Feminine Stereotypes Research Articles

Male Role Norms, Heavy Drinking, and Bystander Behavior for Sexual Aggression.

Bystander training programs have proliferated on college campuses to prevent alcohol and non-alcohol-related sexual aggression. However, many programs fail to address the effects of a bystander's alcohol use on intervention. This is not surprising due to the limited research examining this association. To this end, the present study examined how heavy drinking and a known correlate of intervention, men's adherence to traditional masculinity, are jointly and independently associated with bystander behavior in drinking contexts. Participants were 148 community men between the ages of 21 and 30 who completed measures of heavy drinking, adherence to traditional male role norms, and prior bystander behavior in drinking contexts aimed at helping friends and strangers. Hierarchical linear regressions demonstrated that adherence to the belief that men should attain social status was associated with more frequent bystander behavior for friends, whereas adherence to the belief that men should avoid stereotypical feminine activities was associated with less frequent bystander behavior for friends. In addition, the relation between adherence to the belief that men should avoid stereotypical feminine activities and bystander behavior for friends was significant and negative among heavy drinkers but not among non-heavy drinkers. Findings suggest that men who avoid stereotypical feminine activities may be most inhibited from intervening to help friends in party contexts if they are heavy, compared with non-heavy, drinkers. These men are likely consuming alcohol in these party contexts and may benefit from targeted, gender-specific, interventions.

‘Mothering the artist’

Abstract Drawing on Joan Acker’s notion of the ideal worker (1990) and Karen Ashcraft’s notion of the ‘glass slipper’ (2013), this paper investigates the organising practices that gender the occupation of artist manager and the music industry, and how women artist managers construct an identity in an occupation that is tailored on a male ideal manager, made to fit a man’s shoe. Empirically, we draw on thirteen semi-structured interviews with nine women artist managers, two women former artist managers, and two women former students of Music Management. In line with existing literature, our findings show that the Flemish music industry is organised around practices that reflect hegemonic masculinity, and that women managers mimic many of these practices to fit the ideal manager, and, although they see the gender inequality, they do not challenge it. At the same time, they construct an occupational identity by reframing stereotypical feminine competences as indispensable for being a good manager. By making a business case for these competences, they, however, paradoxically also reproduce those same notions of gender that they aim to overcome.

Racial stereotyping of gay men: Can a minority sexual orientation erase race?

Decades of research indicate that the traits we ascribe to people often depend on their race. Yet, the bulk of this research has not considered how racial stereotypes might also depend on other aspects of targets' identities. To address this, researchers have begun to ask intersectional questions about racial stereotypes, such as whether they are applied in similar ways to men and women, or to children and adults. In the present studies, we examine whether men who are described as gay (vs. not) become de-racialized in the minds of perceivers. That is, we test whether gay (vs. non-gay) men are perceived as less stereotypic of their own racial or ethnic groups. Results consistently support the de-racialization hypothesis, regardless of whether targets are Black, White, Asian, or Hispanic. Moreover, when Black and Hispanic men are described as gay (vs. not), they become stereotypically “Whitened” in addition to seeming less stereotypic of their own racial groups. This “Whitening” effect is explained by Black and Hispanic men's seeming more affluent when described as gay (vs. when not), an effect that holds even when controlling for changes in these men's stereotypic femininity. Collectively, these findings underscore the point that race and sexual orientation are not orthogonal in the minds of perceivers. A minority sexual orientation can alter the racial characteristics ascribed to men, reducing the perceived presence of race-typical traits and, for low-SES men, increasing their perceived “Whiteness.”

A contextual study of female-leader role stereotypes in the hotel sector

Guided by the role congruity theory (RCT), this paper examines the mismatch in female-leader role stereotypes and how this mismatch may lead to prejudicial evaluations against female leaders. It also tests how gender equality practices and leadership development programmes (LDPs) may mitigate prejudicial evaluations against female leaders. Following a quantitative approach, this study uses a paired sample t-test and linear approach (i.e. multiple regression) to model the relationships and test the hypotheses formulated. Drawing on a survey of 392 employees working in 4- and 5-star hotels in Jordan, the study shows that employees stereotype successful leaders to be more masculine than feminine while they attribute both feminine and masculine stereotypes to women. There is, thus, an element of congruity in female-leader role stereotypes which reduces prejudicial evaluations against female leaders. Moreover, the results indicate that gender equality practices and LDPs significantly enhance the emergence and effectiveness of women leaders. The importance of this study derives from extending the RCT through a contextual investigation in the hotel sector in Jordan. This was done by considering two additional constructs, i.e. gender equality practices and LDPs that mitigate prejudice against female leaders.

Dat Black Girl Magic!

595 DAT BLACK GIRL MAGIC! REVIEW-ESSAY Isiah Lavender III Dat Black Girl Magic! Diana Adesola Mafe. Where No Black Woman Has Gone Before: Subversive Portrayals in Speculative Film and TV. Austin: U of Texas P, 2018. ix+173 pp. $27.95 pbk. Sami Schalk. Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2018. vii+180 pp. $89.95 hc, $23.95 pbk. The ongoing colored wave of sf—perhaps now better thought of as alternative futurisms—continues to gain influence in literature, film, television, comics, and online media. The 2018 Hugo Awards serve as incontrovertible proof of this claim (as do the 2018 Nebula Awards): N.K. Jemisin won for best novel, Rebecca Roanhorse won for best short story, and Marjorie M. Liu (writer) and Sana Takeda (illustrator) won for the best graphic story. While she did not win a Hugo, Nnedi Okorafor won the WorldCon award for best YA novel, and Roanhorse was also honored with the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer. Additionally, at least eight other people of color were nominated for Hugo Awards across the categories: Yoon Ha Lee (twice), Nnedi Okorafor, JY Yang, Vina Jie-Min Prasad (twice), Aliette de Bodard, Caroline M. Yochim, Saladin Ahmed, and Jordan Peele. Scholarship has followed, even if a bit belatedly. At least thirteen monographs focused on representations of race and ethnicity in speculative literatures have been published since 2010, in addition to seven edited collections. In keeping with the Black Girl Magic social movement started by CaShawn Thompson’s hashtag in 2013,1 referenced in my title, this review considers two black-authored studies of race and racism in sf: Diana Adesola Mafe’s Where No Black Woman Has Gone Before: Subversive Portrayals in Speculative Film and TV and Sami Schalk’s Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction. Diana Adesola Mafe makes a solid contribution to this expanding field by exploring depictions of black femininity on both big and small screens, in what is the first published study on this subject. Writing in an accessible style, Mafe begins her study with Lieutenant Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) of the original STAR TREK series (1966-1969) as her model, and she concludes the book with further analysis of Uhura (Zoe Saldana) in the J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot (2009) and its sequels.2 Noting how black actresses in speculative-fiction roles usually reinforce white patriarchal authority and tend to be eroticized like the character Lisa (Rosalind Cash) in Boris Sagal’s The Omega Man (1971), Mafe demonstrates how such portrayals establish and cement stereotypes of black women in genre films throughout the late twentieth century and into the new millennium. Mafe suggests that such stereotypes make black women largely invisible to the critical 596 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 46 (2019) eye, functionally erasing black womanhood from sf for roughly forty years while continuing to promulgate social prejudices. In this book, however, Mafe centers on black femininity in her discussion of recent American and British film and television, arguing for their significance in reimagining social constructions and agency by drawing on critical race, film, postcolonial, and gender theories. She examines subversive black female characters from the twenty-first century in four films—28 Days Later (2002), AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004), Children of Men (2006), and Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)—and two television series—Firefly (2002) and the third series of Doctor Who (2007)—all directed by white men. Five chapters and a coda follow her introduction. She splits her case studies evenly, providing close readings of three British and three American offerings, without claiming to be undertaking an exhaustive survey. Her readings proceed in chronological order of release dates. Mafe’s introduction, “To Boldly Go,” lays out the premise of her book: to examine representative black female characters in sf to correct their omission from visual culture. Smartly recognizing Uhura as “the symbolic face of black women in science fiction,” Mafe taps into the seemingly limitless possibilities of raced/gendered representation in sf to destabilize the stereotypes of black femininity (1). By considering the black female characters in the...

The Echoes of 1950s Celebrity Melodrama Carry on Today

The Echoes of 1950s Celebrity Melodrama Carry on Today Stephanie Williams-Turkowski (bio) Stars, Fans, and Consumption in the 1950s: Reading Photoplay. Sumiko Higashi. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 298 pp. $115.16 hardback. Before social media influencers and search-history-targeted ads told us what to buy, magazines were at the forefront of using celebrity content to motivate consumer habits. That was especially the case for Photoplay magazine, a powerhouse in the 1950s, according to historian Sumiko Higashi’s book Stars, Fans, and Consumption in the 1950s. Using a close reading of Photoplay, the leading fan magazine of the time, she outlines how its portrayals of glamourous lifestyles funneled stereotypes of femininity to lowbrow consumers. Focusing on female stars of the postwar era, such as Grace Kelly, Doris Day, Debbie Reynolds, Elizabeth Taylor, and many more, Higashi details not only their personal and social histories but also the creative ways in which magazines promoted notions of romance and leisure to working-and lower-middle-class readers. Using fashion, recipes, advice, beauty tips, and interior design suggestions, Photoplay, Motion Picture, and other star-gilded glossies aspired to mold the gendered identities, conventions, and consumer behaviors of the time. Higashi’s critical examination centers on fan magazines’ implicit promise to teach readers how to accrue social and cultural capital. In that process, she reminds us of the complicated lives of 1950s women. Even those who worked to help support their families juggled multiple aspirational femininities: the girl next door, the good suburban homemaker, the sex symbol within a shattered urban landscape, and so on. The use of such systematized stereotypes encouraged readers to identify with the stars while simultaneously obscuring the view of the stars’ actual identities. [End Page 153] Successful even through economic downtimes, the 1950s fan magazines were among the first to capitalize on celebrity content to secure advertising deals and continued readership. In that sense, they foretold the business models of current celebrity media, which captivate the attention of ever-growing audiences. The book’s relevance to the contemporary mediascape is thus obvious; today’s audiences still depend on celebrity content to guide their consumption and identity pursuits. As Higashi puts it, “The construction of Photoplay stars and fans provides insight not only into mass consumption as it emerged in the postwar years, but also as it thrives today” (245). Although not the first of its kind, Stars, Fans, and Consumption in the 1950s is a fun, celebrity-gossip-inspired read. It is also a useful source for magazine and feminist scholars seeking a historical account of the roots of today’s celebrity obsession. Higashi herself sees the book’s main contribution in its spotlight on a previously understudied phenomenon— specifically, fan magazines’ encouragement of economically less privileged women to transform themselves, through consumption, into self-made Cinderellas. Many students would likely enjoy reading scholarship that uses sex scandals and juicy quotes to exemplify sociological concepts. Although members of Generation Z are undoubtedly less interested in 1950s stars than in, say, the Kardashians, Higashi’s research would inevitably draw comparisons and inspire many discussions. For these reasons, the book is suitable as a supplementary reading in undergraduate and graduate courses that tackle a variety of subjects— including but not limited to media history, the social construction of gendered identities, and media framing of femininity. [End Page 154] Stephanie Williams-Turkowski Stephen F. Austin State University Stephanie Williams-Turkowski Stephanie Williams-Turkowski is an assistant professor of mass communication at Stephen F. Austin University. Stephanie studies fandom communities and popular culture texts. Contact: stephanie .williams @ttu .edu Copyright © 2020 Magazine Media Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication

Supplemental Material for Perceived Morality Determines the Acceptability of Stereotypic Feminine Emotional Displays in Men

Supplemental Material for Perceived Morality Determines the Acceptability of Stereotypic Feminine Emotional Displays in Men

Gender, Artifacts, and Ritual Encounters: The Case of Tomboy Tools Sales Parties.

Tomboy Tools is a company that markets tools and home-repair techniques to women, using a home party sales model. This provides an interesting case to consider how traditional gendered domains can be transcended, and how they are reshaped to allow this to happen. Drawing on participant observation and interviews with consumers, salespeople, and executives of Tomboy Tools, this paper draws on Collins' (2004) theory of interaction ritual chains to explore the microstructures and ritual dynamics of these home parties. Our analysis reveals how both new and more traditional feminine practices and scripts are idealized and reinforced within the collective effervescence that is generated through the shared ritual experience. We examine how women critically interpret the tensions and contradictions that arise in the symbolic representations that seem to support both female empowerment and traditional feminine stereotypes. This leads to varying meanings among the women with respect to the artifacts and sales rituals presented, for their implications on gender identity and politics.

Self-presentation and counterstereotypic gender strategies in social media campaigning: An example from Taiwan's presidential election

ABSTRACTBy employing a functional approach considering both topics and functions, this study explored and compared candidates’ presentation of textual and pictorial information in their social media campaigning through a combination of quantitative method and qualitative content analysis. Results indicated that the intentions of stereotype reversal were, to some extent, demonstrated in their discussions of policy and character issues. The female candidate emphasized policy but utilized emotional imagery as a neutralizer. By contrast, the male candidate more frequently discussed character issues and further softened the messages with emotional imagery. In terms of negative campaigning, the tactics accorded with their gender norms. The male candidate utilized both trait and issue attacks to challenge his rival's stereotypical feminine strengths, whereas the female candidate ignored the attacks by defending her party or challenging the incompetence of the opposing party. The textual and pictorial messages that received numerous likes and shares featured similar sentimental tones. More discussions elucidate how candidates co-opt stereotypic and counterstereotypic gender strategies for different topics and functions in social media campaigning and this research transcends previous studies that focused on only one type of message, either text or imagery.

As senhoras-donas do beco: expressividade e estereótipo de feminino em Cora Coralina

A poetisa contista goiana Cora Coralina é conhecida por suas obras ricas em detalhes do cotidiano do interior brasileiro. Realizando um recorte entre tantas mulheres retratadas em seu bojo literário, com o critério de observar a mulher marginal na sociedade da época, objetivamos neste artigo analisar a construção das imagens das mulheres a partir da expressividade contida nas escolhas lexicais feitas pelo enunciador, e sua interrelação na constituição de estereótipos femininos no conto “Minga, Zóio de Prata”. Nesta análise, apoiamo-nos em elementos da Estilística, de acordo com autores como Martins (2012) e Câmara Júnior (1978), em diálogo com a Análise do Discurso de linha francesa no que se refere ao estereótipo, pautando-nos em autores como Amossy e Herschberg Pierrot (2010) e Stangor (2000).

Broads with rods: the social world of female fly anglers

ABSTRACTBourdieu’s theory of habitus was used to determine if a comprehensive identity exists amongst female fly anglers. Past research has emphasised a need to address ‘doing gender’ and ‘gender performativity’ in sport and recreation to understand ideology surrounding male superiority and the marginalisation of women. Fly fishing is a traditional male-dominated and masculine sport, where women are slowly emerging as prominent figures. Fly fishing presents a setting to then understand the performance of gender and the influence of social norms. A snowball sample of female fly anglers (n = 63) was obtained from an online survey, which was administered between December 2015 and January 2016. Descriptive statistical analysis of a structured closed-category online survey was used to determine if a distinct symmetry and set of practices exist in defining the identity of female fly anglers. Results indicate that a separate habitus is emerging for these women built around adventure, being in nature, identity, freedom, lack of guilt, commitment, empowerment, independence, anti-control and anti-domination, and the maintenance of stereotypical feminine characteristics through participation in this activity.

СТЕРЕОТИПЫ ФЕМИНИННОСТИ В АНГЛОЯЗЫЧНЫХ ИЛЛЮСТРИРОВАННЫХ ЖУРНАЛАХ

The article attempts to carry out the gender linguistic analysis of printed English-language magazines, which will help to clarify the distribution of gender roles in the English-speaking society, and the stereotypes of femininity that the mass media form in public consciousness. The paper presents information on the reflection of femininity stereotypes in the English-language media, in particular, in illustrated magazines Express , Vogue , Elle , Marie Claire , Cosmopolitan , and Glamour . It is pointed out that English-language magazines for women are directly involved in creating stereotypical images of the ideal woman.

Delegitimizing wilderness as the man cave: The role of social media in female wilderness empowerment

Historically, American wilderness has been conceived as a profoundly masculine landscape and a threat to femininity. Early wilderness discourse stressed landscapes of risk and danger, certainly no place for a woman. Prior to the Romantic era and Transcendentalism, but even in recent history, it was not uncommon for women to avoid venturing into wilderness alone for reasons including personal safety and possible corruption of body and spirit. The introduction of tourism in wilderness allowed people to experience the thrill of the wild while enjoying an element of safety through mitigated risk, an experience that appealed to the masculine and created socially significant places. While wilderness has historically been tied to these masculine narratives, these and the wilderness identity are increasingly challenged by contemporary feminine discourse working within various social media platforms. As tourism continues to domesticate wilderness, women are simultaneously pushing against social boundaries that dictate their place within, thus, changing both the identity of place and of women’s roles therein. This process, shifting both definitions of wilderness and woman, occurs through deconstruction of powerful feminine stereotypes through active engagement with these increasingly accessible landscapes. Social media acts as platform through which this changing discourse is garnering support and social power. Thus, this article argues that women’s assertions and performances of power in wilderness directly combat stereotypes of their place in these landscapes. Furthermore, without tourism’s promotion of these spaces as extraordinary and powerful in themselves, women’s performances therein would lack the social significance and challenge to wilderness as gendered.

Running Local: Gender Stereotyping and Female Candidates in Local Elections

An implicit assumption underlying the gender stereotyping literature is that female candidates have an advantage in local elections. Two factors motivate this assumption. First, some local issues, such as the provision of social services, fit into the stereotypic strengths of female politicians. Second, as the level of office increases, so too does the perceived masculinity of the office. Research on local policymaking, however, indicates that the tasks associated with local political offices, such as economic competition with other cites, require masculine rather than feminine qualities. I integrate research on local policymaking with the gender stereotyping literature to clarify the role of gender stereotypes in local elections. Using two national survey experiments, I find that female candidates, especially Republican female candidates, benefit from emphasizing masculine stereotypes and not feminine stereotypes.

Lesbians’ Negative Affect Toward Sexual Minority People with Stereotypical Masculine and Feminine Characteristics

We investigated lesbians’ negative affect toward gay and lesbian scenarios with feminine/negative characteristics. Seventy-one Italian lesbians responded to self-report questionnaires. Analyses tested that feminine gay man scenario (GF) would elicit negative affect more than the other three scenarios (feminine/masculine lesbian woman and masculine gay man) and that participants’ internalized sexual stigma would be a moderator of the relation between their self-perceived femininity and negative affect. When lesbians reported low self-perceived femininity, stigma levels did not affect the evaluation of the GF. Instead, when self-perceived femininity were higher, lesbians with high stigma reported more negative emotions than lesbians with low stigma.

Negative Features of Female Image in Ossetian Proverbs

The article deals with the analysis of proverbs and sayings, the semantics of which contributes to the formation of certain ethnic stereotypes of women. Proverbs itemize the image of a woman in her value judgement and explain her behavior based on private and general assessments. By the examples of Ossetian proverbs, the negative features of the concept «woman» are studied according to modes “female gossipiness” and “female intellect”. The linguistic and cultural analysis of the paroemias representing the concept “woman” showed that the mentioned concept contains a significant amount of information with a national-cultural character. The authors define the dominant evaluations of a female image, comparing the stereotypes of femininity in the paremias of different languages.

Gender stereotypes of femininity in French advertising discourse

Gender stereotypes of femininity in French advertising discourse

‘I hate Women. They get on my Nerves’ : Dorothy Parker’s Poetry of Female Sympathy

In her poetry, Dorothy Parker uses parody as a literary device to detect and denounce gender inequalities and sexist prejudices in New York during the early twentieth century. Despite the pressures of popular magazine culture on women, and her amusing jabs at her own sex in presumed complicity with the prevailing patriarchal ideology, Parker laughs last because her parodic verses, intertwining humor and faultfinding, are not only intended to entertain her male readers, but also to build a virtual village of female sympathy within a hostile male New York. She encourages sisterly bonding and welcomes real women, who are misrepresented by compulsory feminine images of happy domesticity or deviant sexual availability. Her poems offer her secret female addressees weapons of survival to live beyond their submission to male authority and repressive stereotypes of femininity.

“A Lady of Many Firsts”: Press Coverage of the Political Career of Mississippi's Evelyn Gandy, 1948-83

For three decades, Mississippi politician Evelyn Gandy was perhaps the most recognized figure in the state. Beginning in 1948, she served in various elected positions, including state assistant attorney general, state treasurer, and commissioner of public welfare. She was elected lieutenant governor in 1976, the first woman to hold the office, before making two unsuccessful gubernatorial bids. Three press frames emerge from the news coverage of Gandy's career: a “first” frame, which presents women's political contributions as an anomaly; frames emphasizing stereotypical gender roles; and an “iron magnolia” frame, an attempt by the news media to acknowledge her growing political assertiveness while overemphasizing stereotypical feminine characteristics. These three frames are problematic, given the news media's power to reinforce gender roles in narrow and limiting ways.

The Disposition of the Ladies: Mi’kmaw Women and the Removal of the King’s Road Reserve, Sydney, Nova Scotia

In the late nineteenth century, politically powerful residents of Sydney, Nova Scotia, launched a campaign to remove from King’s Road a small Mi’kmaw community that refused to surrender its urban tract and move outside of the city. An Indian Act amendment of 1911 made possible a federal Exchequer Court hearing, which, after gathering testimony from witnesses in support of and opposed to relocation, was empowered to decide the fate of the King’s Road Reserve. This paper highlights the court’s transcript to explore twentieth-century colonialism as it unfolded in an urban setting. It considers how formative negative stereotypes of First Nations femininity were in the shaping of a colonial policy that assumed that Indians—particularly women—were a detriment to urban progress.