I Love Lucy Came Out: Different Ideas Of Gender Roles

Shirley believes it came from how women used to take care of the house. As a result, many believe them to be inferior and think them to be incapable of jobs that require leadership

Donna Reed’s actions in the series many times were unique compared to other women represented in domestic sitcoms. In the episode “The Ideal Wife” Donna becomes fed up with being the perfect wife and decided to take a stance and become more assertive. She stops playing the nice, happy homemaker and demands her children to do their chores and confronts her husband when she does not want to go to watch the gallbladder surgery. In most family sitcoms the wife’s role was to be “subordinate to the husband and children” (Mock 33). Donna, though, confronts this social position by challenging it through her resistance to the submissive life women were believed to live. The rebelliousness toward attitude that women were to report to their husbands and succumb to their children’s need was a progressive movement The Donna Reed Show took toward modern mentalities on gender

With the shift of gender roles in American culture, comes the shift in how Americans portray characters in certain television and media shows. While the cultural norms and beliefs change as a country, so do the way people perceive the roles of males and females. In the 1950’s, it was normal for a female to be working on and at the home, taking care of the kids, and doing the tedious chores around the house. All while the male is at work, making the money to support the family. In today’s time, with many advances in women’s rights and cultural acceptance, these roles are not so specific to a gender.

The show “I Love Lucy” was shot from 1951 to 1960; only six years after World War Two had ended. During the war there was a lack of men in the United States to do all the physical labor and common office jobs. Women were then given the opportunity to escape the boundaries of the private sphere of their homes and go out into the workforce. Although, after the war was over and the men came back to the United States the women, who were then used to working and being the breadwinners of the family, were forced back into their homes being told they were too delicate or incapable of doing the jobs that they had already been doing for years. The comedy show, “I Love Lucy” made light fun of the women's efforts to move from the private sphere to the

Women during this time period didn’t have the same expectations as men, this is shown in “The Hike” when Alex can’t go camping with local kids because of work and Donna steps up and wants to take them, but people say she is too fragile for camping and laugh at her. This shows that people think that women are less capable than men, and that they aren’t expected to do things that men can do. This is also shown in “Pardon My Gloves” when Jeff is being bullied and Donna is trying to teach him how to fight from a book, and Alex says that you can't learn to fight from a book, but from someone with experience. This also goes with the idea that women are fragile and peaceful people. Another expectation for women is that they stop schooling at high school, which is why only 5.2% of women completed four years of college (“Percentage of the U.S. Population Who Have Completed Four Years of College or More From 1940 to 2014, By Gender” 4). Usually women after they left school would get married a couple years later, the average age for women to get married was 22.8 and men would get married at 20.3 (“Median Age at First Marriage, 1890-2010” 1). When people would get married, they thought that it is a disgrace to get a divorce, which is why the divorce rate on average 2.6% throughout the 1950s and 2.2% in 1960s (“Marriage and Divorce, 1900-2012”

This episode is a glaring example of the sexual division of labor, where women are confined to the domestic sphere while men dominate the workforce. It perpetuates the idea that women belong in the home, doing the unpaid

     In many ways today's society, even though women have come a long way, we still live in a patriarchal world. There are many examples of this in everyday life, whether it be that there aren't very many women CEO's or the mere fact that we've yet to have a woman president. No matter where you live, there is the presence of a male dominated world. It especially extends into the working fields. There are professions that are categorically 'women's' jobs like nursing, school teacher, or secretarial jobs. The rest of the professional world is mainly male dominated, i.e. engineering, CEO's of major companies, and Law Firms. Which brings us to the movie I picked to watch, Legally Blonde.

Women today are often seen as fragile and unable to do the work of a man. Jobs such as being a firefighter, being a police officer, serving in the military, and much more, are seen as jobs for men. Although women occupy positions in these professions they are not taken as seriously as men. They are not given the same opportunities as men in the workforce and are often judged by appearance and skin color.

Today women are able to work in anything they desire. ‘In the ideal family of the 1950s, dad brought home the paycheck, mom did the cooking and cleaning, and the kids were respectful and well-behaved’ (Lisa’s Nostalgia Café 1950s, 1950s Everyday Life part 1, Family and Relationships, Family Values Para 3) Back in the 1950s women were only know to clean the house, look after the children and cater for the father. Women weren’t able to have there own working paycheck. They weren’t allowed to open their own bank account.

Women traditionally served as housewives, limited to raising their kids and preforming house duties. In the World War II era, women were allowed to being working in factories and jobs were help was needed to aid our country, but even then inequality was the same and wages were low. Matthew Rothschild (2011) talks about how we should “demand the impossible”, to make priorities clear because the wealthy doesn’t care about us; it is like “we are peons now” (p. 690). Women have been oppressed for over years and portrayed as people that can’t do nothing or rely on men to do it for them, just like in the video “Gender roles in Disney” (“Gender roles,”

As longs as humans have existed, women have been oppressed. Men were generally seen as the breadwinner, the man in the relationship, the man of the house. This theory, or belief further lead to what was known as the retro-era. The retro-era, around the 1950’s, was the epitome of gender-based stereotypes, where women were only valuable to household skills such as cooking, cleaning and housework. In more modern times, women gradually received more rights to pursue careers men would stereotypically take over. Pursuing “manly” careers, which include lawyers, actors, politicians and anything that requires exceeding cognitive function, as a woman elicits criticism. It’s clear to see women have much more limitations, restrictions and expectations than

There are women that work more hours then their male counterparts and women still make less in salary.

During the 18th and 19th century, patriarchy has been responsible for designing women’s role in society. Throughout history, men have been deemed as superior while women have been regarded as inferior. Society has this ideology that women are the sole laborers of a household; they were not granted the same privileges as men. In addition, women have been negatively affected by stereotyping. Women have been portrayed on television as being submissive to men. The depiction of women on television portrays the implications of a societal view of women. From a man's perspective, an ideal woman is a housewife who does all the household duties herself. However, over the years, studies have shown that gender roles have slowly advanced. Women began

Television allows people to see more and choose what they want to be. Women need to be shown in occupations that are not the stereotypical, such as the occupations of nurse, maid, sales assistant, or models. Men are often shown as the breadwinners while women are shown as being emotional and domestic caregivers. Television ought to demonstrate strong older women instead of feeble grandmothers baking cookies. Teenage girls should be represented on television as being able to have serious conversations and feeling that their brains are as important as their looks. Women are often shown as only being able to get what they want by using sexuality. Television audiences certainly must demand more from the television shows the audience watches.

The sight of a working woman today is not something that causes one to look twice. However, this was not always the case. It was a long struggle for women to get to where they are today, and there is still a long way to go. There were a few momentous occasions throughout history that caused a shift in the way women were viewed as workers, such as the need for workers during World War II, the Equal Pay Act, and the appointment of Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court. Women have made great strides in integrating themselves into the workforce alongside men and continue to do so today.