2. EQ: To what extent does the media encourage gender-specific roles?

3. Leave it to Beaver Describe the family dynamic.
How are the children (Beaver and Wally) depicted?
How are women depicted? (ex. Mrs. Cleaver)
How are men depicted? (ex. Mr. Cleaver)

4. Role of middle class women
Popular culture glorified marriage and parenthood
Women = “helpmates” to husbands & full time mothers
Working women were called “a menace” (Esquire)
Ideal wife was “married at 16, raised 4 children, cooked and sewed, headed the PTA and exercised to keep her figure” (Life)

5. Gender roles enforced by education
Girls learned typing and cooking
Boys - carpentry & business
Women discouraged to pursue higher ed.
2/3 of college women failed to get a degree

6. Gender roles enforced by toys
Tiny Tears

7. Gender roles enforced by TV shows
Shows portrayed a perfect family life
Leave it to Beaver
I Love Lucy

8. Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique
“In the 1950s, experts told women their role was to seek fulfillment as wives and mothers. Over and over women heard that they could desire no greater destiny than to glorify their own femininity. They were taught to pity the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women who wanted to be poets or physicists or presidents. They learned that truly feminine women do not want careers, higher education, or political rights…If a woman had a problem in the 1950s, she knew something was wrong with her marriage, or with herself. Other women were satisfied with their lives…What kind of woman was she if she did not feel this mysterious fulfillment waxing the kitchen floor.”

9. Discussion Qs:
Does the media today depict gender-specific roles? Examples?
Are gender roles vastly different from the 1950s? How?
Should children be raised to accept these gender roles?