If sexist beer advertisements were a sign of the decline and fall of America, our cities would have been reduced to rubble years ago. Fortunately, there is enough else going right in the country that predictions of our demise are probably premature. But here’s one recent ad that I couldn’t let pass: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIutgtzwhAc
So women love high heels, and men love beer. That such a cliché could still be considered funny indicates how far we have to go.
But there are subtler forms of typecasting by gender that people perpetuate in everyday conversation. The following are sentiments that I’ve heard expressed, even by people I consider egalitarian-minded:
- Women are neat/men don’t clean or care about appearance.
- Women and girls express aggression verbally/men and boys express aggression physically.
- Women like talking about feelings/men don’t know how to express feelings.
- Women are chatty/men don’t like to talk.
- Women need someone to take care of/men are independent and not good caretakers.
- Women like to shop/men hate shopping.
- Women are better at multitasking but can’t finish tasks/men can’t multitask but finish the job.
- Women are sensitive/men are insensitive.
- Women are good listeners/men are self-centered and don’t listen.
Are these just harmless observations about the differences between women and men? Not likely. The “innocent stereotypes” that we hear daily in our culture affect our thinking and therefore behavior. For example, there is now a substantial body of research documenting that women perform worse than men on tests when participants are led to believe that the results will differ by gender. In contrast, women and men perform equally well when the participants are told before the test that the genders typically perform equally well.
I suspect the same holds true for women and men regarding expressing feelings or cleaning or shopping. People behave according to the cultural expectations regarding each of these characteristics. (Even so, among the people I know, gender is a poor predictor in these areas.) When sexist cultural stereotypes go unchallenged, it reinforces the rigid gender roles that keep both women and men from reaching their potential.
As Cynthia noted in her last post, we can start to break down these roles by becoming more aware of our own presumptions about gender. And then we can address those when we hear them.
When enough of us do, the beer advertisers who depict men as boobs and women as bimbos will wake up one day to find they’ve lost their audience.
Steve
