Feminism

1
Feminism

• A Level Media Studies

2
Feminism

• 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 societys
  dominant ideas about gender roles.

3
Gender Roles

• The mass media play a crucial role in
  socialisation teaching us how to behave and
  think in ways that our culture finds acceptable.
• Sex is biological, gender is CULTURAL.
• What does it mean to be a woman/man?

4
Gender Stereotypes

• Femininity
• Caring
• Nurturing
• Emotional
• Domestic
• Sensitive
• Passive
• Soft
• Gentle

• Masculinity
• Tough
• Providing
• Rational
• Public/work orientated
• Thick skinned
• Active
• Rough
• Hard

Lower status...poorly paid work childcare,
nursing, teaching
Higher status...Influential roles...well paid
jobs...political leadership
Imbalance of power
5
Stereotyping

• 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• However, some may argue that they have been
  replaced by equally disempowering stereotypes...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

6
First wave feminism

• Mid 19th early 20th century.
• Fight for social and political equality.
• Struggle for womens suffrage (right to vote)
• Key concerns included education, employment and
  marriage laws.
• Successes higher education for women, married
  womens property rights and the widening of
  access to professions such as medicine.

7
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.

Made in Dagenham clip
8
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.

9
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
  doesnt matter)
• Spice girls and girl power
• Empowering heroines Buffy and Xena.

10
(No Transcript)
11

• 1987 Glenn Close in Fatal Attracttion
• 1992 Starship Troopers
• 2003 Kill Bill
• Nike ad the teeshirt gets wet from the inside
  only
• Triumph New hair, new bra and if he dont like
  it, new boyfriend
• A new aggressive form of sexuality

12
Naomi Wolf (1991)

• 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.

Womens bodies and female sexuality have become
commodities and the consequences are
mental/physical illness, starvation diets and
eating disorders.
Images of ultra thin supermodels and the perfect
bodies glamourised by the media are indications
of a patriarchal attack on womens bodies.
13
Angela McRobbie (1990)

• 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.

14
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.

15
Gauntlett (2002)

• 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