Feminist Movement Sociology

Lydia Mason is 57 years old and lives in Baltimore, Maryland. She took a Women’s Studies class in 1979 at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. At the time, Women’s Studies was the most interesting class out there. It was very popular amongst young people. “Everybody took it,” she said “girls and boys. Everyone wanted to know more about it.” This positive attitude towards the history of women’s suffrage continued until around fifteen years later. Then, the term feminist started to become something with which people did not want to associate themselves. “In the late eighties I would start to hear people say ‘You know, I’m not a feminist, but…’ and then follow it up with something that I personally believed to be a feminist thought. And I still hear that today.”

Lingering inequalities and other social trends from previous decades brought forth the modern feminist movement in the 1960s. These feminists campaigned for gender equality with causes such as equal pay for equal work, abortion rights, and social parity. In 1963, author Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, which contained reports from a study conducted on female college graduates during the 1950s and early 1960s, which uncovered that most women labelled themselves exclusively as mothers and housewives, and were unsatisfied with the roles forced upon them. Friedan argued fervently that women needed to discover their own identities outside the roles of a wife and mother. Many believe that the arguments made in The Feminine Mystique marked the start of the modern feminist movement (Loveday, 1)

Media, one of the most influential reflections of culture, under represents women and displays them in stereotypical positions. Paula Lobo and Rosa Cabecinhas, Professors of Communication at University of Minho, highlight sex-discrimination within the media in

This article, written by Melanic R. Salome , is about the women’s misrepresentation of in media . Salome considers media as an important tool that affects American women in a negative way. Media has become of paramount interest in our lives, despite the fact that its negative influences on us are increasing at a rapid pace. Media promotes unrealistic and unattainable images that result in depression and dissatisfaction among people. Therefore, media reflects the image of society and the way people think about themselves. Moreover, The writer strives to show the portrayal of women as depicted by media, stating that historically women are more likely to suffer from marginalization and stereotyping than men do . She claims that women are mostly represented as sexual objects and marriage oriented. She highlights that it is unfortunate that this marginalization of women is still continuing, but it is being exploited through a different way by media. Women beauty is used in advertisement on purpose to sell products while men are usually represented as elegant leaders and decision makers. Media, according to Salome, tries hardly to convince American society believing in inaccessible and nonsensical goals. The author believes that women should be accepted as they are without being incorporated into the picture of what the ideal women are. Furthermore, she claims that the American society is a society that cares just about appearance as an important part of the human existence.

15). By foregrounding the complexity of gender in a postfeminist culture increasingly opposed to gender-specific analysis, Levine reminds us that these projects of feminist media analysis are as important in the twenty-first century as they were during the early days of feminist studies.

Early feminism was typically focused only on white women, likely because racism was still extremely prominent at the time feminism began emerging. It was not until Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced the term “intersectionality” in 1989 that feminism started to look at oppressed group’s needs (Nash, 2008, 2). Intersectionality is a way of thinking that acknowledges that when a person has identities that belong to more than one oppressed group, it impacts their quality of life more negatively. In this paper, I will argue that intersectionality is important in the discussion of feminist theories and activism because it ensures that feminism is for all women, not just a select group of them. Intersectionality has changed the way the feminist movement handles the overlapping of different identities, which has helped feminist theorists understand the experiences of women of colour much more clearly. While intersectionality has a very important role in the conversation and practice of feminism, there are certainly critiques of the concept that should be brought up. These critiques, however, can offer a way to improve the study of intersectionality.

In this essay, I will examine how the media affects on race when it comes to gender, sexuality, and identity through analyzing course materials. I will discuss it through readings—"Kicking and Screaming" by E. Galang, "Asian Americans & the Media, Ch.1” by Ono and Pham, and "The Whites of Their Eyes: Racist Ideologies and the Media" by Stuart Hall, "Asian Women in Film: No Joy, No Luck" by Jessica Hagedorn—, and video clips—"Slaying the Dragon”(1998) and "All American Girl”(1994-1995). First of all, Ono and Pham points out that the media have a key role in gender and sexuality of Asians and Asian Americans. ” Slaying the Dragon" points out that the media tend to represent Asian women as over sexualized, exotic, submissive, and superhuman,

There is a heavy stigma surrounding the word “feminism”, saying it out loud evokes emotional responses from many people. During my conversations, I received many casual responses to feminism, or rather the traditional, “I believe in equality” response. I also received some negative responses from people that did not approve with modern day feminism, or believed that we had already achieved equality. And finally, I received some very strong — yet positive — responses to feminism, however, these people explained that feminism itself is on a downward spiral.

The United States of America is one of the most diverse countries, and the most media obsessed yet we still lack a vast amount of diversity in that media. Our media delivers a lot of the same narratives and perspectives and although we have in recent times seen progress in the medias display of diversity we are still being presented with a disproportionate amount of the same points of view. There is no aspect in our media currently that proficiently displays diversity. Diversity becomes especially important when representing women. Though we as a culture have made great strides in gender equality women but especially women of color are an oppressed and underrepresented group. What representation of women of color there has been in our media is often subject to stereotyping and

The women’s liberation movement (or feminism as it is now known) of the 1960s and 1970s touched every home, business, and school (WA, 705). The movement even touched the sports and entertainment industries, in fact, “There are few areas of contemporary life untouched by feminism” (WA, 717). The word feminism in the early 1960’s wasn’t often used and when it was it was used with condescension or hatred. However, in the late sixties that changed thanks to a new group of women. This new diverse group of women included the: young, old, heterosexual, lesbians, working class, and even the privileged. This diverse group came together and collectively created the second wave of feminism.

For centuries, large groups of individuals have come together to oppose prevailing ideas, challenge conformity and promote great change in beliefs, government policy and overall social reform. Whether it is an instinctual component of human existence or a way of survival as learned from previous generations, social reform is an integral part of Western culture’s growth and development into modern society. When discussing this topic, two very great movements come to mind. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s and the Feminist Movement of the 1960s and

For our activism project, my sister, Maggie, and I went to the Ziibiwing Center in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. We live in the near-by village of Shepherd, so we decided to visit the Center while we were home for Easter break. I had been interested in visiting the Center for a number of years and saw this project as the necessary push to finally act on the desire. Mt. Pleasant is located right next to the reservation of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe. At times is hard to tell where the reservation ends and the city begins. The Ziibiwing Center was opened in 2004 to help preserve the Anishinabe culture, honor their ancestors, and to educate people on the culture as well. The Anishinabe are the Ojibwe (Chippewa), the Odawa (Ottawa), and the Potawatomi.

The goal of this blog post is to assess the need for proper representation in the media. This will be done through the examination of the lack of diversity and the under-representation of marginalized individuals primarily focusing the Dove campaign and the historical relevance of the legacy of colonialism and slavery are as a contributor as an example why minorities are underrepresented in the media. Assessment will also be made on how the underrepresentation of minorities sustains the oppression of individual development of self. It further aims to assess how black women are presented in the media through the use of dominant discourses or single stories and how it impacts the community interaction. The blog post will conclude that by solely

The American Feminist Movement of the 1960s and 1970s fought the traditional ways of the workplace, including inequality among the sexes. This movement worked towards equal access to professions and salaries. If women worked outside of the home, job offerings included only those as nurses, secretaries, and teachers. Earnings were unequally distributed. Such events influenced the literature of the time, including Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest. Within her novel, Le Guin criticizes the traditional ways of society. Women are seen as an integral part of the Athshean civilization, holding positions of power among their communities. Conversely, the lesser beings of the yumen population viewed women as sexual objects. Equality among

To admit or to label oneself as a feminist is to accept a whirlwind of judgment from those around you. It is without a doubt that the word “Feminism” or “Feminist” turns heads, and not necessarily for the right reasons. Many have resorted to mocking, disagreeing, and/or hating Feminism without even having a good grasp of what it is. The stigmas that feminists face are that they are radical, extremist, liberal, lesbians who hate men, refuse to shave and enjoy burning bras (Lee).Conversely, feminists are principally advocates for social justice and equality as well as aim for the establishment of equally divided power between the sexes. It is obvious that many are unaware of and uneducated on the misogynistic injustices plaguing our world and the toxic environment we all live in- both women and men. Feminism is a positive concept that works to eliminate injustices between both sexes and to establish the value of women, thus should be treated as such a concept instead of being a forbidden idea.