The meaning of ‘The Glass Ceiling’ is an unseen, yet unbreakable barrier, keeping women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder and from earning equal wages to men. Currently, in the UK, women are earning 82p for every £1 earned by men doing exactly the same job as them (The Independent 2014).
Many have speculated as to whether the glass ceiling actually exists, and if so, whether it can, or will ever be, broken. To define what has created the glass ceiling is very difficult, and it is impossible to determine exactly what role the media plays in this. The media represents women generally as inferior to men, the weaker sex. They are generally portrayed as objects of male desire, especially in advertisements, with smaller less …show more content…
For example in ‘Desperate Housewives’, the whole TV show is based around several women who stay at home while their husbands earn money. It focuses on their lives at home and what they get up to whilst their husbands are at work. Although this is a fairly modern TV show, it represents very traditional, perhaps even old fashioned, values. As well as this, although all of the housewives in the show are represented as strong and able to take care of themselves, they all represent the ‘traditional woman’, living in the suburbs, married with children to take care of, reliant on their husbands for money. For example even in the very first episode, when we are introduced to the character of Lynette, we are given a background story that at a young age she became a senior member of a corporate company, and that she was extremely good at her job, and a very valued member of the corporation. We are then told that as soon as she became pregnant, she almost immediately gave up everything she had earned to stay at home and look after the child, acting as the stereotypical housewife whilst her husband, Tom, went off to earn money for the household, and provide for his family, acting as the stereotypical
Many have speculated as to whether the glass ceiling actually exists, and if so, whether it can, or will ever be, broken. To define what has created the glass ceiling is very difficult, and it is impossible to determine exactly what role the media plays in this. The media represents women generally as inferior to men, the weaker sex. They are generally portrayed as objects of male desire, especially in advertisements, with smaller less …show more content…
For example in ‘Desperate Housewives’, the whole TV show is based around several women who stay at home while their husbands earn money. It focuses on their lives at home and what they get up to whilst their husbands are at work. Although this is a fairly modern TV show, it represents very traditional, perhaps even old fashioned, values. As well as this, although all of the housewives in the show are represented as strong and able to take care of themselves, they all represent the ‘traditional woman’, living in the suburbs, married with children to take care of, reliant on their husbands for money. For example even in the very first episode, when we are introduced to the character of Lynette, we are given a background story that at a young age she became a senior member of a corporate company, and that she was extremely good at her job, and a very valued member of the corporation. We are then told that as soon as she became pregnant, she almost immediately gave up everything she had earned to stay at home and look after the child, acting as the stereotypical housewife whilst her husband, Tom, went off to earn money for the household, and provide for his family, acting as the stereotypical