Dangerous Dames. Heather Hundley
and he is considering entering politics (Kelsey, 2018). Similarly, older generations witnessed Arnold Schwarzenegger transition from world famous bodybuilder to actor to politician, serving as California’s two-term governor from 2003 to 2011 and illustrating the entangled relationships (and stereotypically masculine associations) among physical strength, economic prowess, and political influence.
Although power is marked as masculine in many ways, contemporary society is not void of feminine empowerment. Just over 50 years since the beginning of the major civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, including Civil Rights, Women’s Liberation and the second wave of feminism, the American Indian Movement, Chican@ Rights, the Farmworker’s Movement, and the launch of environmentalism and ecofeminism, we have witnessed positive strides for women in the United States. Victories such as the Food and Drug Administration’s 1960 approval of the oral contraceptive pill and the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade (1973) have allowed women to control their own reproductive rights, moving towards women’s status today. Additionally, though not yet fully actualized, the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 encouraged more women to enter the workforce.1 Recognition of sexual harassment and sexual assault has increased dramatically in the past 50 years, leading to contemporary agitation globally. With increased resources and legal protections available, more women attend universities and earn bachelor’s degrees, participate in all levels of government, fight in combat, and lead as business tycoons—venues where women were not permitted in the not-too-distant past.
Although women have always been strong and powerful, those who stand out as cultural icons typically have been the exception rather than the rule. For example, although female-bodied aviators abound (Haynsworth, Toomey, & McInerney, 1998), Amelia Earhart is the lone woman in aviation known widely prior to 1970s astronaut Sally Ride. Rosa Parks ironically takes a back seat to her male counterparts, including Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, and ←2 | 3→Martin Luther King, Jr. Similarly, civil rights activist and labor leader Dolores Huerta is overshadowed by her co-founder of the National Farmworkers Association, César Chávez (Sowards, 2010, 2012). Media mogul Oprah Winfrey, touted by Forbes and Fortune as one of the world’s most powerful women, “is the only person in the world to have appeared in Time’s list of the most influential people 10 times” (Nearmy, 2016, para. 1). Yet, the ongoing prevalence of gender and race disparities in Hollywood continue to draw scholarly attention (Reign, 2018; Thompson, 2018).
Nevertheless, trailblazing figures have led the way for other strong and powerful women. Since the 1980s, female-bodied aviators and astronauts have become much more commonplace. Female-bodied politicians have increased, as well. For example, 39 women have served as governors in 28 states, 307 women have served in Congress, and 19 of the 100 largest cities in the United States have had female-bodied mayors (“A brief history,” 2016). Women’s presence has increased in the boardroom too, with 24 women leading Fortune 500 companies as CEOs. In 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor emerged as the first, and only, female-bodied Supreme Court Justice until Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined her in 1993. More headway has been made since 1/3 of the bench are women in 2019: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. At the box office, Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins, set a new record for a movie directed by a woman in 2017. Such gains have ushered in, for some, the notion that we are now in a postfeminist era. The concept of postfeminism is “fraught with contradictions” (Genz & Brabon, 2009, p. 1), but it consistently denotes the perception that gender equality has arrived—or at least is well on its way—and therefore feminism is no longer needed.
We reject this depoliticizing, perilous viewpoint. Despite the advances made, much work remains at the forefront of feminist activism. For example, even though 59 different women have been to space, that pales in comparison to the 474 male astronauts who have made the same journey. In terms of politicians, the record number of female-bodied governors at any given time was nine in 2004 and 2007; thus only 5 % of the states in the country were governed by women. Similarly, women head only 5 % of Fortune 500 companies. Although Hollywood too is shifting, Patty Jenkins is only the second woman to be the sole director of any live-action movie with a production budget over $100 million (Domonoske, 2017).
In addition to continued underrepresentation in government, economics, and on screen, the gender wage gap in 2016 was 20 % and even larger for women of color, guaranteed paid maternity leave is not available in the ←3 | 4→United States, and the second shift persists, with many women still being expected to maintain household, childcare, and parental care responsibilities irrespective of having paid jobs. Indeed, the second shift has expanded into a third, as digital labor has expanded to fill women’s leisure time as well (Chess, 2010; Jarrett, 2016; Jones, 2016). Women are overlooked for career advancement more than their male colleagues. In academia, for example, even though women earn just over 50 % of the U.S.-granted Ph.Ds., only 38 % of faculty members overall are women; 46 % are assistant professors, 38 % are associate professors, and 23 % are full professors (Mason, 2011). Considering the occupation alongside family and parenting responsibilities, “across all disciplines, women with children were 38 percent less likely than men with children to achieve tenure” (Mason, 2011, para. 11). “Among tenured professors, only 44 percent of women are married with children, compared with 77 percent of men” (Mason, 2011, para. 14). Thus, even though women are making advances, constraints abound, as evidenced by the glass ceiling and pay gaps, the good-old-boys club, disparate family obligations, social expectations, and sexual harassment, among other obstacles.
Beyond these ongoing structural challenges, the advances made have sparked a backlash. Rising to fame for refusing to honor students’ requests to use their preferred pronouns, Jordan B. Peterson typifies this backlash (Bowles, 2018; Lynskey, 2018; Wilhelm, 2018). Bowles (2018) calls him the “custodian of the patriarchy,” noting his view that “order is masculine. Chaos is feminine” (para. 3). Wilhelm (2018) describes him as “best known for offending and outraging large numbers of people on television and the Internet over various fraught topics like transgender pronouns, gender roles, and identity politics” (para. 5). He has attracted a large following (and sparked some backlash of his own), exemplifying how outrage is deployed to try to protect the status quo and nostalgic imagined past. Women’s advances are perceived as dangerous, and folks like Peterson are actively trying to maintain patriarchal positions of power.
Despite these structural, material, and rhetorical efforts to retain patriarchal power relations, as a result of the 1960s and 1970s movements and ongoing activism, younger generations are exposed to powerful women in greater numbers than in the past. As roles for women have expanded in government and business, so too have roles expanded for women in mediated representations. Indeed, media companies have been quick to capitalize on feminist gains by casting female-bodied protagonists in roles traditionally reserved for males.
←4 | 5→
Such representations have ushered in a postfeminist media era in which “perniciously effective,” active, and