Gender
equality has been one of main debatable issues around the world. One of the
factors that satires the gender inequality is political cartoons. I have
been looking through variety of political cartons, and I noticed that some
of them depict
how kids are taught about wrong gender roles. This
causes these kids to have limited thoughts about gender and hence have lower or
higher self-esteem depending on their gender. It can be seen in most cartoons
that boys have more advantages then the girls as they live throughout their
lives, and depict male-oriented society.
Kids
are continually taught that
boys have more authority and capability in achieving significant goals while
girls are told that they have no power to be
successful in doing the same stuff. The political cartoon on the left includes this
information. In the text bubble, the adults (not shown) start off the advices
in same words. They say “You can be anything you want to be when you grow up”.
But do they really mean ANYTHING (not something insane, but things that works
in reality)? No. The two kids are in fact told two distinctively opposite
meanings.
The boy is told that he can be engineer, firefighter,
astronaut, pilot, and dot dot dot. The list of jobs shows how males are
presented with variety of occupation in the future, while the punctuation
(dot-dot-dot) suggests there are infinite options for the boy. For the girls,
on the other hand, is advised that she can become blonde, brunette, and
dot-dot-dot. Brunette and blonde are basically descriptions of women with
blonde and brown colored hairs. They are not jobs but are just obvious
characteristics of women. This is saying indirectly that women basically will
become some kind of human, but nothing more than or beyond that. The
dot-dot-dot simply means “the other things that are similar to blonde and
brunette” (like blue or black hair). This shows how women are not expected to have
jobs, and are treated unfairly in academic and occupation fields. Most of you probably
have heard blonde or brunette jokes (since even I did numerous of times), and
in these jokes the women are illustrated very negatively.
Even before looking at the text though, you can guess the
gender representation held in this carton by looking at the kids’ facial
expressions. The boy is smiling and looks full of hope. Meanwhile, the girl is absence
of expression, looking shocked about what she heard about her future.
These teachings lead the kids to behave in
ways that women would have low self-esteem while men have high pride. The
cartoon on the right (drawn by the same artist of above cartoon) shows the
opposite reactions when a married couple divorces. The man says “there’s
something wrong with her”, blaming all faults all the women. We don’t know if
it is actually the wife’s fault or not, but we can see that he is permitted to
get away from the responsibility because he was taught that way since young
age. Most people would think he is selfish, but I think we cannot criticize his
personality because it is not his fault that he is half-forced to have a stereotypical
perspective. In contrast, the woman is willing to take the whole blame as she
is saying “something is wrong with me”. She is not saying this because she is
too nice or stupid, but she is just used to and adapt to these environments
where men are mostly right while women aren't. Interestingly, all words in the
text are exactly the same except the last word, which changes the whole meaning.
The wrong teaching from young age is leading them to behave in ways they shouldn't do, and this is making males more and more powerful, while women are weaker. |
| 3rd Step |
After the kids learn about wrong gender roles and see
how they react to a problem depending on their genders, the men and women hence
becomes authoritative and dependent respectfully. As the men gain more power
and realize they have higher status then women, they then decide to become authoritative.
For the women on the other hand, they become more and more dependent on the men
as they lose confidence about themselves. This is shown in the cartoon on the
left (drawn by the same person of the other two). The man is illustrated as
taking responsibility to protect their women. I thought it is interesting how the
artist used two contrasting objects to depict the characteristics of two
genders; the gun represents masculinity, violence, and power, while the
handkerchief suggest that females are emotional, weak, and tender.
I found that there are some techniques used commonly
in all three political cartoons. Juxtaposition is used as the cartoons compare
and contrast the males and females side by side to show how each genders are
represented throughout different ages. I like how the artist used sardonic tone
in all three to mock the misleading gender teachings held in modern society. The
usage of exaggeration is also used to strengthen the sarcastic view, as the characteristics
of the people are exaggerated (such as sharp long noses and thin necks).
The whole process I explained above can be seen as a butterfly
effect: kids learning wrong information starts to base everything on their
gender, and later having stereotypes as they accept their faith and wrong views
held in society. These people hence tell their children the false gender roles,
forming a whole vicious cycle again. Although many people are shouting out and
warning about the gender inequality, there have not been much huge difference
from now compared to the past. Yes it is true that women got more rights as
human, but they are far from reaching fairness. The first step toward getting
away from genderism and forming equality, I believe, is to fix the gender
education kids access to. The future generations are the most possible factors
who could change the gender discrimination.
