gender

Jiang Tao, a child of farmers, graduated from law school only to discover that law firms discriminate against short employees.  After confronting minimum height requirements, he sued.

See also guest posts from The Social Complex introducing the concept of heightism as a gendered prejudice and discussing heightism (and other icky stuff) at Hooters.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

A while back, we featured a post by Mary Nell Trautner and Erin Hatton about the gap in depictions of men and women on Rolling Stone covers. Their study found that women on the cover are not just sexualized, but are generally hypersexualized, whereas men are generally not sexualized at all, and this gendered trend has grown over time.

An anonymous reader sent in an example that highlights this pattern. The British version of GQ is putting out a comedy issue in April. The issue has two covers, one featuring actress Olivia Wilde (via):

The fully-dressed men are “kings of comedy,” while Wilde is a “fantasy figure.” Notice also that the cover on the right that the four female comedians at the bottom are introduced as “sexy.” While these women may be funny, it’s clearly essential that they be hot while being funny; comedic skills alone just won’t do.

GQ created a trailer featuring some of the comedians in the issue. The video consists of 17 male comedians. One woman does make it into the video; at 0:14, Wilde jiggles her boobs:

Because apparently none of those female comedians are worth including as representatives of comedy in the same manner as the men, but only in an explicitly sexualized manner.

In addition to selling stuff, advertising tell us something about what “normal” relationships between people look like, such as the case below, submitted by Kyra M.

What’s it saying? When a woman’s upset, you can fix it with flowers.

In equating “she’s upset” with “get her flowers,” we’re discouraged from considering whether she might have a good reason to be upset.

Women have long been considered irrational creatures (it’s one of the justifications for denying them the vote — they didn’t have sufficient reason to make good choices in government) — much like children. When a child’s upset, you don’t reason with them, or think about whether you need to change your behaviour, you assume it’s because the child is immature. This ad encourages us to treat women the same way, as if they’ve just had their feelings hurt and a little consideration and then everything will be fine.  This undermines women’s status in a variety of contexts, communicating that women’s complaints do not need to be taken seriously. This kind of attitude makes women less able to structure their social environments to meet their needs.

More, this trope suggest that whatever a woman’s concerns are, she’ll abandon those positions and principles if you spend enough money. This construes women as corruptible — another construction justifying the lack of women in positions of authority. After all, would you want someone’s who’s irrational, materialistic, and corruptible running your company? Or your government?

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Anastasia Kulpa teaches Sociology at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Her research interests include the sociology of post-secondary classrooms, and cultural vehicles for transmitting ideology (class, music, television, etc.).

We’ve enjoyed documenting the recent trend of sexifying toys, including Dora the Explorer, Strawberry Shortcake, Holly Hobbie, Lisa Frank, Trolls, Cabbage Patch Kids, My Little Pony, Rainbow Brite, and Candy Land, and Lego (you can see them all together on our Sexy Toy Make-Overs Pinterest board).

Let’s start with Barbie because given how she’s the quintessential sexy toy, I think it’s surprising that she’s been made over.  I found evidence for the Barbie make-over at Feminist Philosophers.  They put up the image below showing how Barbie’s torso was changed in the 2000s to one that was slimmer and with a more arched back:
Cynical Idealism posted about the Care Bear make-over.  The toys have been made both thinner, more flirty, and less androgynous.

Care Bears Then:
Care Bears Now:

I learned about the Polly Pocket make-over at Feminist Fatale.  Whereas in the 1980s, Polly Pocket looked kind of like an infant and came with various accessories, today’s Polly Pocket is decidedly more Barbie-like.

1980s Polly Pocket:

Today’s Polly Pocket:

(source: Mattel)

So, there you have it! Three more sexy toy make-overs.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Cross-posted at Sociology in Focus.

Back in 1987, Raewyn Connell coined the term hegemonic masculinity in a seminal text, Gender & Power. Hegemonic masculinity refers to the dominant form of masculinity that exists within a particular culture. Relative to this ever changing, idealized form of masculinity are different subordinated masculinities – those within a culture that do not live up to the so-called masculine gold standard. Put simply, there are “real men” and then there are all other men.

In watching the 2012 Super Bowl commercials, we can see versions of hegemonic masculinity demonstrated. Perhaps the most vivid version was seen in H&M’s Super Bowl ad, utilizing soccer (futbol) star, David Beckham:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjd6i0S67HQ[/youtube]

Tattooed, rugged, athletic, showcasing a lean musculature and menacing glare, Beckham embodies a hegemonic masculinity that would surely resonate with sporting audiences. And while not presented in this commercial, it is important to also note that Beckham carries other cultural traits that ad to his hegemonic masculine status – he is globally recognized, financially wealthy, and married to a woman who also holds currency in popular culture. This last point is critical. By being married, Beckham confirms his heterosexuality, and her extraordinary beauty and international popularity raise his standing as a “real man”.

In contrast to Beckham, other males were presented in this year’s Super Bowl commercials, who represent a marginal masculinity, meaning they would love to hold hegemonic masculine status and are pursuing such an identity, but for any number of reasons are unable to achieve it. You could say these are the “wannabe real men”. A good example of marginal masculinity is presented in the following commercial for FIAT:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxQsLdwCtMU[/youtube]

In contrast to the commercial with Beckham, the male in this commercial lacks qualities that would otherwise provide him with a sense of hegemonic masculinity. Although he appears to be employed (wearing business attire), he is relatively short in comparison to the woman in the ad, cast as nerdy and lacking confidence. Given the fantasy he has with the female actor, we can see he desires hegemonic masculine status. But because he lacks a kind of physical prowess, he is marginalized.

Of even greater importance here, the concept of hegemonic masculinity is not only about men and their relation to one another. Hegemonic masculinity also represents a cultural system that dominates women. Thus, the FIAT commercial is also useful because it illustrates women’s overall subordination. Connell also defined the term “emphasized femininity”, which refers to women’s “compliance with this subordination… oriented to accommodating the interests and desires of men” (p. 183).

When women emphasize their femininity – or are coerced to emphasize their femininity – they are often times objectified. Objectification refers to the depersonalization of someone, such that her/his humanity is stripped and the person(s) is turned into an inanimate object. Sociologists have argued that when humans are objectified, they tend to be “seen as less sensitive to pain,” and, “we care less about their suffering” (Loughnan et al., 2010, p. 716). In other words, when we turn people into object, we remove their humanity, and it is easier to commit violence against them. Feminists commonly argue the objectification of women in the media facilitates women’s ongoing victimization in society at large.

In the FIAT commercial, the woman “emphasizes her femininity” by catering to the male’s sexual desires. She is also objectified – likened to an inanimate car that would lack human feelings and emotion. Go Daddy also aired a commercial clearly objectifying women, where female celebrities paint another female, who is used as an inanimate, sexualized prop to promote the Go Daddy company.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9ucBY_2WEA[/youtube]

While the Super Bowl is known primarily as a sporting event where millions of Americans tune in each year to watch men engage in athletic competition, the event also includes advertising content that is highly gendered. With so much attention attention directed to this advertising, it is important to dissect it through a gendered framework.

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David Mayeda is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at Hawaii Pacific University.  His recent book publications include Celluloid Dreams: How Film Shapes America and Fighting for Acceptance: Mixed Martial Artists and Violence in American Society.  He also blogs at The Grumpy Sociologist.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

It’s a Leap Year for those using the Gregorian calendar, noteworthy because we get an extra day in February to correct the slight difference between our calendar year (365 days) and the actual amount of time it takes the Earth to revolve around the sun once (365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds). Over the last few days I’ve heard several news stories about the Leap Day tradition of gender norms being inverted, so that women are able to ask out or propose to men. I was either entirely unaware of this or perhaps I learn it and promptly forget it every four years, but Laura E. sent in a link to a set of vintage postcards posted at Slate that illustrate the existence of this idea in the early 1900s. The postcards present this upending of the accepted gender script as a terrifying situation for men, who become prey to suddenly emboldened husband-hunters:

Text:

“John! I have some thing to ask you. Don’t be in a hurry.”

“Ah, say Mabel, please let me go home?”

The dog: “Poor John. I see his finish.”

In a recently-published article on this tradition, Katherine Parkin points out that women in such postcards are often presented as larger, brawnier, and more aggressive than their poor male prey; the women empowered to ask men to marry them are inherently unfeminine:

For more on portrayals of gendered dating/proposal norms and the Leap Year exception, see the full Slate slideshow and Parkin’s article. Now excuse me, I’m going to go see about ambushing myself a husband.

[Full cite: Katherine Parkin. 2012. “Glittering Mockery: Twentieth-Century Leap Year Marriage Proposals.” Journal of Family History 37(1): 85-104.

Cross-posted at Family Inequality.

In 1994, Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur published, Growing Up With A Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps. The growth of children living with only their mothers was — then as now — a matter of concern not only for children’s well-being, but for intergenerational mobility. One of their empirical conclusions was this:

For children living with a single parent and no stepparent, income is the single most important factor in accounting for their lower well-being as compared with children living with both parents. It accounts for as much as half of their disadvantage. Low parental involvement, supervision, and aspirations and greater residential mobility account for the rest.

The biggest problem, in other words, is economic. The other factors —  involvement, supervision, aspirations, mobility — are related to social class and the time poverty that economically-poor parents experience.

Examples

Here are some bivariate illustrations — that is, head-to-head comparisons of the difference between children of poor and non-poor versus single and married parents.

These are the “skill group” rankings by teachers of children by socioeconomic status (or SES, a composite of parents’ education, occupational prestige and income) versus race/ethnicity, gender and family structure. SES shows the widest spread in reading teachers’ group placement of first graders.

Source: Condron (2007)

Similarly, the poor/nonpoor difference is greater than the two-parent/single-parent difference in kindergarten entry scores:

Source: Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (2009)

Those are just two examples from early-childhood assessments. More importantly, here is the breakdown seen in a longitudinal study of children growing up. When women grow up to be mothers, their poverty level in childhood is more important than their family structure for predicting whether they will be in poverty themselves. The poverty difference is large, the family structure difference is not:

Source: Musik & Mare (2006)

This study included a more sophisticated set of multivariate analyses than this simple graph, but the author’s conclusion fits it:

Net of the correlation between poverty and family structure within a generation, the intergenerational transmission of poverty is significantly stronger than the intergenerational transmission of family structure, and neither childhood poverty nor family structure affects the other in adulthood.

That is, childhood poverty matters more.

Fewer single parents, or less poverty?

But if single parenthood and poverty are so closely related, some people say, we should spend hundreds of millions of dollars promoting marriage to help children avoid poverty (and other problems). That’s what the government has done, with money from the welfare budget. Even if it worked, which it apparently doesn’t, it’s only one approach. What about reducing poverty? And, more specifically, reducing the relative likelihood of poverty in single-parent families versus those with married parents. That is, address the poverty gap between the two groups, rather than the size of the two groups. This has the added advantage of not singling out one group — single mothers — for social stigmatization (of the kind I mentioned here). And, because it defines the problem as economic rather than moral, may make it easier to build public support for helping the poor.

Consider a recent paper by David Brady and Rebekah Burroway, which will be published in Demography. They analyzed the relative poverty of single mothers versus the total population — that is, what percentage had incomes below half the median (per person, after accounting for taxes and government transfers). Such a relative poverty measure is really a measure of inequality, but specifically inequality at the low end. (Regardless of how rich the rich are, it’s theoretically possible to have no one below half the median income). Here is my graph showing that result, with only the countries that have reliable sample sizes in the survey:

The Nordic countries have the lowest overall poverty rates. But in absolute terms their advantage is much bigger for single mothers. (The red line shows equal poverty rates for single mothers and the total population.) The US and UK have the largest difference in poverty rates between single mothers and overall poverty. That is, we have the largest poverty penalty for single motherhood. If the relative poverty rates for single mothers were lower in the US, we might spend more time and money addressing poverty and less trying to change family structures.

Edward Bernays (1891-1995) is largely considered the founder of public relations (or “engineering consent,” as he called it) but is not known very well outside of the marketing and advertising fields. A nephew of Sigmund Freud, Bernays was the first to theorize that people could be made to want things they don’t need by appealing to unconscious desires (to be free, to be successful etc.). Bernays, and propaganda theorist Walter Lippman, were members of the U.S. Government’s Committee on Public Information (CPI), which successfully convinced formally isolationist Americans to support entrance into World War I. While propaganda was commonly thought of as a negative way of manipulating the masses that should be avoided, Bernays believed that it was necessary for the functioning of a society, as otherwise people would be overwhelmed with too many choices. In his words:

Modern propaganda is a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group.

[Source: Bernays, Propaganda, 1928, p. 52; available here.]

After WWI, Bernays was hired by the American Tobacco Company to encourage women to start smoking. While men smoked cigarettes, it was not publicly acceptable for women to smoke. Bernays staged a dramatic public display of women smoking during the Easter Day Parade in New York City. He then told the press to expect that women suffragists would light up “torches of freedom” during the parade to show they were equal to men. Like the “You’ve come a long way, baby” ads, this campaign commodified women’s progress and desire to be considered equal to men (relevant clip starts at 3:00):

“Cigarettes were a symbol of the penis and of male sexual power…Women would smoke because it was then that they’d have their own penises.”

Here are some of the news photographs of women smoking publicly during the Easter Parade:

[Photos via.]

The campaign was considered successful as sales to women increased afterward. Cigarette companies followed Bernays’s lead and created ad campaigns that targeted women. Lucky Brand Cigarettes capitalized on recent fashions for skinny women by telling women to “Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet”:

Marlboro, in stark contrast to the Marlboro Man ads we’re familiar with today, started the “Mild as May” campaign to encourage women to take up smoking cigarettes that were appropriately mild and easier to smoke:

Chesterfield, in a 1930s ad, argued that “women started to smoke…just about the time they began to vote”:

A later ad for Phillip Morris tells women to “Believe in yourself!”

Cigarette makers also worked to teach women how to smoke properly. Ads often depicted women in the act of smoking. Some companies, like Philip Morris, even held smoking demonstrations for women:
[Via.]

The article describes how a “pretty registered nurse” is touring the country to teach women proper smoking etiquette. The article also lists “men’s pet peeves” and “women’s pet peeves” for men and women smokers. (Full text after the jump below.)

Together, these efforts to conflate smoking with freedom and make smoking acceptable for women created a new set of consumers and reinforced Bernays’s argument that demand could be created.

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