Project 4

The purpose of our project is to investigate our community's opinion on the oppression of women. We wanted to gather results on our community's experiences with sexism. Throughout this project, our group explored various topics related to the oppression of women/sexism. We took up the definition of Oppression as defined by Marion Young in Five Faces of Oppression, that it is the result of a 'few people’s decisions' that create 'unquestioned norms and habits' that are harmful to a certain part of the population (Young, 1). Each author and publication we reviewed inspired the different aspects our project focused on. Rafia Zakaria explained the division that occurs within feminism among the women who write about it and the women who live it (Zakaria). After analyzing Zakaria’s writings, we hoped to see how her findings were reflected in our survey. Ariana Bell and Jaana Juvonen examined the gender discrimination in young ages, causing sexism in an environment that was intended to feel safe. After reading the article, Bell and Juvonen state, "Girls who experienced school‐based gender discrimination by an adult in seventh grade reported higher levels of perceived school unfairness in eighth grade” (1). Many women that were treated unfairly when they were young making them feel as if they were not as equal to men. Scholars also report the economic differences between genders. Binder et al. discusses how women in graduate school are not granted as much money as men (Binder et al, 106). Women all around the world are being kept from the money they earned.

Our research is a very important topic. There are many people in American society today who still deny the existence of sexism despite copious amounts of contradictory evidence that prove the existence of sexism. Our group understands the importance of sexism, and we wanted to determine how our community also feels about this topic. The questions asked in our survey prompted readers for their opinions on societal norms, the prevalence of sexism, and other numerous topics relating to the oppression of women.

The members of our group spent many hours analyzing and reviewing scholarly articles pertaining to the oppression of women. We found our sources through Galileo, Google Books, and Google scholar. The scholarly material we reviewed inspired us to create a survey to measure our communities' opinions. The survey consisted of forty-nine questions that prompted the respondents for their opinions about our topic. Our group used different forms of social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat to distribute our survey. We also texted our family and friends who did not have these social media platforms. Our group also posted a link in the College app to help further our research. After IRB approval, our group started by getting participants to take our survey. Next, we waited a week for our survey results to come in. Sixty people took our survey, and Qualtrics guarantees that participants remain anonymous and results are confidential. All the people that took our survey are above the age of 18 and US citizens. Participants had the option to enter their name if they wished, and they could also withdraw their consent at the end of the survey. We used the Qualtrics system to look over the results of our study.

Of the sixty respondents who took our survey, 71.3% of our respondents identified as female, 26.7% identified as male, and 1.7% identified as non-binary. The majority in this category may be more likely to acknowledge that sexism does exist and may overestimate the prevalence of sexism. Our respondents consisted mainly of those that identified as white/Caucasian at a rate of 76.62%, followed by 8.33% Hispanic/Latino, 6.67% identified as Black/African American, 3.33% identified as Asian, another 3.33% identified as a different identity, and finally 1.67% identified as Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander. The majority of our respondents identified as heterosexual at 68.33%, the second highest demographic was bisexuals at 25%, followed by 3.33% who identified as pansexual, 1.67% identified as gay, and finally another 1.67% identified as asexual. The overwhelming majority of our respondents were between the ages of 18-24 at a rate of 83.33%. 6.67% were 45-54 years old, followed by 3.33% for those 24-34, 3.33% as well for those aged 35-44, 1.67% for those aged 55-64, and another 1.67% for those aged 65-74. At 43.33%, most of the participants had completed some college but did not obtain a degree, 28.33% had only a High School diploma or GED, 8.33% had a bachelor’s degree, 6.67% had not obtained their high school diploma, 5% had an associate degree, another 5% had a master’s degree, and finally 3.33% had a doctorate.

In addition to the general sexism that women must endure, there is also evidence of racism among the oppression of women. Several scholars have reported on the racial oppressions that women endure. Gopal Singh wrote an article describing various aspects that play a role in maternal mortality rates, such as sociodemographic factors, urban versus rural living, racial and ethnic boundaries, and he also observed many other aspects. In “Trends and Social Inequalities in Maternal Mortality in the United States, 1969-2018”, he reports that over the past five decades the maternal mortality rates for black women have remained significantly higher than those of white women (Singh, 32). The results that Singh found were very devastating, and these results may have been surprising to some people. The maternal mortality rate is a very important issue, and it plays a major role in the healthcare field today. Another scholar, Meeta Jha reports in her book, The Global Beauty Industry: Colorism, Racism, and the National Body, the way society glorifies women with Eurocentric traits, as opposed to women who have features that are shared among other women of color (Jha, 3). The way that society views women of color versus white women will certainly play a role in how healthcare workers treat these women. In our survey, we wanted to determine if our community recognized the disparities that exist in the healthcare field. Question 22 of our survey asks participants, “Do you think there is a difference in the way healthcare professionals treat women of color and white women?”. 66.66% of our participants responded that there is a difference in the way healthcare professionals treat women of color and white women. The results show the majority of our community acknowledges the racial disparities that exist within our society.

The wage gap is one of the most pressing issues that threatens the lives of millions of women worldwide. Money is one of the most important aspects of society, so why is the wage gap still prevalent in society today? So why are we paying women less than they are paying men? The journal “Turnover or Turnaway? Competing Risks Analysis of Male and Female IT Professionals’ Job Mobility and Relative Pay Gap” by Damien Joseph and Sandra A. Slaughter talks about how women and men in IT jobs are paid differently. The article explains, “Hypothesis 2C states that the larger the relative pay gap, the higher the likelihood that IT males will turn away-within a firm than turn away-between. The test of equality of relative pay gap coefficients supports'' (Joseph and Sandra,156). This article demonstrates that IT jobs are more likely to hire men than women, and when they do hire women, they are getting paid less than men. After reading the article, our group concludes that the wage gap is something that deserves much more attention because it is such a pressing issue. In question 40 in our survey, many people strongly agree that there is women inequality going on in today's society. Women all around the United States must pay an absurd amount of money compared to men. When having to pay for medical bills the hospital/government looks at the type of salary you bring. Studies have shown that women that bring in the same salary as men are paying more for their medical bills. In an article by Alina Salganicoff states, “Medicare beneficiaries ages 65 and older, women have lower median per capita income than men ($21,853 compared to $27,480)” (Salganicoff, 45). In question 26 of our survey, only 38% of people said that all genders should receive equal pay. These percentages were surprising to me because I expected more people to support equal pay for all genders.

Another focus of our group research project was to identify the oppression of women in job opportunities in the community. In the journal “Economic Development and Women’s Labor Force Participation in India,” authors Rahul Lahoti and Hema Swaminathan describe the Labor Force Participation Rates (LFPR), which is a measure of an economy’s active workforce. The formula of LFPR is to find the sum of all workers who are employed or actively seeking employment, divided by the total civilian working-age population. Lahoti and Hema state, “Women’s LFPR in India has experienced a steady decline over the years of 1983-2012” (Lahoti and Hema, 173). This information emphasizes that not only women in America are struggling with finding jobs due to the oppression of women but women all over the world are struggling. The information provided is significant to the oppression of women because it explains the disparities in job opportunities. Many women must work to provide for their family and it is hard to do so when women are treated differently due to their gender. In recent years, the presence of women in the workforce has declined, and the journal also reports on this. Isis Gaddis and Stephan Klasen also wrote about women in the workforce in their academic journal called “Academic Development, Structural Change and Women’s Labor Force Participation.” Isis and Klasen go into great detail about women in the workforce, their shortage of education, and other difficulties. They state, “Due to low levels of female education and the incompatibility of wage work with childcare as well as sociocultural restrictions on female employment outside of the home, women are not able to benefit from the emerging opportunities in industry” (Gaddis and Klasen, 643). In this journal, Isis has many statistics demonstrating why there is a decline in the women labor workforce participation rates. When respondents in our survey were asked “Have you ever felt that you were out of place because of your gender identity.” 70% of respondents said they felt like they were out of place due to their gender identity. This surprises me because I believe that everyone should feel comfortable wherever they are. No one should be treated differently due to their gender. This goes to show there is a problem with gender discrimination in today's society.

All these aspects of the oppression of women which marginalize and disempower women, are reinforced and upheld by their representation, or lack thereof, in audiovisual media. Women are vastly underrepresented on screen in comparison to their male counterparts, as a study conducted by Stacey L. Smith in “Gender Roles and Occupations” found that out of 5,839 speaking characters in family films, only 28.3% were women (Smith, 3). This demonstrates what Julia T. Wood points out in her article “Gendered Media, "That underrepresentation is used to 'distort reality' and 'tempts us to believe that there really are more men than women'"(Wood, 31). When women are represented, they tend to be portrayed as weak or submissive as well, with men occupying roles of importance and authority. Women are relegated to the sidelines, portraying know-nothing housewives or ditzy girlfriends, and most commonly, objects of male desire (Wood, 31-36). These representations serve to uphold the image of women as the “other” gender, both less incapable and competent than men, and thus unworthy of equality. Women are not only less present in popular media, but their characterizations hinder their ability to represent themselves within the world by encouraging harmful stereotypes. In question 58, 79% of our respondents said that they felt women are represented in a sexist way by the media, and, in question 52, 45% said they had recognized sexism in their media most of the time. This awareness suggests that there is indeed a problem in how women are presented in media.

The oppression of women is a very important topic that demands society’s full attention, and our project highlights some aspects that encapsulate this issue. Carol Ronai states, “Sexual domination is not a static ‘thing’ found at one point in time or at one place, but rather it has a history and is webbed across many places in time and space” (Ronai, 5). Ronai’s book demonstrates the complex history that sexism has in our society, and sexism is intertwined with the foundations of our society. 85% of our survey respondents agreed that sexism is prevalent in our society today (Question 15). Many studies show that women are sexualized every day. Xiao and Wang report, “Objectified women are seen to have less humanity, warmth, and competence. Thus, when women are objectified, they are also oppressed” (Xiao and Wang, 554). Jonathan Clifton and Karen Jones wrote an article on how many women are affected by sexism. After reading this article, Jones and Clifton state “Women inhabit restricted domestic roles and are the ‘weaker sex’” (Clifton and Jones, 8). Various women around the world feel restricted, and unable to fulfill their role as a woman. In question 33, respondents were asked “Women have a responsibility to take care of the household duties.” 20% of respondents agreed that women have household duties, or as I said “domestic roles."

In conclusion, our research demonstrated that our community does acknowledge the oppression of women as a serious issue. As we were reviewing the responses of the survey in Qualtrics, we found that the majority of our respondents agree that sexism still exists in our society today. The oppression of women in our society is a very important issue that deserves much more recognition because it affects billions of people daily. The results of our survey prove to be very promising, but there is still much room for improvement in our society and community. There is still an alarming number of people who do not view sexism as an important topic or a relevant part of society.

The main limitation of our research was the way we distributed our survey. We had a limited time to distribute our survey due to delays from the Institutional Review Board Process. We had initially planned to distribute our survey through paper flyers around campus, on our school’s universal platform (D2L), and through email in addition to the distribution methods we actually used. All of these methods would have allowed for us to have a much larger sample size and possibly a more diverse sample size. Because many of our respondents likely accessed the survey through Social Media Platforms, they are more likely to be younger individuals. We wish we would have had a clearer purpose for our project upon starting the project. We wish we would have focused more on how classism and socioeconomic status related to the oppression of women. In addition to these considerations, we also wish that our research could have highlighted the wage gap more than it did. Overall, our project did a good job at implementing scholarly sources to gather our community's opinion on the oppression of women and their experiences with sexism. Our group’s topic is extremely relevant to our society today, and we hope that the community and the world, in general, will soon understand the true scope of this issue.

Bell, A.; Juvonen, J. "Gender Discrimination, Perceived School Unfairness, Depressive Symptoms, and Sleep Duration Among Middle School Girls." Child Development, [s. l.], vol. 91, no. 6, 2020, pp. 1865–1876. DOI 10.1111/cdev.13388.https://search-ebscohost-com.proxygsu-bru1.galileo.usg.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=pbh&AN=146973568&site=eds-live&scope=site. Accessed 16 Nov 2021.

Binder, Melissa, et al. “Same Work, Different Pay? Evidence from a US Public University.” Feminist Economics, vol. 16, no. 4, 2010, pp. 105–135. doi:10.1080/13545701.2010.530605.

Dye, April K. "Why does everyone think I hate men? the stigma of feminism and developing a feminist identity." Diss. Miami University, 2005, pp. 9. https://etd.ohiolink.edu/apexprod/rws_etd/send_file/send?accession=miami1133535707&disposition=inline. pp. 9.

Gaddis, I.; Klasen, S. Economic development, structural change, and women’s labor force participation: Journal of Population Economics, [s. l.], vol. 27, no. 3, 2014, pp. 639–681. DOI 10.1007/s00148-013-0488-2. https://search-ebscohost-com.proxygsu-bru1.galileo.usg.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=bth&AN=95711806&site=eds-live&scope=site. Accessed 6 Dec. 2021.

Jones, K.; Clifton, J. "Rendering sexism invisible in workplace narratives. A narrative analysis of female entrepreneurs’ stories of not being talked to by men." Gender, Work & Organization, [s. l.], vol. 25, no. 5, 2018, pp. 557–574. DOI 10.1111/gwao.12216. https://search-ebscohost-com.proxygsu-bru1.galileo.usg.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib& b=lgs&AN=131798056&site=eds-live&scope=site.

Joseph, Damien, et al. "Turnover or Turnaway? Competing Risks Analysis of Male and Female It Professionals’ Job Mobility and Relative Pay Gap.” Information Systems Research, vol. 26, no. 1, 2015, pp. 145–164. doi:10.1287/isre.2014.0558.

Lahoti, R.; Swaminathan, H. "Economic Development and Women’s Labor Force Participation in India." Feminist Economics, [s. l.], vol. 22, no. 2, 2016, pp. 168–195. DOI 10.1080/13545701.2015.1066022. https://search-ebscohost-com.proxygsu-bru1.galileo.usg.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=bth&AN=113744298&site=eds-live&scope=site.

Meeta, Rani Jha. “Introduction.” The Global Beauty Industry : Colorism, Racism, and the National Body. Routledge, 2015, pp. 1-6. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Global_Beauty_Industry/7fWPCgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0.

Ronai, Carol R., Zsembik, B., and Feagin, J.R. Everyday Sexism in the Third Millennium. 2013. Routledge, 1997, pp. 1-11. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Everyday_Sexism_in_the_Third_Millennium/raC3AwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

Salganicoff, A. "Women and Medicare: An Unfinished Agenda." Generations. 2015; vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 43-50. Accessed December 6, 2021. https://search-ebscohost-com.proxygsu-bru1.galileo.usg.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=slh&AN=109563262&site=eds-live&scope=site

Singh, Gopal K. “Trends and Social Inequalities in Maternal Mortality in the United States, 1969-2018.” International Journal of Maternal and Child Health and AIDS (IJMA), vol. 10, no. 1, 30 Dec. 2020, pp. 29–33, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7792749/pdf/IJMA-10-29.pdf. Accessed 9 Nov. 2021.

Sutherland, Jeanne-Anne, and Feltey, Katherine M. “Here’s looking at her: an intersectional analysis of women, power and feminism in film.” Journal of Gender Studies, vol. 26, no. 6, 2017, pp. 618-631, https://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=13&sid=9c96aec7-bdf5-47e8-9e67-cde24f5092a5%40sessionmgr103.

Wood, Julia T. "Gendered media: The influence of media on views of gender." Gendered lives: Communication, gender, and culture. vol. 9, 1994, pp. 231-244. http://www1.udel.edu/comm245/readings/GenderedMedia.pdf.

Xiao L, Wang F. "Examining the Links Between Beauty Ideals Internalization, the Objectification of Women, and Ambivalent Sexism Among Chinese Women: The Effects of Sexual Orientation." Archives of sexual behavior. vol. 50, no. 2, 2021, pp. 553-562. doi:10.1007/s10508-020-01718-7

Young, Iris Marion. “Five Faces of Oppression.” Justice and the Politics of Difference, 1990, pp. 39–65. https://contensis.uwaterloo.ca/sites/courses-archive/1185/PHIL-324/media/documents/10a-young-1990-five-faces-of-oppression.pdf.

Zakaria, Rafia. “At a Wine Bar, A Group of Feminists” Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption. S.L., W W Norton, 2021, n.p. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Against_White_Feminism_Notes_on_Disrupti/UgcDEAAAQBAJhl=en&gbpv=1&dq=rafia+zakaria&printsec=frontcover. Accessed 20 Sept. 2021.