1. SUMMARY OF THE FILM
Our heroine is a young girl (Yentl/Anshel) living in an orthodox Jewish community in Eastern Europe around the turn of the 20th century raised by her Rabbinical widower father who educates her in secret about Jewish Law and theology inspiring an insatiable thirst for knowledge and discussion. When he dies, she refuses to consider marriage as is expected of all women, instead she pretends to be a boy and sets forth seeking a yeshiva to further her studies. The main storyline is cultivated around her defiance of the traditional cultural norms of the times when women were not educated and extremely oppressed. (Streisand, 1983).
2. HOW WOMEN ARE PORTRAYED
As discussed by Lindsey (2010), an aspect of the organization of social interaction is the social …show more content…
IMPLICATIONS FOR GENDER-RELATED ISSUES AND/OR SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE
The main gender-related issue demonstrated in Yentl (1983) was the extreme oppression of women. In today’s society, social work practice seeks to empower women by means of encouraging education and self-advocacy in addition to supporting women to use their voices to fight for political and social equality on all levels.
Since women were oppressed by an inherently patriarchal society which only allowed men to become educated, for Yentl to be regarded as an equal she had to oppress her own femininity in order to gain the knowledge she longed for. She assumed the role of a man adopting the customary behaviors and modes of dress. She cut her hair, changed her clothes and erased all that she possibly could of her femininity to appear as a man for the purposes of acquiring knowledge and autonomy.
Although Yentl appeared transgendered, it was not for the purpose of her sexual orientation; “Sexual orientation refers to emotional and sexual attractions, whereas gender identity refers to one's sense of self as being female, male, or otherwise gendered (perhaps transgendered or not gendered at all)” (Burdge,
Our heroine is a young girl (Yentl/Anshel) living in an orthodox Jewish community in Eastern Europe around the turn of the 20th century raised by her Rabbinical widower father who educates her in secret about Jewish Law and theology inspiring an insatiable thirst for knowledge and discussion. When he dies, she refuses to consider marriage as is expected of all women, instead she pretends to be a boy and sets forth seeking a yeshiva to further her studies. The main storyline is cultivated around her defiance of the traditional cultural norms of the times when women were not educated and extremely oppressed. (Streisand, 1983).
2. HOW WOMEN ARE PORTRAYED
As discussed by Lindsey (2010), an aspect of the organization of social interaction is the social …show more content…
IMPLICATIONS FOR GENDER-RELATED ISSUES AND/OR SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE
The main gender-related issue demonstrated in Yentl (1983) was the extreme oppression of women. In today’s society, social work practice seeks to empower women by means of encouraging education and self-advocacy in addition to supporting women to use their voices to fight for political and social equality on all levels.
Since women were oppressed by an inherently patriarchal society which only allowed men to become educated, for Yentl to be regarded as an equal she had to oppress her own femininity in order to gain the knowledge she longed for. She assumed the role of a man adopting the customary behaviors and modes of dress. She cut her hair, changed her clothes and erased all that she possibly could of her femininity to appear as a man for the purposes of acquiring knowledge and autonomy.
Although Yentl appeared transgendered, it was not for the purpose of her sexual orientation; “Sexual orientation refers to emotional and sexual attractions, whereas gender identity refers to one's sense of self as being female, male, or otherwise gendered (perhaps transgendered or not gendered at all)” (Burdge,