Sexism In Modern Society

Gender roles have been a hotly debated topic in the most recent years, especially the role of women in society. Women have had set expectations that they are believed to conform to, which is shown in many pieces of film and literature. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald describes the life of a man in the upper class in the 1920’s, as well as women in the 1920’s. The movie The Princess Bride, written by William Goldman, visually explains the treatment and expectations of women, and especially focuses on the “damsel in distress” stereotype.. Roxane Gay’s “Bad Feminist” explains the stereotypes against women and ways women can come together and fight these constraints. Based on these sources, societal expectations take away from each individual’s identity, forcing women to conform to society's standards. In order to fight against these expectations, women have banded together and formed movements against these standards.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether sexism has an effect on the lives of women in situations such as breastfeeding their child and whether or not people take offense to the sight of seeing a mother breastfeed her child. I will recruit 100 participants, 50 males, and 50 females, ranging from ages 18 to 50. I will perform my study using an experimental design where participants are shown a series of images in a video on a projector screen and they will place the images in one of two categories, with ten slots open for each category. The next part of my study will be to ask the participants in an essay question if they would continue, or be comfortable with their significant other continuing to breastfeed in public after receiving negative feedback from a stranger (See Appendix). I hypothesize that the majority of the participants will place an image of a mother breastfeeding in a public setting in a “bad deeds” category, but will place a picture of shirtless men playing football in the park in the “good deeds” category. I expect to come to the conclusion that people are more likely to take offense to the sight of a woman breastfeeding than to seeing a shirtless man.

Women first gained the right to vote on August 26, 1920 with the 19th amendment was approved, giving women full voting rights. Fortified by the constitutional victory in 1920, the handful of new women in Congress embarked on what would become a century-long journey to broaden women’s role in government. In the intervening years, the drive for more women’s rights encompassed the lives of the next generations of women. Even today, women are still fighting for their rights and stand up against prejudice. On the forefront of this movement are our women congresswomen who speak on behalf of all women. When Hillary Clinton announced her presidential candidacy, controversial questions immediately surfaced about the role of gender in politics. Through Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2008 and 2016, media is the principal propagator in showing bias and sexism.

When we hear the word sexism most minds automatically associate feminine oppression. I began to wonder why that was. Webster defines sexism as “prejudice based on sex; especially: discrimination against women.” After reading this I had to know why that was.

Throughout the years, different forms of literature  have generally shown women as weaker than men. They have played archetypes such as the mother archetype or the lover which have traits less desirable than the roles that men would take. These archetypes tend to limit their personalities and they become characters that are solely there for inconveniencing the hero. Stereotypes for women have affected these archetypes, but throughout history many people have made efforts to change these archetypes and make them more desirable. Even though archetypes for women have been shown as weak, it has changed throughout the years.

The rise of enlightened sexism: How pop culture took us from girl power to girls gone wild

Sexism has always been a major issue for women. It seems that today, everyone has to be careful of what they say and do so as to avoid offending someone. While everyone is busy worrying about extinguishing sexism towards women - which still is an issue that needs to be taken care of, who is concerned with sexism towards men? Sexism is just as much of an issue to men as it is to women.

The article I read was You’re Sexist. And So Am I from USA Today. This article went into discussing how everyone has internalized sexism, believing in sexism in their head, whether they like to believe it or not. This is because society teaches people norms that women must follow in order for them to be respected. As we have discussed in class, this is the idea of subjectivity because all of these social codes are predetermined and that makes them very difficult to change. One example of this was in the article when it talked about how women often chose their careers around them someday becoming mothers. Women are expected to have children and then take time off from work to raise their children. No one believes that men should be expected to stay at home and raise children because it is not the societal norm. Therefore when a woman chooses a career around impending motherhood, she is falling into subjectivity.

In modern america sexism is slowly diteriating, but it has not complitly disappeared. Women have worked hard to become astronaut, Ceos, presidentsdoctors and more, but even with these accomplishments women are still discriminated against. Women face a variety of stereotypes in the work place that prevent them from progress, some company's really think that women don't need equal pay because they are not the head of the house hold and their husbands paycheck should do the job. Other business corporations believe that women can not committed to a job because they are the primary caregiver of their children which causes companies to lose money every time there is an emergency. "The paradox is that the world of rigid and hierarchical sex roles

“You bitches need to learn your places. You do not order a brute around and get away with it!”

In recent months few topics have gripped the nation quite like the idea of sexism and gender roles. While in the last few decades many strong leaders have stepped forth to reconcile the differences, American still has a long way to go. While we present ourselves as a model for other countries, doing so is unjust considering the misbalance of power, representation, perceived value and respect. While many continue to deny it, sexism is still a major problem in modern American society.

and women sexual agency. Overall, sexual consent is represented in different forms regarding both males and females and plays a role in sexual violence.

Still today, women are often used as nothing but sexual objects or are killed for added drama in popular films. Additionally, women’s voices are often silenced in academic, business, and other settings due to the same sexist beliefs about women being inferior from the Elizabethan era. Currently, women are often pressured early on to think about having children and taking care of a family, similar to the Elizabethan era. From this, it can be concluded that modern gender roles and sexism mirror those in the

As long as sexism exists within our society, it will exist within our literature. Depicting women as the submissive and therefore passive gender has been an age old occurrence within cultures. This is reflected in many aspects of societies from pop culture to history. A key contributor to the continuation of this is the unreliable, biased and sometimes outright manipulative narrative of these texts. This narrative, subjective in it’s art, not only affects how female roles play out in a plot but also heavily influence how the audience views the power dynamic between genders. Throughout Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, James K. Baxter’s He Waiata Mo Te Kare, and Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer all female characters have been passive victims or objects to their circumstance.

In everyday life, people are given roles to play; doctors are to heal the wounded, officers are to maintain order in society and teachers are to guide the youth onto the right path. In the past, each gender had to behave a certain way, the men were the strong worker of the home, whom provided the income for the family, while as the women were the gentle angels at home, whom took care of the children and housework. If the women were to defy these roles, they would be look down upon and be treated worse. However, time has change, these roles are no longer black and white; there is no longer a certain way a woman is supposed to act, modern women are depicted differently from the way they were in the past, this is due to the new norms in society that has been molded throughout time. This can be proven with the old fairy tale “Cinderella” by Charles Perrault and the 1990s movie Pretty Woman directed by Garry Marshall.