A Woman’s Barrier?

This blog post is going to be a more detailed and deeper analysis from one of my previous blogs “Men Know Everything”. This blog was about gender stereotype and bias within the movie Good Will Hunting, to be specific the Harvard Bar scene where Clark shows the typical “Powerful male” stereotypical role. He is shown to be smart, charming, a leader and within this scene he shows his “superiority” as the “alpha male”. As I stated in my blog “Guys within movies are always portrayed as intelligent and always right while the women are typically viewed as less intelligent, slutty, and needy at times. Some movies portray women as strong and independent but even then they are treated badly, called a “cold-hearted bitch” and get ridiculed while its socially acceptable for a male to be bossy and strong-willed.”

My claim about the topic at hand is that women have this stereotypical expectation of how they should act in life and work. Those women who have more freedom will find this barrier within the work place that will hold them back because of the company’s belief about women and their “ability” in a working environment.  I have found two articles that can further develop this claim about gender stereotypes.

Now for the movie scene that really stuck out to me, I’d like to go into further detail about it.

“Within his scene Wills friend and Clark seem to have a battle of not only wits but masculinity. For Clark, his views of masculinity are being intelligent, ripping people off and making others feel inferior.” This really stuck out to me, since its something I really have noticed about males, more so in high school and middle school more than anywhere else. Even so, males tend to have a desire to “prove” themselves or to show off for someone. Though, this only happens when the males are “competing” for the “alpha” role.  As I stated in my blog “I noticed this mainly within middle school, because everyone typically wanted to be better than others. The guys would mess around in class, speak out, and wouldn’t really get in a lot of trouble cause it was “Boys will be boys.” But where do women come into this, and the barrier that they will eventually find themselves struggling to get across. Well men are typically viewed as leader like while women are the followers. 

In my first article called “Description and Prescription: How Gender Stereotypes Prevent Women’s Ascent Up the Organizational Ladder” by Madeline E. Heilman.. The article focused on “how women in a work place not only have to act a certain way, they have to be better than competent at what they do to be able to advance while men do sometimes have to go above and beyond to advance but some don’t.” It also talked about how men and women are typically viewed within society such as “Men are seen as natural leaders, standing tall, built bigger to seem tougher, so they are the first to be noticed in any situation…. Women are viewed to be dependent, soft spoken and act like doting mothers..” These stereotypes get stuck in a person mind, with the possibility of getting them to hold themselves back for fear of not being how others want them to be. This article focuses on how women are very rarely “high up” in command in their careers. It talks about how since women are viewed to act a certain way, how they are told to act, not by parents per say but by society itself, seems to make them less willing to act tougher or fight their way to the top. This is not only present in their career life, but in their college life as well when it comes to not only going to college but working part time as well. The article talks about how women in a work place not only have to act a certain way, they have to be better than competent at what they do to be able to advance while men do sometimes have to go above and beyond to advance but some don’t. While in school, if a girl spoke out or acted brash “we would get in trouble, told girls don’t act out like that and get the 3^rd degree for being “tomboyish”.

In the second article I chose called “Gender Stereotypes and Women's Reports of Liking and Ability in Traditionally Masculine and Feminine Occupations", as you can see by the title, it really focuses on the stereotypes both men and women have. “Women partook in a research test to see about their liking and ability to succeed in what people call a "Traditional Male Role". They talk about how women who are more "gender identified" prefer the more feminine roles in a work place while other women who are less "gender identified" took more of a liking in the male roles associated with work. With gender bias seeming to dictate a work place and school, people are tending to act how they are suppose to, and not how they are. They work the way they are suppose to or told to, and they partake in other activities that are shown to be something they HAVE to do or enjoy. This article gives a lot of data of what they uncovered and the methods they used.”

Now back to the scene with Clark and Will. Something that I noticed is “Clark tried to act smart, memorize things that he could use to make himself seem smarter than others. He did not learn to better himself; he learned to be able to make others inferior.” As I stated in the blog post, most men don’t typically do this. With the pressure they also receive from society, they have to act a certain way as well, in everyday life and in the work place. Guys in the work place have to really be out there. For some it’s easier, for others its down right impossible. It’s who that person is that should determine their place in a job or in a classroom.

My last opinion:

People have dealt with societies, peers and parental pressure to be a certain way for years, but it should stop. People act differently because we are all not the same, we have our own identity, and we are our own person. We shouldn’t have the cookie cutter image of what everyone should be, and let people excel at things they truly are good at, not matter what gender or race they are. 

http://unccblog14.blogspot.com/
"Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 57, No. 4, 2001, pp. 657–674"
http://uncc.worldcat.org/title/description-and-prescription-how-gender-stereotypes-prevent-womens-ascent-up-the-organizational-ladder/oclc/1430363711180?referer=brief_results 
"Psychology of Women Quarterly, 32 (2008), 196–203. Blackwell Publishing, Inc. Printed in the USA. Copyright C 2008 Division 35, American Psychological Association. 0361-6843/08"
http://uncc.worldcat.org/title/gender-stereotypes-and-womens-reports-of-liking-and-ability-in-traditionally-masculine-and-feminine-occupations/oclc/424876405&referer=brief_results