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Gender Roles-Interviews with Kids

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIwWS2atEmc

Disneys affect on children and my own views from a single parent upbringing

             Children are believed to develop their gender identity around the age of three. Children are bombarded from the day they are born with gendered images. What are the results of this? What role does parenting play in a Childs life? I want to take a look at Disney films and then also my upbringing in a single mother household.

            When looking at the marketing that goes towards children’s products, it all features stereotypical roles. Disney is probably one of the absolute worst at reinforcing stereotypical roles. Women in Disney movies are always maid, princess, damsel in distress, or homemaker types. Usually during the course of the movies they need the help of the big strong male character for help, or they are vying for the attention of the male. Many times the characters go from being the possession of their fathers to the possession of the husbands. For example Areil is handed over to Prince Eric, Jasmine to Aladdin, and Belle to the Beast. I think it is very important to also look at what the characters themselves look like in Disney films. In most of the films the main female character can be described as an anorexic barbies; while most of the male lead characters are rich, muscle bound, tall, and powerful men.

            I think that the reinforcement of these stereotypes can be very problematic for some children. They grow up thinking that Disney is the way it is supposed to be. So male children begin at a young age seeing women as possessions. Female children see themselves as needing a male. They also see the female roles of homemaker.

            I grew up in a single parent household. My parents divorced when I was five years old. My father was a collegiate football coach, so even when my parents were still married he could not be around very much. After the divorce he got a new coaching job two states away so I got to be around him even less. Growing up in that situation was very hard, but at the same time I believe it gave me a completely different insight that others do not have. I grew up viewing my mother as the sole person that took care of me, even though my father was sending child support funds. My mother still worked and took care of my brother and I. She would often take us camping so we would get some of the “male” experiences, even though she hated it. Being exposed to this throughout my life, I really do not see any differences in ability between men and women. Even in the physical ability realm women can do many things that men cannot. But not having a father figure around has affected me also. I tend to over think things instead of the typical male just do it attitude. Which is sometimes is good and sometimes like when it comes time to write papers very bad. I will write one thing and then think about all the aspects of the next before actually getting anything on paper. Looking back on it now as much as my mother tried to fill in the father roles that I needed, I feel like I ended up getting most of my gender identity from the media and from the brief visits with my father. I do not feel like my upbringing was ideal but I do not think that my identity has been negatively affected. I believe that for the most part I have an expanded understanding.

            Now learning about how all of these images go to impact a child’s perception of gender roles, lends me to think that parents must take these images into much greater consideration. I don’t believe that many parents want their daughters to grow up to be helpless damsels but yet these are the images that they continue to feed them. I do not however believe that regulations need to be put on Disney or any other similar organization. It is the parents’ responsibility to their children to ensure the proper images are being learned.

Gender Gap

             The anti-discriminatory laws have been in place for many years. We still see a lack of complete equality across the workforce front. Many cite the lack of top women executives, non-equivalent pay, and work type as the main focus points of discrimination. I think that we need to look further into the reasons why these issues may be continuing and what are the actions that need to take place.

           

            One major problem that I see is time. While it seems like it has been a long time since the laws were put in place, they really have not been when you consider that they are trying to change the culture of the business world.  Citing a Wikipedia article on gender discrimination, “In the United States in 1995, the Glass Ceiling Commission, a government-funded group, stated: "Over half of all Master’s degrees are now awarded to women, yet 95% of senior-level managers, of the top Fortune 1000 industrial and 500 service companies are men.” Currently, citing an article on workforce.com, “44 percent of promotions to senior management positions go to women, up from 12 percent in 1999.” The Wikipedia article showing that more women earn masters degrees than men is now being shown in the workforce. So at the time of the article it looked awful to have so many women earning masters degrees to only have five percent represented at the management level. Now as those women that earned masters degrees enter the workforce, they are rising to management level positions. It takes time for the culture to change, and if it wasn’t for feminist groups actively pushing the issue we would probably still be stuck at the 95% level.

           

            Just like the previous citation states, there are more women getting higher education than men now. This will translate to higher employment numbers for women. Also, as more women are employed the higher the likelihood that they will “move up the ladder.” This will translate into higher wages and the narrowing of the wage gap.

           

            Another issue contributing to the idea of the gender gap is women who do not engage in the taxable workforce. One of the most prominent reasons for women to stay out of work is the desire to be a stay-at-home mother, or to take a job that allows flexible work schedules for childcare. I know of many women who take jobs that earn substantially less than what they could conceivable earn, because the want the ability to have flexible hours so that they can focus on their children. This abundance of women that forgo higher paying jobs has a negative effect on the perception of the wage gap. I am not saying that it is wrong at all; I am simply trying to present some of the information that could be leading to a misrepresentation of the wage gap. Also, many of the women whom rely on their spouses income, actively participate in volunteer work. Much of this work is non-income despite the tremendous amount of hours of work. An example of this is my stepmother. Despite usually spending over 40 hours a week volunteering, she gets no income from it. So despite having a college degree and providing an immense value to the community, she is seen as a negative to the gender gap.

            In summary, when looking at how long the male dominated culture has been in place, I feel the strides that have been made this quickly are tremendous. As many statistics show women will continue to become more equals in the workplace. Many of the current CEO’s were well into their careers before the anti-discriminatory laws were put into place. Also many of the women executives you see in power now came into the workplace directly after the laws were enacted. I believe we still have a long way to go to equality and more importantly the generally belief and acceptance of complete equality, but as a society we are well underway. The women currently entering the workforce have a great debt to the feminist that struggled so hard before them.

Sports Management Professional Interview-Ellen Staurowsky

            I am a Sports Management major and plan on having a career in the sports world. I decided to do two journal writings on issues relevant to the sports industry. Currently there are huge issues with gender equity and race equity in sports. Title IX was a great start to equality, but some of the issues are still propagated. There are still issues of underrepresentation of women coaches of women’s sports. Title IX brought about the addition of many sports at the collegiate level, but men filled most of the coaching positions. Also at the administration level there is a vast discrepancy in the ratio of gender. I was able to listen to an interview of Ellen Staurowsky. Staurowsky is a Professor and the Graduate Chair in the Department of Sport Management and Media at Ithaca College. She began her career in sports at the age of 23 as a professor and collegiate coach of two sports. She spent nine years as an Athletic Director. She focuses on gender issues, pay equity and social justice issues.

Currently she believes that we do not know what is happening at the ground level in organizations. There haven’t been studies thorough enough across all aspects to know exactly the level of diversity. So far all studies have shown that women are significantly underrepresented on all levels. When talking about the barriers to diversity and inclusion she states that the theory that time will cure the lack of diversity is a myth. She feels like there is a need for conflict to induce change. This conflict could come in the way of lawsuits and public embarrassment. There is a large problem with sex segregated sport entities. The United States as a whole continues with the same struggles with gender equality. She states that the legacies of racism and sexism still continue.

Ellen talks about a couple types of sexism. One is exclusionary sexism. This is demonstrated by Texas high school football coaches are often also given the athletic director role. This is exclusionary by the simple fact that there are virtually no women football Head Coaches. Another type is what she refers to as the labyrinth. The labyrinth is the web of information and connections that are needed to be successful in ones job. She gives a personal example of this when she was an athletic director trying to attend meetings. She had a hard time figuring out where the meetings were being held while it seemed like every male that was there knew exactly what was happening and where to be.

She feels that managers have a very important part in promoting diversity. Promotion of diversity within an organization must be top down. Employees must understand why it is beneficial to them to promote diversity.

Mrs. Staurowsky makes a strong point that history of diverse leaders seems to be forgotten. The WNBA President was celebrated as being the first female in a position like that but it was forgotten that there were many before her that had similar positions of power. She feels that the NCAA and Mile Brand have done a very good job providing very clear leadership on diversity issues. The NCAA has developed a Department of Diversity and Inclusion.  Going forward she feels like individual Universities and each Conference needs to do a better job of promoting diversity.

After listening to Ellen Saurowsky’s interview, I feel like organizations need to be made to understand the problems that are being perpetuated by the lack of diversity. I am in two gender studies classes also and it amazes me how prevalent the lack of diversity in sport organizations compared to other types of organizations. I do disagree slightly that time is a myth. I think that we have seen that great strides have been made since the Seventies. It has been shown that current students demonstrate far less amounts of racism and sexism than previous generations. So seeing that I feel like the lack of diversity will continue to become less of an issue as time goes on.

Unless sports organizations want to subject themselves to gender equality lawsuits, they need to work hard to breakdown the barriers for women. Women can be very successful leading sports organizations if given the chance. Nancy Hickey the Athletic Director at the University of Texas San Antonio is a great example. In her short time there they have already positioned their previously non-existent Football team to be in the Football Bowl Subdivision of the NCAA.

Second Sports Management Professional Interview- Jacqueline McDowell

This is this is the second interview with a female sport professional. Jacqueline McDowell is an assistant professor of Sport Management at the University of Illinois. At the University of Illinois Sports Management is in the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism. Mrs. McDowell generally focuses on diversity research in the sport industry with extra focus on diversity initiative in collegiate athletics.

She defines social class as categorizing people based on income, wealth, power or position. She says that the African American definition of class is different. African Americans categorization is influenced more by a person’s attitude about life or their behavior. In talking about class stratification she states there are 3 major classifications Upper, Middle, and Lower or working class. She further states that the middle class can be broken down into three subcategories. Some define middle class by education level. She says that even if a person earns less that thirty five thousand a year but has a college education; they may view themselves as middle class. In speaking of classes influence on sports, she says that there is an issue with access to facilities for lower income people. Many of these people have added property taxes that pay for the facilities but they can still not afford the entrance fee. Many working class young males view sports particularly football and basketball as a way to escape the “ghetto.” This can be very problematic because only five percent of high school athletes attend college for sports and of those only three percent every make it to the professional leagues. She talks about how class effects peoples work experiences.

While she says that class has an effect, she states that class cannot be separated from other issues. The effect of class is actually compounded by other issues such as gender and education level. Benjamin Bowser exemplifies this. He is a high class African American, but he is the equivalent of a middle class white. Another example that she gives is an African American female Athletic Director being asked by a male Athletic Director to go get him or her a glass of water. As to say she was only there to assist like a secretary would be. In reducing class related barriers, she states that organizations need to enhance and develop programs that assess the accessibility issues. Instead of taking a capitalistic approach organizations need to take a humanistic approach and think about the needs of the people that they are serving.

McDowell made a comment about how even though a female may be in a power position she is still viewed as lesser than males whom have the same power status. I feel like this is very true throughout society. An example of this is Elsa Murano. When Murano was hired to be the President of Texas A&M, she was not viewed to have the power that came with the position. Many feel like she was hired to be a spokesperson only. When she began asserting the power that comes with the position, she came under criticism. She subsequently resigned under intense pressure.

           

While hiring of females to power position follows the laws that are in place to prevent discrimination, it can be very problematic if they are only a “token” hire. A token hire would be a female being hired by the organization just to show that they are meeting the laws and or public viewpoint. The reason this is so problematic is that others could get the impression that she was only hired because she is a female. So if she was hired over somebody else then an animosity develops towards the idea of hiring females. It also could reinforce the idea women not being able to do the tasks associated with power positions.

I completely agree with what McDowell believes on how sport organizations should think about the community that they are serving. So many facilities and professional teams receive subsidies from property taxes. One thing that I think every professional team that accepts money to build or renovate stadium should do, is offer reduced ticket prices for the people who pay extra property taxes for the facility. It would be one small way for the professional team to help ease the bad image associated with tax subsidized stadiums, while also providing access to those lower income people.

This is very relevant to the sport industry. Current professional sports teams sell most of their season tickets to businesses. This is so that the businesses can write it off as an expense. The professional teams have priced events so that even most middle class families cannot afford to attend. With the current decline in the economy you see many businesses cutting their spending, and usually one of the first spending cuts is sports tickets. As we can see with teams like the Jacksonville Jaguars, attendance is dropping and there is no market for middle or lower class families to get tickets because of the high cost. Also many sports organizations are under pressure to match female administrator ratio to the level of participation by females. This pressure could lead to token hires, which could lead to a multitude of problems. In my opinion a token hire is worse than no hire at all.