Amelia Earhart Gender

In 1937, female aviator Amelia Earhart set course to fly around the entire world, however she disappeared, never to be found, while flying over the Pacific ocean (Ware 59). Before such tragic events occurred however, Earhart accomplished many feats of aviation and defied gender expectations of her time. From a young age, Earhart “struggled… against the restrictions imposed on her sex” (31) during the time period. For instance, Earhart had a passion for “strenuous games and exercise” (31), refused to accept the “Victorian selflessness and domesticity” (33) of her mother’s time, and had a “boyish” appearance (21). Earhart desired to wear “riding breeches and a heavy leather coat” (36) and kept “short, tousled hair” (19). Her appearance, along
In Gilbert and Gubar’s The Queen’s Looking Glass, the pair use classic fairytale stories to convey the extent to which women are hindered by the male sex. G&G discuss different aspects of the story Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and how it conveys either “submissive femininity” (40) or monstrous rage. The two argue that the seven dwarves themselves are actually Snow White’s “dwarfed powers” (40), and that they also educate Snow White in lessons of “service, selflessness, [and] domesticity” (41). Although Snow White and the Seven Dwarves is only a fairytale, the concept G&G establish conveys the “realm of domesticity” (40) which society deems is best suited for the female. The education that G&G discuss illustrates the concept of “women’s work”(41), or what jobs are best fit for the female sex to perform, the jobs which have been gendered over time through stereotyping. Joan Acker elaborates on this in Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations, by stating that gendering occurs in “divisions of labor, [and] allowed behaviors” (146). A study conducted by Annette Jinks and Eleanor Bradley “assessed the attitudes of 100 newly recruited student nurses to gender and nursing stereotypes” (122), which revealed that when nursing is observed as a profession, “70% of the student nurses… agreed that nursing was female dominated” (123). The nursing field has become saturated by females because of the stereotype that “female nurses are seen as handmaidens to doctors” (123). A handmaiden, or “female servant,” is meant to be submissive to the master (Merriam-Webster). This connotation of the word enhance the idea that nursing is feminine because the nurse is under the order of the doctor. This type of submissive service leads the female to become, what G&G would describe as, a “housekeeping angel” (41), or someone only