Paper Example on Gender Roles in American Society: A Preconceived Notion

The American society has a set of ideas, concepts, perceptions concerning the gender role which often specify the range of behaviors and attitudes viewed generally appropriate, acceptable and desirable for each perceived sex. A gender stereotype is dominantly a preconceived notion utilized in the traditional society to limit the roles and responsibility on individuals, whether male or female in the society. Through specifying and dictating individuals' social responsibility regardless of ability, intelligence or strength, gender stereotype massively deters both men and women from maximizing their potential (Bauschke & Klambauer 2018). It is often the simplistic generalization of the uniqueness in male and female by attributing roles of the ground of biological characteristics like anatomy, sexual hormones such as estrogen and testosterone preconceived to determine contributors like aggressiveness in male and moody feeling in females. However, the repressive gender stereotype institution is adamantly propelled by the male dominants to discriminate women ascribing then inferior socio-cultural role to remain submissive to men (Parker & Pollock 2013). Moreover, gender stereotype has constantly spread across all socio-cultural, economic, political and religious institution. For instance, in fine art and literature, women have significantly been discriminated and prejudiced with their substantial works disputed as too feminine and unrecognized in the professional artwork. Nevertheless, despite the great marginalization throughout the centuries, women have continued to struggle to eradicate the immense marginalization and transcend beyond the socio-cultural stereotype and prejudice. Therefore, the investigation focuses on critical evaluation and analysis of gender role and stereotyping in fine art and literature.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Women have constantly participated and involved in the art world ranging from artistic expressions, patrons, sources of inspirations and historical critics. They have continued to play a significant role in the integration of the art institution (De Villiers 2017). Despite the complexity of the industry, which requires creative and critical thinking to facilitate unique fine art, the female gender has immeasurably propel the art industry into higher level throughout the century. Ranging from Diemudus, Claricia, Guda, Ende, Hildegard of Bingen to Herrad of Landsberg, women have always played a great role in facilitating artwork like their counterpart, the male. They have contributed to the establishment of manuscripts, embroideries, illuminations, and carved capitals that had significant influence during the medieval period (Lewis et al. 2006). Moreover, during the Renaissance period, influential women such as Fede Galizia, Marietta Rubust and Sofonisba Castigiglione among others developed the humanism art philosophy which affirmed the importance of human dignity raising the status of women in the society. Women engaged in musical, visual and literary art highlighting the socio-cultural and conventional matters that impacted the medieval society. Although women greatly influence the literary industry with vast artwork alongside their talented counterparts, the male, they were significantly discriminated and prejudice deterring them from maximizing their artwork potential. For instance, during the 19th century, despite being allowed to participate in artwork and literary depiction, women were prevented from professional artwork or art education as the male counterpart (Carnevale et al. 2018). Their works were often reduced to domestic artwork and craft pieces rather than fine art in both fabric and textile art.

Gender representation in art and literature has consistently promoted inequality. Intellectual perception of femininity and masculinity in the society has largely transformed the visual art since antiquity. Women have consistently occupied the inferior position as men's subordinates rather than equals (Bauschke & Klambauer 2018). Before the Aristotelian approach in art and literature, women were considered an imperfect being that could not transmit perfection required in fine professional art. They only occupied the inferior and unproductive positions in the industry deterring them from portraying their potential. Women were only viewed as a primary source of artistic creativity to be exploited by men but lack the ability to thrive beyond the social structural customs. In the 20th century, the feminine was not only bared from achieving educational intelligence but deterred from possessing superior abilities as compared to men. From domestic violence, social discernment and refinement, they were considered as visionary goddess unconscious to a critical creative fine art (Relf et al. 2019). Throughout the artistic history, women's acquired talents and unique gifts were constantly overlooked and undervalued due to the dominant importance that gender role played in American society. Women were maligned by unending marginalization and criticism and aggressive jabs of a dysfunctional society. From spiteful looks to establishing rigid social structures, the male-dominated society ensured that women's progress in art and literature was adamantly limited. They were only utilized as muses that provided inspiration for the male artists (Rhys & Plath 1992). Although traditional women struggle in influencing art for centuries, their role has been reduced to a simply penetrating in male artists to instill a renewed sense of passion, fervency, and enthusiasm to create better work. Seemingly it reduced women to sex object utilized to satisfy men and help them relax.

Moreover, women were limited from accessing adequate artistic education required to propel professional fine art. The academic institutions in Europe that offered prompt education significantly discriminated and marginalized women. For instance, until the period for the French Revolution, the powerful and influential academy in Paris that had 450 students only admitted 15 female artists, who were either daughters or wives of the male members. Later in the 18th century, the institution resolves to not admitting women. Despite being the pinnacle of a painting of the period encompassing large scale compositions that portrayed mythical and historical situations, women were consequently licked out from such exhibitions. Similarly, women have been discriminated in the contemporary fine art industry (Lewis et al. 2006). According to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, almost 51% of women participate in visual arts but exhibitions and gallery representation, only a few get the privilege of portraying their artistic talents as compared to their male counterparts who dominate the market irrespective of the quality of their work. The women populace depicts a less optimistic story. For instance, in London, 78% of the galleries exhibition depicts more men than women with only 5% portraying a substantial gender balance between men and women. Female artists and curators continue to experience unique setbacks, from the subjects they expose during their work which have often been ridiculed as too feminine, emotional and imperfect (Relf et al. 2019). As Tate Modern director Frances Morris explores, the art industry has adamantly failed to empower, promote and support women's career in the industry resulting in massive and undocumented discrimination, prejudice and marginalization which creates a great gap between male progress and female progress. Therefore, rather than ensuring the elevation of every individual irrespective of gender, background or sexual orientation, gender stereotype has significantly created an imbalance in the industry for centuries disadvantaging women who have been limited from accessing vital resources to transcend and expand to higher levels.

Nevertheless, the discrimination of women constantly sparked resistance and industrial disobedience as many women struggled to change their deplorable situation and marginalization that the male-dominated society subjected them in. the inferiority complex that women were associated to became a tool to prejudice and harass women in the society (Carnevale et al. 2018). Irrespective of their artistic creativity and talents, women were simply considered as beguiling seductress, visionary goddesses, inspirational muses and a child-bearing being with inadequate logical or cognitive ability to comprehend the sophisticated trends of artistic industry, in her book, Women Artists and the Surrealists Movement, Whitney Chadwick, exposes the multidimensional struggle of women as they strive to eradicate the preconceived notion that dominated the 20th century society that women were adamantly inferior, uncreative and untalented as the male counterparts (Chadwick 1985). As a phenomenon advocate of the surrealist movement, she exposed how society predicated the woman as an object of male definition and catalyst to male creativity without any chance for independent creative identity. She explores hos surrealist movement offered women a chance to interact with the art world that appreciates creativity and symbiotic coexistence between women's liberation and the socio-cultural imposed expectation (Chadwick 1985). To transcend from the rigid autocratic social structure, the surrealist movement attracted women from across the globe to rebelliously advocate against inferiority complex in the industry. Beautiful, young and rebellious, the surrealist movement that encompassed influential figures like Maar, Eileen Agar, Valentine Penrose, Emmy Bridgewater, Alice Rahon (Paalen) from France, Leonora Carrington and Ithell Colquhoun, who became the embodiment for interior women's creative imagination (Bauschke & Klambauer 2018). They strive to redefine the place of women in the art and literature industry by harshly criticizing the muse notion portrayed and propelled by men. Despite being branded rebellious, the surrealist women's struggle enabled them to become actual artists rather than muses whose entire being embodied sexual inspiration for men (Helland 2018). Therefore, with the elevation of the surrealist movement, Chadwick affirms that women got a voice to advocate for their liberation from the confinement of male-dominated and repressive society.

Additionally, in Old Mistress: Women, Art and Ideology, Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock explores how the construction of feminine institutions has become historical with women socially, economically and ideologically occupy specific influential positions within the bourgeois and patriarchal society. They expose how despite the adamant struggle among women, other feminine structures and figures encourage the exploitation of women in the art industry. They build up a fundamentally new examination of the relations between women, workmanship and belief system as they dissect the lives and, similarly essential, crafted by women in both the fine and enriching expressions from the late medieval times until the women's art movement of the 1970s (Parker & Pollock 2013). Griselda Pollock, this new version of a really noteworthy book offers extreme racial discrimination to women-free Art History.

Conclusion

Parker and Pollock's evaluate of Art History's sexism prompts extended, comprehensive readings of the craft of the past. They exhibit how the changing chronicled social substances of sexual orientation relations and ladies specialists' interpretation of gendered conditions into their works give keys to novel understandings of why we may examine the specialty of the past. They further demonstrate how such information empowers us to comprehend workmanship by contemporary artists who are women and can add to the evolving self-ob...