...Dafoe Whitehead labeled these three periods the period of Traditional Familism, the period of Individualism, and the period of The New Familism” (p.184). The three social and political movements in the second period, the period of Individualism, respectively are The Sexual Revolution, The Women’s Liberation, and The Anti-War Movement. In Mona Lisa Smile, these three periods and movements are characterized in the behavior and language of the actresses. The first time period is Traditional Familism, which lasted for twenty years from the mid-1940’s to the mid-1960’s. It is a period after World War II. Lim and Smalzer (2008) considered that the predominant configuration of this traditional period is, “A married couple with children” (p.184). They also concluded, “three characteristics stand out in this period: conformity to social norms, greater male domination of the family than in the later periods, and clear-cut gender roles”(p.184). It suggests that the division of family roles is clear-cut, which husband and wife being charged with specific responsibilities. According to Lim and Smalzer (2008), divorce rates were low, but meanwhile birth rates were high during this time. Wetzel (1990) said childbearing “reach a peak of 25.3 per 1000 in 1957 at the apex of the baby boom” (p.8). In the meantime, he mentioned that divorce was uncommon, affecting less than one percent of the at-risk population. Nancy represents traditional...
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...1950’s Men and Today’s Men The gender role theory “posits that boys and girls learn to perform one's biologically assigned gender through particular behaviors and attitudes” (Boundless, 2015). The environmental causes of gender roles and the impact of socialization are emphasized by the gender role theory. The social role theory postulates that the social structure is the underlying force in determining gender roles. The social role theory also states that the division of labor between two sexes within a society drives sex-differentiated behavior. The division of labor is what created gender roles, which eventually, led to social behavior that could be defined as being gender specific in nature. Over the years, these roles would transform to adapt to the expectations of society’s current males. One popular trend of gender roles that has been commonly studied is workplace roles. For decades, men were viewed as the sole provider; therefore, the wife’s duties did not exceed past her home. She was in charge of caring for her husband, their children, and their home. Men were supposed to go to work every day to provide for their family, adequately meet all of their needs, and be someone that his children can look up to. In the 1950’s, men were coming back from war, and the women had filled the positions left open by men going off to World War II. During the 1960’s, known as the hippie era, gender roles began developing in a more neutral and equal manner, “but media still tried to...
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...Through out the world women aren’t developing in social and economics because of gender inequality. Empowerment is used in discussions of women in developing nations. Empowerment is to refer to people without power of any gender, race, ethnicity, or social class, that overcome obstacles in their societies. Gender socialization separates males from females, which causes them to create their own worlds and languages. The girls and the boys participate in the same activities in their schools and communities. The school district tries to avoid gender socialization. Males and females are put into specific statuses and roles, which make human societies stratified by gender. People use to think that women and men where totally separated, but recently discovered that this isn’t true. And that these differences were based on biological and psychological differences. It was discovered that gender roles are strongly influenced by culture. Gender inequality can be traced back in time. In Europe, the courtly love specified that women wasn’t allowed to engage in warfare or politics. They couldn’t compete with men in any way that led them away from doing what women was to do in those days. In the more modern industrial society, boys and girls are put into separate categories: masculine and feminine. When they get older the men enjoys more wealth, prestige, and leisure than women do. Sexism is an ideology that justifies prejudice or discrimination...
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...By the 1960’s, women activists through the Women’s liberation Movement worked towards the collective struggle for equality and for equal oppurtunities in the workplace. This decade was a time for social change which would impact women’s rights in a number of different aspects, including their role in the military. During the sixties, the clash between traditional views on women’s roles and social movment for their equal oppurtunities resonated throughout the military. In 1960, the world of american women was limited in almost every aspect- From family life to the workplace. Typically, they were expected to marry young and devote their lives to domestic chores, their children, husband and housekeeping. and the 38% of american women who worked in the 1960’s were limited to jobs such as teachers, nurse or secretary. They were also unwelcome in more professional aspects. According to a reliable source “ in 1960, women accounted for 6% of american doctors, 3% of lawyers and less than 1% of engineers”. These women in these workplaces not only faced sexism but were also paid considerably lower salaries than men and denied opportunities to advance career wise as they would be harshly assumed by their employers of becoming pregnant and quitting theirs job, and...
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...achievement in education since the early 1990’s.” Concerns over the link between gender and educational attainment focus mainly on the extent to which males and females perform differently in education and their tendency to study different subjects. However it is not true that males attain more qualifications in general than females at school. Girls have outperformed boys in 16 + examinations since at least the late 1960s but these overall gender differences in educational achievement began to increase in the late 1980s after the introduction of the GCSE. Previously traditional ideas about the proper role of women in society prevented them from achieving their full potential, yet now women have different priorities and are no longer destined to be only housewives and homemakers; women are now expected by society to go to school and get an education. Female aspirations have changed dramatically from the 1970’s to the present; Women have become more than just bearers of children, cooks, cleaners and wives. They are now educated; becoming surgeons, pilots, physiatrists and anything they want to be. An ethnographic study done by sociologist Sue Sharpe: ‘Just like a girl’, found a change in the aspirations of females in an interview conducted in the London borough of Ealing in the 1970’s and early 90’s. Her findings display a major shift in the views of women and education. In the 1970’s women had lower ambitions, they viewed educational...
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...Betsy Jeanotte HIST 425 12/10/14 Final Research Paper: Woman’s Movement of the 1960’s In the 1960’s and early 1970’s, cultural changes were altering the role of woman in American society. More and more woman were joining the workforce, leaving their traditional roles of stay at home wife and mother. Women coming into the workforce also led to the dissatisfaction amongst them when it came to equality in the workplace, pay differences, and even sexual harassment. One of the biggest changes came woman of age were using birth control after it was approved by the federal government in the late sixties. This freed countless women from unwanted pregnancies and gave them more freedom in their personal lives. Gradually, women were able to get some of their basic goals in the time: equal pay, limits on women in positions of power, end of domestic violence, and equal responsibility when it came to housework and raising children. To best understand this, we need to put ourselves in the shoes of a women during the 1960’s. Her life, was difficult and unsatisfactory. She was denied basic rights, even those to her own body. She was born to be trapped in a home and discriminated against in her own workplace. But, a beacon of hope came during the 1960’s. With that hope, came new ideas, laws, and protests. The idea that a woman was not “the second sex” but equal to her fellow human beings. They wanted to be treated the same, earn the same wages, not feel guilty for not wanting a husband...
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.... What real life labor movement was the film Salt of the Earth based on? Based on the book From Out of the Shadows and the film Salt of the Earth, how did women participate and contribute during the miners’ strike? What did the workers and their families gain through this movement? The film Salt of the Earth is based on Cold War politics and Mexican-American labor. Women participate and contribute during the miners strike in many different ways such as feeding the men while they were protesting. However, afterwards women take the men places on the line and men assumed childcare and household responsibilities. Even though women were assaulted and harassment they refused to be intimidated. In fact, women fought back for their rights. According to the book From Out of the Shadows the majority of the union negotiated team during the Empire Zinc strike were not miners, but wives of...
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...Constructing Gender And Sexuality Chapter Study Objectives What Is Sex? What Is Gender? • Compare and contrast the concepts of sex and gender. ==> Sex is a distinct category that someone belongs to male or female. Gender is not only the physical but also the behavioral personality traits that a group considers normal for its members. Essentialist and Constructionist Approaches to Gender Identity • Compare and contrast the essentialist and constructionist approaches to gender identity. ==> The essentialists believes that there can only be two categories, male or female, there is no exception. However constructionists believe that gender isn’t a dichotomy and that there can be more than two categories, and different ways for explaining them. Essentialists typically reside outside of sociology, usually in medicine, theology, and biology. Constructionists are typically mainstream sociologists. Gender Inequality • Explain the possible origins of gender inequality according to the text. ==> Back in the day when men had to go out and procure food, they needed to be bigger and stronger. They were needed for this vital role. Women were built to be nurturing so they could stay back with their offspring and keep them safe while the men hunted. The two rules were crucial for survival. • Compare and contrast functionalist theory and conflict theory in their approaches to explaining gender inequality. ==> Functionalists theory says that sex determines which roles men and women...
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...The internment of the Japanese American population was a dark chapter in American history that drastically altered the lives of generations of Japanese Americans. Generations after the war ended curious arose about the hardships experienced by the Japanese American’s in the relocation camps. The tales often unheard are of the Japanese first generation women, Issei, and the second generation Japanese Americans, Nisie, who directly experienced the drastic shift in gender role, education, and economic freedom. The first Japanese immigrants came to the United States in search for the American Dream and with them they “often brought the strongly patriarchal agrarian values and family roles of the old county with them” Charlotte O’Kelly and L.S. Carney stated in “Capitalist Industrial Society” (1968,...
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...and Harriet or Leave It to Beaver were the “families” of the mid-1960s.They were comprised of two parents, two children and a happy stable environment. The Husband’s role was that of the provider, with the Wife’s role being that of a homemaker and nurturing mother. The children were a reflection of their parent’s social reverence to society norms. In the late 1960s – 1970s cultural norms regarding marriage, pre-marital sex/cohabitation and childrearing changed significantly. The family was replaced by divorced parents or blended families, reflected in shows such as “Different Strokes,” “One Day at a Time,” and “Parent Trap” reflected such. Currently, non-traditional families are accompanied by same sex marriage and depicted in sitcoms such as Modern Family, which combines multiple variations of family models in one show. These various family modules are becoming widely accepted in society, along with changes in the social module of marriage, as “traditional family values are being swept away by a wave of tolerance toward lone mothers, gay couples and unmarried parents” Richard, Kellner and Wintour (1998). Research shows that over the past one hundred years the previously accepted social model of marriage has significantly changed in America regarding the general purpose of marriage, the individual’s roles and the union structure. The general purpose of marriage in the early 1900s was to enter into the union of matrimony for social, economic and...
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...Through studying gender roles during my Visual Art course and exploring social exclusion in Society and Culture, it compelled me to want to learn more about the representation of women within the art world. As a socially aware individual with an interest in art, I felt the need to explore these inequalities to see if they still exist and how this may impact on other young artists. The research methods that I chose were interview, statistical analysis and content analysis, which would provide me qualitative results, as well as quantitative by being able to collect data and statistics. Originally, I planned on conducting a focus group discussion, however as my project progressed, I decided on content analysis as it allowed me to observe a variety of sources and immerse myself in the art world. By choosing an interview I was able to gain insightful knowledge from four females who were either art curators or historians and one male who is an art historian. This gave me qualitative results as I was able to receive in-depth answers from numerous people and allowed and exploration of my cross-cultural by interviewing both genders and gaining their perspectives on this. However, there were some limitations such as by completing my interviews through e-mail, I was not able to ask any follow up questions for answers to be further elaborated. Additionally I only had one interview with a male and four with females, which may cause more perspectives from females and thus, a gender bias. By conducting...
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...Liberation Movement Emerge in the late 1960’s? Discuss with reference to Britain and the United States of America. In a decade where the whole world was experiencing revolutions due to social discontent, this increased the desire, of women, in the late 1960’s to ‘confront existing structures of oppression,’ giving the impetus for the emergence of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Caine argues the emergence of the movement bought a ‘new tone,’ when discussing women’s oppression. Rather than focusing directly on women’s suffrage, this was a political movement demanding ‘rapid and radical change,’ in an ever increasing ambience of liberalisation. Upon inception, it is vital to highlight one can account different reasons for the emergence of the movement in Britain and America, as different domestic situations led to different reasons for the emergence of a more radical form of feminism. This essay, together with a multiplicity of historians, will consider the importance of World War II and the Civil Rights Movement, and the impact they had on the emergence of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Linked to this is the ever apparent discrimination women faced and increasing desires to change this, coupled with developments of new opportunities, demonstrated by the aforementioned world events. Additionally, the impact of literature such as Betty Friedan’s, The Feminine Mystique, needs to be considered. Whilst all the factors play an important role in contributing to the emergence, it...
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...“There's a gender in your brain and a gender in your body.”-Chaz Bono. In the article "What about gender roles in same-sex relationships?" the Stephen Mays states, "There are few actions or characteristics that classify as gender-neutral." Women and men have always been separated in American society. There has been one set of rules that apply to men, and another set of rules that apply to women. This is evident in the home, workplace, and all throughout everyday living. Our supposed part as a two gendered society starts at the hospital when we are born. Boys get blue or darker colored blankets while girls get pink or lighter colored blankets. While children are growing up, gender roles are highly defined by their upbringing. Boys were taught...
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...In early times, women were viewed inferior to men and were not given equal opportunities in the household, workplace and society. However throughout time, women have led to a change in traditional gender roles and fought for equality. The 1950s were viewed as a period of conformity, where men and women recognized gender roles and followed society’s views. The 1960s were a period of uncertainty, disturbance and social revolution. After the turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s, the 1980s were represented as a period of optimism and vision. In the past decades, women began to find their voice and drastically change their position in society, politics, education and leadership. During these times, the racial divide and unfair treatment of women were...
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...Sexual Liberation Cassandra M. Gonzalez HIS/145 the American Experience Since 1945 Dr. William Frost OCT/10/2012 Sexual liberation The 1960’s in our history of the United States are often described today as the period of profound societal change. Attitudes to a variety of issues changed including changes towards sexual attitudes. This altered view towards sexual attitudes and behavior is often today referred to as the sexual revolution, also known as the time of sexual liberation. Many different political movements were all important components to this period in the sexual revolution, such as Feminists, gay rights campaigners, and hippies just to name a few. American’s during this era faced many controversial issues – from the civil rights, to the Vietnam War, and nuclear arms, and the time was ripe for change. This climate of change led many, particularly the young in significantly shifting social attitudes, behaviors and institutional regulations surrounding sexuality. The Birth of Contraceptives Sexual liberation was a social movement that challenged what society viewed as the sexual norm and typical gender roles. Sex became more socially accepted outside of monogamous, heterosexual marriages, and increased. The increase in acceptance of intercourse prior to marriage gave individuals more freedom. The year of 1962 many advances occurred that supported the freedom of being sexual active and not having to procreate: the first Birth Control pill went on the market...
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