Gender Roles in Movies Essay

In Hollywood film women 's roles have varied quiet considerably between genres, geographical placement, and period settings. These factors contribute to the different representations of women 's roles in the film they are present in. The roles are diverse going from the traditional maternal role to that of manipulative murderer. Women 's roles in movies can be almost equal to the male roles, and the co-stars are not given the majority of the acclaims just because they are male. Society has set certain standards that women are supposed to follow. The most common image of women is that they are very passive and try to avoid conflict in any situation. More and more in society women are breaking down the social barriers that confine them to their specific roles. The films Rear Window and Resident Evil show women in roles that are untraditional for our society. These two movies help to show how women are rebelling against social norms and that they are taking more active and aggressive roles. In film noir’s we can see women represented as the femme fatale, a woman whose mysterious and seductive charms leads men into compromising or dangerous situations. In action movies we see the heroine who is strong both physically and mentally, and has the ability to use weapons. Women seem to be more trapped than men because they are supposed to live up to society’s standards dealing with beauty and size, which are more physical characteristics. These specific guidelines have been set by

In the diverse society of today, the topic of equal rights and equal treatment of every person is a heavily focused and pronounced topic. With time and tremendous amount of effort by many advocates of civil rights, the enormous rift between races and genders have minimized to fractions of what it used to be. This change of belief from the white male supremacy to the diverse equality is a significant turning point of the world history. Not even 100 years ago, women were not able to vote and were supposed to stay at home while the husband, the man of the household, went out and worked for the family. Within the past few decades, women and men

Morality in the film, presents sex as frowned upon to mention in public. What was the right thing to do? It would be for people to acquire proper jobs according to China’s society that did not breach the implicit ‘moral codes’, which in this case, sex. Due to the conservative nature of China, people disapproved bringing up the topic of sex or having anything related to it. People hide or keep such topics on the down low. Their reactions and actions deemed it as wrong and inappropriate to moral standards. However, sex in other countries is viewed differently where they do not shun it away unlike the people in the movie. The lead actor had reservations of selling sex toys as means of making a living due to the conservative nature of his hometown. This reflects moral values that are passed down from society or his parents that would cause him to deem it unacceptable.

The film industry has created the conventional gender roles of society into their movies; A majority of films have supported some of the male and female stereotypes. In the history of the film industry, the role of men is primarilythat of the stereotypical working class man or hero, while the roles of women are primarily portrayed as being somewhat inferior to men. In the 1930s through the 1970s, men held the leading roles in films while women played smaller roles. Men were typically employed, successful gentlemen, while the woman’s only job was a housewife. The film industry was mostly dominated by men. In terms of jobs, women were given mostly family roles and rarely were shown outside of their homes, while men had

“ You cannot talk about genre without talking about gender.” Initially, this would appear to be a simplistic statement. On closer analysis, however, one fact becomes evident. It is the representation of gender which informs the genre of the text. Ismay Barwell , in her essay ‘ Feminist perspectives and narrative points of view’ states that “ Every text is gendered since every act of narration…..involves a process of selection….and the nature of that selection implies certain values” ( p.99). She makes the point that “ The desires, attitudes and interests which guide any choices made must be either male or female”( p.98 ). It is within this frame of reference, that the two texts will be analysed.

Gender and racial identity was a form of discrimination in the world and they were interrelated that fuelling the injustice social phenomenon and problem. For example, women were a particular group and as a symbol showed the social abuses, acts of violence and biggest discrimination based on the sexual difference and racism. The difference of color, race, gender were the big biases not only to deprive of women’s an equal rights education opportunity, health insurance or care, personal credit, but also to help racist and sexist to deny women get the work, food and shelter equality. On the one hand, everyone has their own identity which was the individuals’ psychological relationships to relate social systems. Based on the Repost of Gender and Racial Discrimination which focused on and pointed out there are some barriers to limit women get the rights or empowerment in daily life and advancement in their career, especially the sexuality and racial biases. (Zagreb, Croatia). So, the personal value, socioeconomic status, education attainment, age, ethnic and racial, gender and social class identities were the invisible standards to decide and evaluate women should be got what kind of treatment in their life. Also, people almost preferred to create identity based on the gender and racism in the daily life. because it was a part of self-concept for the kind of person, the color of skin and the

Women’s roles in movies have changed dramatically throughout the years. As a result of the changing societal norms, women have experienced more transition in their roles than any other class. During the period of classical Hollywood cinema, both society and the film industry preached that women should be dependent on men and remain in home in order to guarantee stability in the community and the family. Women did not have predominated roles in movies such as being the heroin. The 1940’s film Gilda wasn’t an exception. In Gilda, the female character mainly had two different stereotypes. The female character was first stereotyped as a sex object and the second stereotyped as a scorned woman who has to be punished.

In the article, Gender Role Portrayal and the Disney Princesses by Dawn England, Lara Descartes, and Melissa Collier-Meek, the authors discuss Disney’s portrayal of gender roles through princess movies, and they argue that Disney is providing children with stereotypical gender-role models. Throughout the article the authors discuss the over-sexualization of the princesses and their more dominantly effeminate traits. The authors also composed a coding system for traits demonstrated by the princes and the princesses through the Disney movies from Snow White up until the most current at the time of the article, Princess and the Frog. The coding scheme for traits had two categories that traits would fall under, traditionally masculine and traditionally

Older Audiences Looking at movies targeted towards older audiences, the polarization of sexual portrayal is mostly determined by the gender a specific genre is usually targeted to. Although it cannot be said that certain movie genres appeal to and are only seen by one gender, it has been found that women generally prefer romantic genres while men prefer action, adventure, or suspenseful movies (Wühr, 2017). What is most interesting about this common conception of target audience, is that the portrayal and the effects vary completely. On one end of the spectrum and, in the action driven film, there is the “relentless sexualization of the female body” (Weitz, 2009, 30).

Children are the future—the next generation that will inherit the earth. And for that alone families try to instill the proper values into their children in order to teach them how to govern themselves when they become the deciding generation. This is done through social messages transmitted to younger generations. But as society’s values change, so too do the social messages. After all, only a few generations ago the role of homemaker was solely designated to the woman, and the idea of a woman working side by side by men seemed unfathomable. Now, women are widely accepted as equals to men. This radical change in how women are viewed can be partially attributed to the transformation in gender messages conveyed through various mediums. And nowhere is this change more evident than in Disney movies, one of many facets of gender messaging. The messages Disney movies used to convey with their classic princesses—Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty—and the ones they

In this discussion, I will claim how the value of women roles in films are greatly diminished due to the sexualized nature of female characters in films. The term “sexualized” is when women are objectified as being nothing but sexual symbols for men to gawk at. For decades women have been simply seen as “fuck toys” rather than their intellect on screen. This is in part because the film industry is regulated and run by mostly heterosexual males who make the decisions on what is brought on screen. How would a heterosexual male truly understand the intellect of a women? Her story? What she stands for? They wouldn’t. What they do understand is the male complex and how sex sells. They know how to prop a woman in a bikini showing her running down a beach half naked while her body parts are bouncing in slow motion. This male ideology is infecting Hollywood films, and we are only getting to see what they find entertaining which is women being hypersexualized. Rather than seeing a film of a woman being a lawyer who helped stop the imprisonment of a young black man who was falsely accused, we are presented with movies like “50 shades of grey”. These stories rarely if ever get told. The only way for this to occur is to bring awareness of the gender inequality in films. I am going to bring this awareness by providing examples of gender inequality in Hollywood films, statistical examples of gender inequality, and ways we can change this perception.

Various leaders from big film studios, production companies, and talent agencies urge entertainment companies to have more women involved in the entertainment industry. Through a joint initiative of Women in Film Los Angeles and the Sundance Institute called "Systemic Change Project", industry's change makers might resolve gender-related crises in the industry.

The role of female lead characters in film has evolved in a positive way since the beginning of cinema. During the early years of Hollywood female characters were secondary characters with little importance, with many films not including them at all. However, over time women leads in film became more complex and have evolved into multidimensional characters. This evolution started in the 1940’s with films such as The Philadelphia Story, continued with Aliens in the 1980’s, and has led to the fantastic characters that exist in films such as Gravity in 2014.

Since the 1940’s, movies have predominately portrayed women as sex symbols. Beginning in the 1940’s and continuing though the 1980’s, women did not have major roles in movies. When they did have a leading role the women was either pretreated as unintelligent and beautiful, or as conniving and beautiful: But she was always beautiful. Before the 1990’s, men alone, wrote and directed all the movies, and the movies were written for men. In comparison, movies of the 90’s are not only written and directed by women, but leading roles are also held by older and unattractive women. In this paper I will show the variations and growth of women’s roles in movies from the 1940’s though the 1990’s.

Gender role play is the concept of young children partaking in a form of play that already sets them within a specific gender role, for example, a girl pretending to be a mother or a girl partaking in a “pink-collar” job such as nursing, teaching etc. This form of play can be seen within make-believe play. Though this topic can be tricky to study, due to the fact children in general can be tricky to observe, it is incredibly relevant due to the fact play in general has a huge effect on children and their development and enhancement in cognitive and behavioral skills. Previous literature has found that make-believe play can enhance social skills, emotional regulation, care and affection, attention span, creativity, etc. With the previous literature reviews it was found that gendered toys and gendered jobs were already noticed by young children, for example, if a toy is a more masculine color, girls already turn away from it and when certain jobs are shown to young children, they have already created schemas dealing with which gender can do that specific job (Weisgrama et. al., 2014). With the small amount of research done in the context of gender roles and play it is obvious that gender roles already have some effect on children and their play habits, but we do not yet know if it truly plays a role within their future career goals and or their future lifestyles. The proposed research question will examine how gender roles that are practiced within make-believe play may