Michelle's Opening Blog

1950s- Present: Gender Roles

            Gender role plays a big role in our society today. From the 1950s to present day, the roles of men and women changed tremendously. In the early decades, men always are allowed and have the first priority over everything including women. The intimacy between men and women have evolved throughout the decades from closed relationships to a public and opened one. How did that exactly changed? There are many factors that contributed to the transformation of gender roles. Factors such as the introduction of media usage greatly influenced the lives of human beings. In our group blog, we will explain in detail of the specific factors inside media that can and did already affect the gender roles.

            In our group, we’ve decided to focus on the progression of gender role in periods from 1950s to present. In doing so, we selected a focal point on several factors that encouraged and portrayed the role of men and women. In particular, women will be our main focus point; however we will also discuss the transformation of men.  To get more depth of the issue, we selected several categories to explain the process of gender change. We selected television shows, films, advertisements and video games to further explain the progression. Everyone in our group will focus on one of these factors and as for me; I am going to further research the advertisements that portray the progression of both men and women.

            In the early 1900s, women were usually indoors and had the role of housewives who takes care of everything inside the household. However, when World War II occurred in 1938, women’s role shifted a little from bring themselves into the work field. Thousands of men were drafted into the military and left the work field empty; women took the role as head of the house and started working in factories, shops, and stores in order to maintain functioning of a household. After the World War II, society got more stable and men’s return to home replaced the jobs of many women. Even though some women remained in the work field, many were still expected to be good house wives. These images were usually visualized through the use of media. Media is a powerful source ever since technology was introduced. In the 1900s, the increase usage of technology forces media to become more powerful and influential. One type of media source that become efficient in the 1900s were advertisements. Advertisements were not only images and words printed or shown on television, instead they are like magnets that attract audiences into the product or message producers are trying to convey. 

The usages of media have greatly impacted the lives of Americans in the United States since the early 1950s.  Advertisements as one of the essential source of media have become more productive in the society. Many owners of businesses started using advertisements to introduce their product and try to attract more consumers to demand the supplies. As soon as the United States gains peace from war and other struggles, many industries begin to produce necessities for households.  Many home appliances and food industries uses female to persuade audiences to consume their product. In doing so, I believe the store owners uses women to reflect upon their gender role in this era. The advertisements suggested and proves women to be housewife and child bearing materials. Also, some other advertisements also portray the role of men, whereas little boys were the attraction when being placed in the same portrait as their female siblings. These advertisements suggested that men usually were the head of the society where they are always considered to have the first priority over women. The intimacy between men and women in the early 1900s from advertisements depicts the gap between them from first men then women.

However, media slowly progresses the role of women as time runs. In the mid 1990s, women begin to wear little less than before. Many started to wear less covering clothing; making them more attractive to men. Unlike those women of the 1950s, women in the future decade became more ambitious towards everything such as men and money. Women were attractions for men. From there to now, women become the main interest. It is no longer about the products industries try to sell; instead they are using women’s seductiveness to persuade and blind audiences, men mainly, to consume the product. As each decade moves on, I am hoping to analyze that the advertisement field will begin to use less clothing wore women to advertise their products.

In the future blog post, I will explain in depth of several advertisements that portrays the gender role progressions in every decade from 1950s to present in media. In this blog project, I am hoping to further investigate the different types of advertisements that portray the transformation of gender roles.