2. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism
Why have theories?
Theories look at something which is complex and difficult to
understand and try to make it more comprehensible.
• Theory for its own sake, however, is of dubious value. You
need to be able to demonstrate that you have understood the
theory and are able to apply it appropriately to the issues at
hand.
• If you try to use terminology and ideas that you do not fully
understand, your work will look at best contrived and at worst
it will sound just silly!

3. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism
All media theories are bound up with culture. Culture has something to do with
the way in which society decides what its values and beliefs are, and the way in
which these values and beliefs are transmitted.
The media, in particular, but also popular culture in general, are central to this
process of transmission. Much of the way in which we see the world is determined
by our consumption of media texts.
One of the key functions of media theory is to explore the relationship between the
individual, the text and the transmission of culture and values within a society.

4. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism
About Feminism
Feminism is a vast movement which is not specifically centred on studying the
media. It is concerned with challenging the unfair and unequal distribution of
power and wealth in a patriarchal society.
Through the years Feminism has been firstly a political project which has sought to
challenge power structures and change the roles and perceptions of women.
In common with other perspectives (such as Marxism), a part of this is to
understand how power works because without this understanding it is almost
impossible to get things changed.
This is why feminists have made such an important contribution to Media Studies.
If the Mass Media play such an important part in the reinforcement of patriarchal
ideology, then it is essential to see:
• how this process works,
• to criticise it
• and to find ways of using the media to propose alternatives to patriarchy.

5. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism
First Wave Feminism
This term refers to the first concerted movement
working for the reform of women's social and
legal inequalities in the nineteenth century.
Although individual feminists such as Mary
Wollstonecraft had already argued against the
injustices suffered by women, it was not until the
1850s that something like an organized feminist
movement evolved in Britain.
Its headquarters was at Langham Place in
London, where a group of middle-class
women, led by Barbara Bodichon (1827-91) and
Bessie Rayner Parkes (1829-1925), met to discuss
topical issues and publish the English Woman's
Journal (1858-64).

6. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism
The key concerns of First Wave Feminists were education, employment, the
marriage laws, and the plight of intelligent middle-class single women. They were
not primarily concerned with the problems of working-class women, nor did they
necessarily see themselves as feminists in the modern sense (the term was not
coined until 1895). First Wave Feminists largely responded to specific injustices they
had themselves experienced.
Their major achievements were the opening of higher education for women;
reform of the girls' secondary-school system, including participation in formal
national examinations: the widening of access to the professions, especially
medicine; married women's property rights, recognized in the Married Women's
Property Act of 1870; and some improvement in divorced and separated women's
child custody rights. Active until the First World War, First Wave Feminists
failed, however, to secure the women's vote. – This fell to the work of the
Suffragettes ...

7. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism
Votes for Women The Suffragette Movement
Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928) was a British
political activist and leader of the British suffragette
movement which helped women win the right to
vote.
In 1999 Time named Pankhurst as one of the 100
Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating:
"she shaped an idea of women for our time; she
shook society into a new pattern from which there
could be no going back."
She was widely criticized for her militant
tactics, and historians disagree about their
effectiveness, but her work is recognized as a crucial
element in achieving women's suffrage in Britain
culminating in the Representation of the People Act of
1928 where women were granted the right to vote on
the same terms as men.

8. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism Second Wave Feminism
The term 'Second Wave' was coined by Marsha Lear,
and refers to the increase in feminist activity which
occurred in America, Britain, and Europe from the
late sixties onwards.
In America, second wave feminism rose out of the
Civil Rights and anti-war movements in which
women, disillusioned with their second-class status
even in the activist environment of student politics,
began to band together to contend against
discrimination.
The tactics employed by Second Wave Feminists
varied from well publicised activities, such as the
protest against the Miss America beauty contest in
1968, to the establishment of small consciousness-
raising groups.
However, it was obvious early on that the movement
was not a unified one, with differences emerging
between black feminism, liberal feminism, social
feminism, etc.

9. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism Second Wave Feminism in Britain was also
multiple in focus, although it was based
more strongly in working-class socialism, as
demonstrated by the strike of women
workers at the Ford car plant for equal pay
in 1968. (see Made in Dagenham, 2010)
The slogan 'the personal is political' sums up
the way in which Second Wave Feminism
did not just strive to extend the range of
social opportunities open to women, but
also, through intervention within the
spheres of reproduction, sexuality and
cultural representation, to change their
domestic and private lives.
Second Wave Feminism did not just make
an impact upon western societies, but has
also continued to inspire the struggle for
women's rights across the world.

10. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism
Third Wave feminism
When Rebecca Walker (daughter of author Alice Walker and
godchild of activist Gloria Steinem,) published an article in
Ms. Magazine entitled "I Am The Third Wave," it drew a
surprising response.
Young women from all over wrote letters informing the
magazine of the activist work they were quietly engaged in
and encouraging older feminists and leaders of the women's
movement not to write them off.
The front page of the Third Wave Foundation web site
explains that the organization strives to combat inequalities
that [women] face as a result of [their]
age, gender, race, sexual orientation, economic status or
level of education. By empowering young women, Third
Wave feminists would argue they were building a lasting
foundation for social activism.

11. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism
Feminism and the Mass Media
• Feminists are particularly interested in the contribution made by the media to
society’s dominant ideas about gender roles.
• And in this the mass media play a crucial role in socialisation in teaching us how to
behave and think in ways that our culture finds acceptable.
• A significant part of this socialisation process is to provide answers to questions
like: What does it mean to be a woman? and What does it mean to be a man?
• Of course these questions are not always exactly the same but we are all familiar
with the kind of gender stereotypes so often reinforced by media representations.

12. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism
Activity 1
1. Try completing this chart of binary oppositions which gives some of the main
gender stereotypes. Can you extend the list?
Femininity Masculinity
Caring ?
Nurturing ?
? Rational
? Public, work-orientated
Sensitive ?
? Active
? Rough
Soft ?
2. What can you conclude about status and power from these lists?

13. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism The gender roles and representations have changed
rapidly in recent years, largely because feminists have
made a good deal of progress in eroding stereotypes
but some would argue they have been replaced by
different but equally disempowering stereotypes.
In the view of some feminists, the key site of struggle
has moved away from the attribution of low-value
qualities towards the visual presentation of the body.
In an influential book The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf
(1991) argued that images of ultra thin supermodels
and the perfect bodies glamorised by
advertising, fashion and the media in general are
indications of a patriarchal attack on women’s bodies.
Women’s bodies and sexuality have become
commodities and the consequences of this are mental
and physical illness, starvation diets and eating
disorders...

14. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism
Naomi Wolf says ...
"The more legal and material hindrances women have broken
through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of
female beauty have come to weigh upon us ... During the past
decade (1980s), women breached the power structure;
meanwhile, eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic
surgery became the fastest-growing specialty ... pornography
became the main media category, ahead of legitimate films and
records combined, and thirty-three thousand American women
told researchers that they would rather lose ten to fifteen
pounds than achieve any other goal...More women have more
money and power and scope and legal recognition than we
have ever had before; but in terms of how we feel about
ourselves physically, we may actually be worse off than our
unliberated grandmothers."

15. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism
Wolf's research suggests that there is a cultural backlash against feminism that
uses images of female beauty to keep women in their place. How many folks
have succumbed to the idea of the ugly feminist activist who is only a feminist
because she's too undesirable to get a man? That popular concept first showed
up on the scene to describe suffragettes lobbying for the vote.
Wolf suggests that, throughout the years, there have been forces in culture
that attempt to punish women who seek more control over their lives and their
environment.

16. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism Laura Mulvey conceived the term ‘male gaze’ to
emphasise the extent to which so much of our
media output assumes that the spectator is male or
constructs reality from a male point of view, from a
set of largely masculine assumptions.
Mulvey’s interest was particularly the cinema which
offered the perfect opportunity for the male viewer
to drool over the erotic exhibition of women’s
bodies on screen. Because female characters have
been invariably insignificant to the plot, female
viewers have also identified with the male
character, enjoying the spectacle of women
through his eyes.
This idea, that the media encourage women to see
themselves through the eyes of men, was also
developed by Angela McRobbie (1991) in relation
to girls’ magazines where ‘to achieve self
respect, the girl has to escape the bitchy, catty
atmosphere of female company and find a
boyfriend as quickly as possible …’

17. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism
However the landscape of gender representation in the media has changed
enormously over the last thirty years. Today men and women are portrayed as
working side by side in such settings as hospitals, schools and police stations.
In the cinema, roles for women have developed away from the victim roles of the
past and producers have realised that ‘kick-ass heroines do better business‘
(Gauntlett, 2002)
Uma Thurman
in the Kill Bill franchise
Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft

18. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism
Second Wave v. Post feminism
To acknowledge that recent changes have taken place is not necessarily to say
that the battle is over. Recent debates between second-wave feminists and
postfeminists have focused on the amount of progress that has been made.
Some second-wave feminists have viewed the developments described above
with a certain amount of cynicism and suspicion. They argue that many battles
for economic and workplace equality have still to be fought and won and that
strong representations of strong assertive women may be little more than
marketing ploys.
Postfeminists, on the other hand, may well take a very different position. They
might argue that if women know that femininity is a construct, then they can
play with its signs, symbols and identities from a position of power.

19. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism Issues in Feminism by Sheila
Ruth (2001)
‘Feminists value women, not in the
hypocritical fashion of centuries of
male-dominated cultures in which
women were valued for the work they
could produce, the price they could
bring, or the services they could render;
nor do feminists value women provided
they behave according to some
externally imposed set of requirements.
Rather we value women in and of
themselves, as ends in themselves, and
for themselves...

20. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism

21. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism

22. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism ... As feminists we understand that the
majority of beliefs and attitudes regarding
women both in our own culture and in most
other cultures are false or wrongheaded,
based on myth, ignorance, hate, and fear. It is
necessary to replace myth with reality and
ignorance with knowledge about women
created by women, first for women and finally
for all people.
As feminists we point out that for centuries we
have been denied our rights as citizens and as
human beings. The right to vote, the right to
earn a substantive living commensurate with
effort, the freedom to determine whether to
bear children- the denial of these and other
freedoms constitutes concrete instances of
oppression...

23. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism
...We recognize that women possess persistent strength and spirit in the face of such
oppression and are optimistic about the possibilities of change. Many of the
qualities developed by women in the face of denial are precious and unique.’

24. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism
Activity 2
1. Using your knowledge of the media, draw down examples of women
characters and personalities who illustrate the traditional ‘male gaze’
representations discussed above.
2. Now consider some examples of how modern representations in the media
have run counter to these and ‘changed the landscape’.

25. Theoretical Perspectives -
Feminism
Provide a Feminist
reading of this text
which is the cover of
The Observer Music
Monthly magazine from
February 1994