Sue Society

Girls are still fulfilling gender roles. They are conforming to the ideal stereotypical female. In today’s society most people like to think that society overall has changed, that has become more progressive. Society has slowly changed in some ways like how segregation between African Americans and Caucasians is no longer acceptable. It does not mean that prejudice and discrimination still do not exist but it means that society is evolving as whole. Gender roles and schemas have changed quite a bit over the years but not as significantly as many people believe. Women in the 1950’s were to be the stereotypical housewives and stay at home moms. Slowly women have entered more into the work force but many people still hold certain schemas subconsciously in the back of their mind. Babe Didrikson was one women athlete that helped to change the ideals of women and how they are view in sport. Babe was an all around athlete that competed in golf, basketball and track and field from around the 1930’s to the 1950’s. She challenged the ideal of the greatest athletes in world as men. Many people saw her as un-lady like and saw her threatened “the old male supremacy” (Women and Sport in the United States 16). She did not embody what most people viewed as a male.

Today girls are still pushed into certain gender roles. They are seen as trying to look pretty, not be very intelligent, and have nurturing and less power jobs. The media pushes these images and ideals onto children today. In the blog Title IX, there was an article describing how there is not gender equity in geography bees. It says how more men are winning geography bees. The author Kris speculated in the article Gender equity and geography bees, that girls grades fourth through eight, “ are ingesting different messages about what it means to be a girl, when being smart is not as highly prized as being pretty, when beating boys might not be as socially acceptable”. I think this very much true today. Society still sees women as sexual objects and as wives rather than human beings that are just as capable as men in basically every aspect of human life. The article states that a North Dakota professor is suing the National Geographic Bee for not making the contests equitable. I don’t know that is the fault of the contests or the organization but rather society’s fault in gender. Society still has underlying gender schemas of the roles that men and women perform so that the National Geographic Bee cannot be at fault, so sue society.