Here is the synopsis of our sample research paper on Gender and Film: "Senorita Extraviada". Have the paper e-mailed to you 24/7/365.
Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 4 page paper discusses the film "Senorita Extraviada" about the rape and murder of young girls in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and the relationship between the crimes and the idea of gender as a social construct. Bibliography lists 3 sources.
Page Count:
4 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_HVSenori.rtf
Buy This Term Paper »
Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
them. This paper discusses the investigative film "Senorita Extraviada," made by Lourdes Portillo, and what part gender plays in our perception of the film and the filmmaker. Discussion When we
consider matters of gender, it is important to distinguish them from "sex," which refers simply to the "biological bases for differentiating females and males" ("Gender Bias in the Study of
Politics"). Gender, however, at least according to this source, "refers to the characteristics and behaviors prescribed for a particular sex by a given society and learned through socialization" ("Gender Bias
in the Study of Politics"). While this is not accepted by everyone, we will argue here that considering gender as a social construct makes sense in the context of the
film and the murders. The evidence to suggest that gender is a social construct lies in the fact that the "behavior and characteristics associated with males and females are
not universal or timeless" ("Gender Bias in the Study of Politics"). For example, during WWII, women worked in factories, flew planes, did what was necessary to help in the war
effort, and "were presented by the news media as strong and capable of physical labor" ("Gender Bias in the Study of Politics). When the war ended and the men wanted
their jobs back, women were suddenly deemed weak and incapable of doing "mens jobs" and so were pushed out of the labor force and back into the home ("Gender Bias
in the Study of Politics"). Clearly, womens roles in the context of the labor market during and after the war were defined by men, and were a social construct. The
behavior and characteristics deemed "appropriate" for the two sexes result in gender stereotypes: men are "strong, aggressive, ambitious, competitive, rational, independent, intelligent/smart, rough" while women are the exact opposite: "weak,
...