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The Social Construction of female bodies

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The Social Construction of female bodies

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This padlet explores the concept of gender "performativity" devised by the postructural feminist, Judith Butler. Howson (2013, 75) claims that as gender is constructued through cultural norms this "could be viewed as a kind of performance". This means that people adopt gender behaviours that dictate how males and females behave according to social and cultural conventions. Butler suggests that gender is constructed through a "stylised repetition of acts" which comes to be viewed by society as a natural occurrence (Butler as quoted in Howson 2013, 76). The example of drag used by Butler gives people the idea that gender may be in fact a performance rather than a product of innate behaviours (Howson 2013, 76).

I provide a sample of images to demonstrate 'performativity' in action.

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This article discusses if the traditional division of labour has altered since the recession in the United States (USA) in the "late 2000s". It suggests traditional attitudes and behaviours in the USA have remained with women still, whether in paid work or not, providing the majority of housework and caring. The image accompanying the story vividly demonstrates gender 'performativity', that is, a woman doing exactly what is expected in this day and age, working and providing care for her children.

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Among the many news stories dedicated to the recession that gripped the United States in the late 2000s were several pieces that asked whether the economic downturn had led to a change in traditional gender roles. More than 80 percent of the jobs lost during the recession had belonged to men, which led to women holding the majority of jobs in the United States for the first time ever [source: Rampell]. Men who lost their jobs were employed in fields like construction and finance, whereas the women had been in slightly steadier fields like teaching and health care, fields where there will always be a demand for workers. With their husbands unemployed, women would now take on the role of breadwinner, while the men would take care of the home.

The tipping of the employment scales due to the recession isn't expected to be permanent, and the recession wasn't the only catalyst in changing gender roles. Men and women's roles in society have been changing for decades now. Traditionally, men have worked outside the home and served as the sole breadwinner for the family. They held some of the most powerful jobs in society, including doctor, lawyer and politician. Women, on the other hand, governed the domestic sphere. They were expected to stay home, raise children and have an evening meal waiting for their husbands. If they did work, it was as a secretary, a nurse or another stereotypically female profession.

Women in the U.S. got one of their first tastes of the working world during World War II. The men went to war, and the women went to the factories and offices. Though the women returned to their homes after the war, they didn't remain there for long. The social changes of the 1960s and 1970s caused a cultural revolution that found many women pursuing careers outside the home. In recent years, more men have expressed a desire to take on the role of primary caregiver to the children.

That doesn't mean these changes have been easy. Men have had to struggle with what masculinity means to them if they're not the sole breadwinner. Women have to deal with making less than men in wages and a difficult time advancing to the highest positions within a company. Women are also subjected to the "Mommy Wars" -- a set of battles between working moms and stay-at-home moms in which each side declares that the other side is irreparably harming their children.

And while the recession may have forced more men to stay home, they didn't necessarily pick up the bulk of the housework or childcare. The New York Times reported that unemployed dads spent about as much time caring for their children as their working counterparts did; the laid-off dads made finding a new job their foremost priority [source: Rampell]. This state of affairs is probably not unfamiliar to working moms, who have long dealt with the so-called "second shift," in which they come home from their stint in the professional world only to spend just as much time cooking, cleaning and caring for children.

Though change is still in the air, there's no doubt that men and women's roles have become less strictly defined, and many families have made the male and female roles more egalitarian when it comes to jobs, housework and childcare.

Related Articles

Sources

Cavendish, Lucy. "Motherhood: stay-at-home or back-to-work? The battle continues." The Observer. March 28, 2010. (Sept. 14, 2010)http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/mar/28/motherhood-parenting-debate-stayathome-lucy-cavendish

Hawke, Lucy A. "Gender Roles within American Marriage: Are They Really Changing?" ESSAI. 2008. (Sept. 14, 2010)http://dc.cod.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1023&context=essai

Jayson, Sharon. "Family life, roles changing as couples seek balance." USA Today. April 19, 2009. (Sept. 14, 2010)http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-04-18-families-conf_N.htm

Mintz, Steven. "Mothers and Fathers in America: Looking Backward, Looking Forward." Digital History, University of Houston. (Sept. 14, 2010)http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/mothersfathers.cfm

Parker-Pope, Tara. "Gay Unions Shed Light on Gender in Marriage." New York Times. June 10, 2008. (Sept. 14, 2010)http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/health/10iht-10well.13597941.html

Rampell, Catherine. "As Layoffs Surge, Women May Pass Men in Job Force." New York Times. Feb. 6, 2009. (Sept. 14, 2010)http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/business/06women.html

Rosin, Hanna. "The End of Men." The Atlantic. July/August 2010. (Sept. 14, 2010) http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/8135/

Sherif Trask, Bahira. "Traditional Gender Roles." Sloan Work and Family Research Network of Boston College. Aug. 29, 2006. (Sept. 14, 2006)http://wfnetwork.bc.edu/encyclopedia_entry.php?id=3816&area=All

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Are men and women's roles in society changing?

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Among the many news stories dedicated to the recession that gripped the United States in the late 2000s were several pieces that asked whether the economic downturn had led to a change in traditional gender roles.

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This article discusses the history of the division of labour but I thought it was a cheeky image to demonstrate that Butler's theory is correct - roles are not fixed!

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The ideology of separate spheres dominated thought about gender roles from the late 18th century through the 19th century in America. Similar ideas influenced gender roles in other parts of the world. The concept of separate spheres continues to influence some thinking about "proper" gender roles today.

In the conception of the division of gender roles into separate spheres, women's place was in the private sphere, which included family life and the home. Men's place was in the public sphere, whether in politics, in the economic world which was becoming increasingly separate from home life as the Industrial Revolution progressed, or in public social and cultural activity.

Many experts of the time wrote about how such a division was natural, rooted in the nature of each gender. Those women who sought roles or visibility in the public sphere often found themselves identified as unnatural and as unwelcome challenges to the cultural assumptions. The legal status of women was as dependents until marriage and under coverture after marriage, with no separate identity and few or no personal rights including economic and property rights. This status was in accord with the idea that women's place was in the home and man's place was in the public world.

While experts of the time often tried to defend this division of gender rules as rooted in nature, the ideology of separate spheres is considered an example of the social construction of gender: that cultural and social attitudes built ideas of womanhood and manhood ( proper womanhood and proper manhood) that empowered and/or constrained women and men.

Nancy Cott's 1977 book, The Bonds of Womanhood: "Women's Sphere" in New England, 1780-1835, is a classic in the study of women's history that examines the concept of separate spheres, with women's sphere being the domestic sphere. Cott focuses, in the tradition of social history, on the experience of women in their lives, and shows how within their sphere, women wielded considerable power and influence.

Critics of Nancy Cott's portrayal of separate spheres include Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, who published Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America in 1982. She showed not only how women, in their separate sphere, created a women's culture, but how women were at a disadvantage socially, educationally, politically, economically and even medically.

Another writer who took on the separate spheres ideology in women's history was Rosalind Rosenberg. Her 1982 book, Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism, details the legal and social disadvantages of women under the separate spheres ideology. Her work documents how some women began to challenge the relegation of women to the home.

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese also challenged the focus on separate spheres as a place of solidarity among women, in her 1988 book Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women in the Old South. She demonstrated the different experiences of women: those who were part of the slave-holding class as wives and daughers, those who were enslaved, those free women who lived on farms where there were no enslaved people, and other poor white women. Within a general disempowerment of women in a patriarchal system, there was no singular "women's culture," she argues. Friendships among women, documented in studies of northern bourgeois or well-off women, were not characteristic of the Old South.

In common among all these books, and others on the topic, is documentation of a general cultural ideology of separate spheres, grounded in the idea that women belong in the private sphere, and are aliens in the public sphere, and that the reverse was true of men.

In the late 19th century, some reformers like Frances Willard with her temperance work and Jane Addams with her settlement house work relied on a separate spheres ideology to justify their public reform efforts, thus subtly both using and undermining the ideology. Both saw their work as "public housekeeping," a public expression of "women's work" of taking care of family and the home, and both took that work into the realms of politics and the public social and cultural realm. This idea was later termed social feminism.

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Women's Place, Men's Place: How the Idea of Separate Spheres Grew

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The ideology of separate spheres dominated thought about gender roles from the late 18th century through the 19th century in America. Similar ideas influenced gender roles in other parts of the world. The concept of separate spheres continues to influence some thinking about "proper" gender roles today.

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The advertisement in the youtube clip below provides gender stereotyping and demonstrates women and men performing according to cultural gender norms.  The damsel in distress and the big strong man who comes to the rescue to save her!  and of course the woman is doing the boring domestic work - cleaning the sink! This clip could also be utilised in the 'masculinities' padlet as it perfectly displays male dominance in action.

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The article from ten daily below provides a comparative analysis of two images of celebration after a rugby leagues game. It highlights extreme hypocrisy by showing the disgust displayed by the public towards the lesbian rugby players as opposed to the heterosexual couple. The image of the women subverts the traditional gender roles. The women are 'performing' in a way that doesn't align with social and cultural norms and hence the outrage. This image intersects with the padlet about 'masculinities' as the women are subverting a masculine norm, that is, they have entered the sacred realm of sport and in particular, rugby league. Grace (as quoted in Howson 2013, 78) claims that people are negative towards "lesbian bodies that are presented and performed in ways that evoke heterosexual masculinity".

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Have you seen this disgusting photograph of Billy Slater passionately kissing his wife Nicole after Queensland won the final State of Origin game on Wednesday night?

It makes me sick. There should be universal public outrage and condemnation of this totally inappropriate public display of affection.

This confronting act took place in full view of thousands of children who there at the stadium - not to mention the millions more watching at home. Won't somebody please think of the children?

I don't care what Billy and Nicole do in the privacy of their own home. That's completely up to them, and no judgement here. Good luck to 'em. But this nonsense should be kept off the footy field.

State of Origin is about footy - not this crap. Imagine the future players coming through that'd be put off by this display. Let your football do the talking, Billy. Not this. And by sharing the picture, the media and the NRL itself are sexualising football. It's a disgrace.

If you think I sound like a sad, joyless wanker whose views are seriously warped, you'd be right.

I can hear you now. "What's so wrong with a man sharing a kiss with his wife after a momentous occasion?" I hear you ask. "It's a bloody kiss - get over it! There's nothing wrong with this picture."

You'd tell me it's a lovely photograph. And it really is.

But change the names Billy and Nicole to Karina and Vanessa, and what I've written above is exactly what countless others wrote just two short weeks ago. I've used the same words that were spewed out in a sea of hate-fuelled outrage sparked by the exact same sort of photo.

Women's Rugby League stars Karina Brown and Vanessa Foliaki shared their almost identical kiss on June 25, after New South Wales defeated Queensland 16-10 in their State of Origin clash.

The opposing players, who've been together in a loving relationship for some five years, were photographed at the conclusion of the match, on the field, in the same manner Billy and Nicole were.

A disappointing and frankly embarrassing social media shit storm quickly followed, after the NRL shared the beautiful photo on Facebook.

The League's social media moderator fired back, inviting the incensed critics to join the NRL in the year 2018.

I'd be willing to bet that those same people bleating about Karina and Vanessa's photo, pointing to it as an example of the impending end of days and the terrifying creep of identity politics, are the same ones who'd tear me to shreds for what I just wrote about Billy and Nicole.

The blatant double standards here aren't a coincidence. They're a clear illustration of a homophobia that lingers in Australia and in sport. Big strides have been made - marriage equality, a push for inclusion in sporting institutions that were once off-limits to LGBT people - but we've got a long way to go.

If you don't agree, head on over to the NRL's Facebook page and read through some of those atrocious comments on the photograph. Then change the names Vanessa and Karina to Billy and Nicole and see how you feel.

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Keep It In The Bedroom, This Is Just Not Footy, It Makes Me Sick

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Have you seen this disgusting photograph of Billy Slater passionately kissing his wife Nicole after Queensland won the final State of Origin game on Wednesday night? It makes me sick. There should be universal public outrage and condemnation of this totally inappropriate public display of affection.

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Bullying - keeping women's bodies in their place 

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Bullying - keeping women's bodies in their place 

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The attached article discusses the alleged bullying of female politicians and the adverse behaviour by their male colleagues which can be attributed to these women not performing according to traditional gender roles - why aren't they in the kitchen?

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If anyone in the Liberal Party seriously believed the recent leadership spill would create anything like clear air for the new Prime Minister they were mistaken. Badly.

Scott Morrison isn't two weeks into the new role and to describe the party he's leading as being in turmoil is an understatement.

The bruises inflicted from the spill aren't fading: the ugly truth about the machinations leading to the ousting of Malcolm Turnbull have been revealed as both chaotic and cruel. The treatment of women has emerged as particularly toxic.

Last week Liberal MP Julia Banks quite boldly announced her intention to resign and cited the bullying and intimidation she faced as a key reason for her exit.

On Monday Liberal senator Lucy Gichuhi told ABC's RN she will use parliamentary privilege to name those inside the Liberal Party who bullied and intimidated her.

'I will detail my experience': Liberal senator Gichuhi threatens to name bullies #auspol https://t.co/hqqdMBRrgD

- PatriciaKarvelas (@PatsKarvelas) September 3, 2018

She said the bullying she witnessed had politicians in tears.

"I'm talking about senators and ministers who were in tears because they were at the crossroads where they could not choose, especially the ones from Victoria went through a very, very rough time because they were holding a carrot ... like this is your preselection - 'hey you do this, we do that'," she said. "One senator had to be told that on your marking the ballot paper you show another senator. What kind of workplace is that?"

On ABC's 7.30 program on Monday, the minister for women, Kelly O'Dwyer confirmed to host Leigh Sales that bullying did take place in the spill.

"I've had conversations with many members of parliament, both male and female, and it is clear to me that people were subject to threats and intimidation. And bullying."

Minister for Women, @KellyODwyer, says it's clear to her that #Liberal MPs "were subject to threats and intimidation and bullying" during the recent leadership spill. More tonight on #abc730. @leighsales #auspol pic.twitter.com/qerTAYQZGS

- abc730 (@abc730) September 3, 2018

When Sales asked her to comment on the sentiment expressed by some Liberals in relation to Julia Banks that she ought to accept the 'rough and tumble' of politics O'Dwyer pulled no punches.

"Well, frankly, I'm a bit disgusted by that. Julia Banks is no petal. She's no snowflake. And no princess.

"She's someone who has had a stellar legal career, before coming into the parliament and was the only woman and the only member of the Government to actually win a seat off Labor at the last federal election.

There's no question, that politics can be robust. Just as there's no question that other careers can be robust. If you play Australian Rules football, it's a robust sport, but we do not say it is at all acceptable for someone to punch him in the head behind play."

It is clear that in parliament there has been a lot of punching from behind and the past six months alone provide a compelling case for why political careers are hardly beckoning more women.

Consider Sarah Hanson-Young. Or Emma Hussar. Or Julie Bishop. Or Julia Banks. And ask yourself this: Why would intelligent, talented and committed women dedicate their professional lives to a career in politics? It's increasingly difficult to answer which presents a cataclysmic dilemma that perpetuates the cycle.

It is not a silver lining because it doesn't detract from its detrimental impact but the fact women are speaking out - publicly - about the way they're being treated means it cannot be as readily diminished or swept aside. The numbers don't lie and the number of women in Canberra is far too small, particularly in the Liberal party.

It is difficult to imagine they will fare well with female voters when we next attend an election though whether that proves to be instructive is anyone's guess.

It is clearer than ever before that a lack of merit has absolutely nothing to do with the lack of women represented and a lot more to do with the way women are treated. It's not the rough and tumble women can't face - from this vantage point it's the relentless and often fruitless battle just to be treated with the same respect as male colleagues that's the real deterrent.

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Bullying in the Liberal party & the real deterrent for women

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If anyone in the Liberal Party seriously believed the recent leadership spill would create anything like clear air for the new Prime Minister they were mistaken. Badly. Scott Morrison isn't two weeks into the new role and to describe the party he's leading as being in turmoil is an understatement.

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Howson, Alexandra. 2013. Chapter 2, 'The body, gender and sex', in The Body in Society: An Introduction, 2 nd Edition. Polity Press. 50-84.

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A Bachelor Australia rejectee is performing by appealing to the male gaze.  She is well groomed, shapely and posing seductively to attract the admiration of the opposite sex.