Miss Representation: Women in Politics
One profession where men largely outnumber women is in politics. It seems that in a world where women outnumber men, that should be the opposite. However, there are many reasons why women are outnumbered. No, it is not because they aren't qualified or that they are worse than their male opponents. It is because of the way the media has portrayed women in leadership roles.
In Miss Representation, people expose how degrading media can be on women. It seems largely possible that the media would degrade celebrities but it never crossed my mind that the media would degrade women who are leaders. The women's job is to be professional and to better our country just like the men around them, but the media finds a way to criticize their appearance. The media does not criticize men in politics for their looks.
This is part of the reason for the lack of women leadership. Women are portrayed as objects and not as independent thinkers. Because of the way media portrays women for their looks and not their minds, men and women alike do not think that they should govern our country. Another reason is that when women do make it into political roles, the media degrades their appearance. We often don't hear about their policies or other decisions that they are making because the media chooses to focus on other aspects of them. Young women don't see a good representation of women in politics. They often see a women degraded. Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, and Sarah Palin are a few names of women who have made it to high offices and had to work harder than anyone there to prove that they were worthy of that position. Each of them were subjects of abuse by the media for their looks.
In Miss Representation, people expose how degrading media can be on women. It seems largely possible that the media would degrade celebrities but it never crossed my mind that the media would degrade women who are leaders. The women's job is to be professional and to better our country just like the men around them, but the media finds a way to criticize their appearance. The media does not criticize men in politics for their looks.This is part of the reason for the lack of women leadership. Women are portrayed as objects and not as independent thinkers. Because of the way media portrays women for their looks and not their minds, men and women alike do not think that they should govern our country. Another reason is that when women do make it into political roles, the media degrades their appearance. We often don't hear about their policies or other decisions that they are making because the media chooses to focus on other aspects of them. Young women don't see a good representation of women in politics. They often see a women degraded. Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, and Sarah Palin are a few names of women who have made it to high offices and had to work harder than anyone there to prove that they were worthy of that position. Each of them were subjects of abuse by the media for their looks.
I think it's really interesting how women in the United States are more underrepresented than women in other foreign countries. There have even been women presidents in other nations, while in the United States, we've only had a few female candidates run for president in the last couple of presidential elections. We've had 45 male presidents and not a single female president. I remember someone saying during the presidential election in 2016 when Hillary was running, "Is our country truly ready to have a female president?" Now that I think about this, it really highlights how skewed our nation is in terms of gender balance, and how media may be affecting this trend in politics, almost dehumanizing a woman's power and intelligence.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you that in politics women are degraded based on how they look and the policies that they aren’t pushing for are not the spotlight in their campaign. The question I pose for you is, how do you think we can make a change to push for less of this? What do we need to do with the younger generation to make sure they don’t think from a young age that women are just objects? The most important thing is to make sure that the kids in the next generation will not think like adults do now.
ReplyDelete