[T] UNIT I. GENDER & MEDIA

How have stereotypes impacted our modern vision of gender?

Public & Private Space

LESSON I. HISTORY IS A NO WOMAN'S LAND

The Matilda Effect

Who was she?

Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826 – 1898) was an American feminist, abolitionist and writer and was the first to describe what is known today as the Matilda Effect

Why does it happen?

Science is thought to be a man’s world and media contributed to this either by not publishing anything on female scientists, prioritising male names or simply by calling scientists ‘Men of Science’

What is it?

Inspired by the Matthieu Effect (the fact that if two scientists make the same discovery, the one with the most prestigious background would get credit for it), it presents the same principle, the fact that women are systematically erased from science history and replaced with a male counterpart (associate, fellow scientist…)

Who was she?

She was nicknamed the Godmother of Rock’n’Roll and lived from 1915 to 1973

Why was she forgotten?

Being black and a woman, it was hard to be remembered in a very divided America.

In 2018 she was introduced in the Rock’n’Roll of Fame as an early influence finally deserving her place next to giant names

Why was she famous?

She was the first one to mix Gospel and Electric Guitar. She was the “the original soul sister” and influenced many Rhythm’n’Blues and Rock’n’Roll artists like Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presle, Bob Dylan or even Eric Clapton.

She was the first to use heavy distortion and opened the way to electric blues

Lise Meitner (1878-1968) was an Austrian physicist who was denied a Nobel Prize 49 times. She contributed to theories on Nuclear Fission with her nephew Otto Frisch. He received the Nobel Prize for the same reason in 1944.

Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958) was a British geneticist who discovered the structure of DNA. Her work was given against her will by her partner (who saw in her a mere assistant) to other researchers who could determine the spiral shape of DNA.

Trota of Salerno was an Italian medical practitioner who wrote several books under different names. These books were then rearranged in the XVIth century and given a male name, erasing her completely

Alice Ball (1892 – 1916) was an American Chemist, first woman and African-American person to get a degree from Hawaii’s university. She discovered a cure against leprosis. She unfortunately died before her work was published and all credit was given to the university’s director at the time, Arthur L. Dean.

LESSON 2. ROOTED STEREOTYPES

GRAMMAR

Either – Either est positif et signifie ‘l’un OU l’autre’.

Etant donné qu’il se réfère à une seule partie des deux éléments, il peut être suivi d’un nom singulier ou d’un nom pluriel si celui-ci est précédé de ‘of’. Dans certains cas, Either peut aussi être traduit par ‘soit’ s’il est utilisé avec ‘or’.

Examples:

Either day is a good option for us.

Either of them did it.

I like both books, I’d be happy with either.

Other use: Either you love me, or you don’t!

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Neither – Neither est négatif et signifie ‘Aucun’.

Il fonctionne de la même façon qu’Either mais de manière negative. Il peut aussi signifier ‘ni l’un ni l’autre’ s’il est utilisé avec ‘nor’

Examples:

Neither came to my party.

I think neither of those coats fits me

Which game do you want? Neither of them.

Other use: It is neither raining nor snowing / She is neither tall nor short

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Both - Both signifie ‘l’un ET l’autre’.

Il est suivi d’un nom commun au pluriel et peut être suivi de ‘of’ et même d’un article.

Exemples:

Both gardens are amazing.

Both the gardens are sumptuous.

Both of the gardens look horrific.

Answer the following questions after having watched the videos.

Question I. Introduce the documents.

Question II. What are the depicted stereotypes in those ads?

Question III. Why do you think those ads could not be shown on TV nowadays?

Question IV. How could you make the situation fairer?

All posters are taken from the Pinterest platform

LESSON 3.FEMALE SYMBOLS

V. Woolf, ‘A room of one’s own’, 1929

The following document is an essay written by Virginia Woolf (1882 - 1941) and divided into six chapters.

This work was inspired by two lectures she delivered in 1928 at Newham College and Girton College (women’s colleges), part of the university of Cambridge.

Through metaphors and thought-provoking sentences, she focuses on women’s lack of self-expression, indicating that women require a private room and money if she wants to write fiction at the time. It also adds the difficulties women faced at the time, lack of access to education, lack of freedom, privacy, lesbianism, androgyny...

QUOTES:

“Suppose, for instance, that men were only represented in literature as the lovers of women, and were never the friends of men, soldiers, thinkers, dreamers; how few parts in the plays of Shakespeare could be allotted to them; how literature would suffer! We might perhaps have most of Othello; and a good deal of Antony; but no Caesar, no Brutus, no Hamlet, no Lear, no Jaques--literature would be incredibly impoverished, as indeed literature is impoverished beyond our counting by the doors that have been shut upon women.”

“Have you any notion how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe?”

“The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”