The stereotype that women are "too emotional" for higher ranking jobs has limited their ability to have an opportunity to succeed, or even try, these highly qualified jobs. For example, the culture used to, and still does to a certain extent, that women belong in the home and in the kitchen. The job of a woman was to cook, clean, and take care of the family while the men went to work. That is because women were seen as "too emotional" to handle themselves in the business world. This has also transfered to politics, since the United States has still not seen a woman president. Also, at school girls are seen as easily intimidated so guys feel like they can walk all over and say they are better than girls.
The stereotypes of men are different compared to those of women. Men are seen as the hit first ask questions later, or violent, attitudes of men. This is shown in a school setting where the majority of the fights that one hears about, people automatically assume that it is guys that are having the fight. Usually it is men having the fight, but only because of the way the media has influence the men and what attitudes are acceptable for them to have. This goes into the point I made about the common stereotype of men just being unintelligent. The unintellingence comes from the media depicting that it is ok for men to hit first and ask questions later. The media has brainwashed the men of our society into thinking that this violence is ok.
The violence also is in work areas as well, especially in professional sports. Hockey fights, football fights, and baseball fights become popular events inside the sport itself. This is because the media has shown and influenced men into thinking that violence is normal and necessary to have control of a situation. Also regarding politics, war and violence has become a more and more common solution as the years have gone on. More wars have been declared in order to resolve problems rather than finding another way to come to an appropriate solution.
Therefore, our media has a very powerful influence and control over the people, and the stereotypes made against them, in our society. These stereotypes have affected our everyday lives and unless we start fighting them now, they will grow more and more influential in our schools, workforce, and politics as the years go by.
Great points, Megan. I just thought I could add a thought to your violent men paragraph. In the hallways many times at main campus, I notice a ton of fights both of male-male AND female-female. My thinking to this is that the male-male ones are just as you described, but the female-female ones are almost a role switching by females to a male "role" in the sense of fighting over something (whether it'd be an tangible or intangible object or statuses.) Some fights I have seen are two girls fighting about affairs with a "lover", much the same as males do. In this role switching I just found it peculiar that vulnerability is considered a fault or failure in some female altercations just as it is among men.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I believe your last paragraph sums up the whole chapter! :]