Gender roles continue

[secondlina]

In the Oz books, at some point, Ozma's emerald city is attacked by an army of girls lead by their fearless leader, the powerful Jinjur, also a girl. Oz is all about women in power facing other women in power.

The reality is still not at that point. Continuing on the idea I wrote last time that men seemed more freed by gender role changes then women, I saw an article today with this in it:
 

It's a 1938 disney rejection letter saying that :

"Women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen, as that work is performed entirely by young men. For this reason girls are not considered for the training school. 
The only work open to women consists of tracing the characters on clear celluloid sheets with India ink and filling in the tracings on the reverse side with paint according to the directions."

Wow, good thing today is different! Well, according to an article about this letter, In Ratatouille, among the 26 head animators there is no women. Now you wonder, is it because women are not interested in animation, or because those who are perform less well then men or simply because those who are interest get disapointed by the boys club that seem to be living in animation studios. I remember visiting Funbag animation when I was 17, in the context of an internship. The guy that had brought me into Funbag told me later "Wow, their boss told me you distracted them a lot and a lot of employees complained they could not work."

Could not work because of an (underage to boot!) one-day-only female coworker? Sheesh.

I guess I understand that, if woman are rare in the animation world, it's normal that they may be distracting, but that made me feel like a zoo animal. So I really wonder about the animation world, and the comic book world and the commercial art world in general, who's greater members (sic) are still men. This brings us back to Linda Nochlin's text "why is there no great woman artist?" who says that their is no woman artists (at least back in the 1970s) because most of the art world did not always reject openly women, but rather made it difficult for them and opened easier "girlier" jobs for them instead. Boy, that reminds me of the whole disney inker versus animator right?

I know the world today is a lot less like that, and that one of the reasons women aren't in animation is because of a lack of interest. But that lack of interest is caused by something, and it might not be the competitive atmosphere or the horrible hours because women choose jobs that have those too. Maybe it's because there has always been so little woman that woman are discouraged. When your class teacher must warn the class to leave women alone or your internship boss tells your mentor you're distracting his employees... Is that really all that encouraging?

Yeah, this text is feminist and borderline sexist towards men. Too bad. I'm feeling female fury today.

-Secondlina
  
EDIT: Check out http://ichiban-victory.livejournal.com/447109.html?view=3085957#t3085957
Ichiban Victory does an awesome little post that sheds a bit of light on the stuff said in this one. It complements my super feminist rant with a more moderate point of view! Plz read :)
(I love her post!)

Comments

[dqbunny.livejournal.com]

Animation, like journalism, seems very much like the "good old boys" club, where it started flourishing during a male-dominated era in the workforce and it never got a reality check. Look at Klasky-Csupo. That was a husband and wife team, and the wife was the one who was the driving force behind Rugrats, The Wild Thornberries and other really popular American animation in the mid to late 90s. It shows that women really can produce great things when it comes to animation.

I've know two people who are both animators - calger459 who is doing freelance and some other stuff, and Jac, who works for Dreamworks. Jac's story has been really interesting to follow, and you can find her blog here. You might like reading her stuff.

[fenmere.livejournal.com]

And like Animation, journalism is poised for some quick changes, too. And the key is in the upstarts. The market for the daily newspaper is rapidly shrinking. Weeklies are in a fantastic position to come to the forefront because the printed copy compliments a website better with a weekly, rather than competing with it.

I currently work for an independent weekly where the managing editor, Sheri, is a woman. And she's a damn good manager, too. And the office dynamic is really dynamite: laid back, positive and productive. We can't blame that all on her, since Deb, the receptionist, is also key to that atmosphere along with Peter, the publisher. But we all listen to Sheri and she makes the final decisions on what goes to print. Period. And she's a real pleasure to work for.

And together, we're beginning to really eat up the local daily.

There's hope there, I think.

[dqbunny.livejournal.com]

I'm a designer for a mid-sized metro in Arizona, where the newsroom is run by women. The publisher is a man, but the executive editor, and the two managing editors are all women. It's the first time that's happened in my career, and it's been fantastic. There's been no difference in the way the newsroom is run compared to the male-led newsrooms I've been in, and no one makes a big deal about the gender at all.

I specifically work on a smaller segment of the local daily that is actually a weekly. I design two publications geared toward towns within our coverage area. There's another designer who handles the third zone.

I agree that things are changing so quickly, especially in the past few years. Newspapers are making the shift to become either hyper local (think Gannett and their 24/7 newsrooms) or becoming more magazine-like. I do a lot more alternative and magazine-type design than I did in the past, and I'm in the beginning stages of learning Flash to make the designs work better with online.

Our dynamic is largely positive, though we have had a round of layoffs in our newsroom recently and that has added to the tension in there.

[fenmere.livejournal.com]

Interesting!

Yeah, my paper is lucky to be up against one of the lowest rated McKlatchy owned papers in the country. It's got the largest share of the local market by factors of ten, and it's really struggling, which makes things easier for us.

It'll be interesting to see which of the dailies adapt and survive and which don't. I'm predicting far fewer company deaths than some of my colleagues seem to think will happen, but quite a few layoffs and lots of change. (Though probably less social change than we'd like -- that'll take some brilliantly successful people to give the rest a run for their money)

Even with all the yummy entropy feeding us, indy weeklies are still a volatile part of the industry. It wouldn't take much to wipe us out.

Good luck to your paper, and I'd love to follow its progress!

[dqbunny.livejournal.com]

You're always more than welcome to poke at my LJ. A lot of my work-related discussions are friend-locked because Lee rather sucks when it comes to things like that, and if they knew I was writing about work, I'd be fired so quickly it wouldn't be funny. Hence, the friend lock. I honestly think the way my company handles things right now, we're most likely going to be swallowed up by Gannett eventually.

At the paper itself, there's some wonderful journalism being done despite the layoffs, company policies, etc. As long as we keep bringing in that 31 percent profit margin (achieved by said layoffs), I don't think they care what we do. But some of the Lee stuff does scare me, like at our next quarterly meeting we're watching an interview with one of our top advertisers.

[fenmere.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I'm pretty proud of where I work. I mean, we're talking three owners and a staff of six in the office at most (though that's growing yet). And the owners keep a pretty tight ship as far as crossing sales with editorial stuff is concerned. They're also pretty good at focusing the political content of the paper on process rather than opinion or policy.

I tend to write about work as well, and you're welcome to read it, but I too have to be pretty careful. Bellingham is a small enough town with just enough people who think the Indy is against them that whatever I write in my journal publicly has a grave danger of getting around. There's also the Cascadia Weekly, owned by the largest land holding company in the county and edited by someone who seems to hold a grudge against the Indy as well, so the local politics can get a little exciting some times -- if a little tawdry.