Feminism - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

1 / 15
About This Presentation
Title:

Feminism

Description:

FEMINISM A Level Media Studies FEMINISM Feminists seek to challenge the unfair and unequal distribution of power and wealth in patriarchal society. – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:254
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 16
Provided by: Grai158
Category:
Tags: feminism

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: 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  • However, some may argue that they have been
    replaced by equally disempowering stereotypes...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
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com