Powerful Women? SB9

                Today in class we learned about how the media portrays different people as less human.  The same can be said about women in government.  Is it alderman or alderwoman?  Alderwoman is just weird to say.  That’s because having a women in a city council requires you to change the title.  Back in history women haven’t been given the opportunity to always pursue jobs in the government sector.  Today however, it’s still a battle to overcome the stereotypes of being a weak woman in a powerful role.

                When Hilary Clinton was running for president, one of the questions I would hear from others was, “How is this woman going to handle a man’s job?”   Now I’m not saying that Clinton represents all women, but that is a stereotype that any woman will have to overcome if they run for a major office.  To me, it seemed that in order to run for president you had to be a man or else you weren’t qualified.  Being a woman, Clinton was considered less than a human because she was entering the man’s world.  Being the president, situations are tough and stressful and women don’t possess the human qualities to handle those difficult situations—or at least that is the ideology of the presidential role. 

                The media today has a lot of influence about who gets elected, because after all, they provide the knowledge to many Americans.  If the media portrays woman weak in debates and speeches, the viewers will pick up on that and believe that women are weak candidates.  If the media portrays a woman presidential candidate as strong and the men as weak, it will set up an interesting election.  Women today are still thought of as the weaker gender and can’t handle the stresses of high power jobs.  By thinking of women as weak, we are really just thinking of them as less of a human in that they can’t perform human work. 

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fi.telegraph.co.uk%2Fmultimedia%2Farchive%2F01014%2F16-clinton-crying_1014190c.jpg&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fpolitics%2Flocal-elections%2F3247456%2FUS-election-2008-Top-25-turning-points-in-the-campaign-13-25.html&h=287&w=460&tbnid=XBtEnkMKImZ46M%3A&zoom=1&docid=JI6T2KwmoE66PM&ei=5GBFU7b1O6OWyAHk5YDQCg&tbm=isch&ved=0CFMQhBwwAA&iact=rc&dur=265&page=1&start=0&ndsp=17   

Here is a picture taken of Hilary Clinton tearing up By including pictures like these in media reports, Clinton can be shown as a weak candidate and is not ready for a powerful position.