are the norm
Sex
 Biological: Male/Female
 Previously considered
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Hierarchy of value and power
based on gender, race, class,
sexual orientation, etc.
binary
 Now increasingly seen as
fluid
Men and women are judged
differently for the same
characteristics
Gender
 Social construct:
Masculine/Feminine
 Occurs on a continuum
GENDER SOCIALIZATION
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Gender and Children
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First question asked?
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Males preferred in many cultures
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Infant behavior across gender is similar: treatment is different
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Baby’s clothing predicted how “it” was treated (Smith & Lloyd,
1978)
Media, teachers, peers, etc. often provide and reinforce gender role
expectations (i.e., what is socially appropriate for females & males)
Over time, a gender role schema develops:
We interpret our world based on our gender expectations
GENDER SOCIALIZATION CONT.
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Puberty
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Sex differences become more visually apparent
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Conflict for girls because of how society views the female
body and role of female sexuality-conflicting
Importance of appearance (especially for girls)
 Sexual double-standard
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Negative response to menstruation
Adulthood
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Working mom/Superwoman
Role strain/conflict
Lack of support (at work and home)
Glass ceiling
“Empty Nest”
Menopause
VIEWS ON PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
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Psychological distress is environmentally induced via
gender roles and (patriarchical/sexist) social forces
Women at higher risk for role strain and conflict
 Women more likely to experience sexual trauma/harassment
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Psychological distress is a logical response to a
stressful environment
Women are over-represented in certain psychological
disorders due to socialization and social influences (not
because of biological differences)
Eating disorders
 Depression
 Anxiety
 PTSD
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VIEWS ON CLASSIFICATION
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Classification systems considered problematic
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DSM criticized for being male-centered (male = norm)
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Dependant and histrionic personality disorders are in the DSM
Dominating, greedy, macho personality disorders?
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Classification focuses on symptoms, underemphasizes social
context (PTSD an exception)
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Diagnostic labeling criticized for encouraging adjustment to
male-centered social norms
VIEWS ON SPECIFIC PSYCHOLOGICAL
PROBLEMS
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Depression
 Women taught to be helpless, dependent, please men
 Feel unable to control their lives or assert true self
 Appearance = worth
Generalized Anxiety = conflicting social expectations
PTSD = fear, anxiety, stress felt after victimization (e.g., rape,
abuse)
Eating disorders
 Socialization and societal messages
 Use gender role analysis to examine external messages