Women and Stereotypes

Though equal rights were extended to women in the early 20^th century, it is going to take a long time before things are truly equal. Thousands of years of women being held as lesser beings cannot be undone by one century of equal rights in America. Because women have been thought of as less for so long, stereotypes have become a real problem today. Not only do many people assume validity in stereotypes, but because of their existence, women unknowingly play into the stereotypes. I resign from these stereotypical women and in retaliation, I will be creating an analytical hypertext that delves into the perpetuation of female stereotypes from the perspectives of two groups of women, two groups of men, and two examples of professionals.

My own experience to this issue involves my personal observations throughout my life thus far. I often witness girls I know play perfectly into the female stereotype. I see women play dumb in an effort to gain attention or to receive help with a task. I see women girls excuse bad behavior; they see themselves as privileged in a sense. They can be catty and crude and abusive, all without repercussions. I witness this and deplore it, as I am sure many other groups of people do as well.

The two main groups of conflict I will be looking at are women who perpetuate the stereotypes and those who attempt to defy them, but get stuck in them anyway. The subgroups that I find to be the biggest participants in the conflict are, to put colloquially, “douchy” guys, nice guys, professors and teachers, and employers. The first group can be defined as men who wish to exploit the stereotypes. They may think of women who play into the roles as gifts. Nice guys fall under several categories; either men who want to treat women right within the context of dating or men who believe everyone deserves to be treated well. Professors and teachers look at the situation as deplorable and probably do their best to remedy the issue. Employers on the other hand seem to perpetuate the problem by continually, maybe subconsciously, holding women to lower standards than men.

For my analytical hypertext I will take apart this issue and divide the website into sections based off of different groups’ opinions and based off of different personal experiences.