Sexism

18:23 minutes

TED Talks

This video shows a TED talk given by Sheryl WuDunn, former New York Times reporter and the first Asian American to win a Pulitzer Prize. In her talk, she refers to gender inequity as "the central moral challenge of this century" and elaborates on the material covered in her bestselling book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. A related video worth watching is:

• The Bride Price: Effects of Child Marriage Worldwide

4:57 minutes

Media Education Foundation

In this excerpt from the most recent version of Still Killing Us Softly, lecturer Jean Kilbourne discusses the image of women in advertising. Kilbourne vividly shows how ads create impossible norms of female beauty and promote the objectification, dehumanization, and subordination of women. The Media Education Foundation sells a 45-minute DVD version of this talk as well as Dreamworlds, a DVD that explores the representation of women in music videos.

2:16 minutes

Jesse Rosten

In this mock infomercial, Photoshop is presented as a woman's beauty product to remove wrinkles, lengthen eyelashes, and slim down. "Just one application of Fotoshop can give you results so dramatic they're almost unreal(istic)," touts the ad. "Why eat healthy and exercise when you can just look like you do?" As the video's tag line points out, the commercial isn't real, and neither are society's standards of beauty.

1:14 minutes

Dove Self-Esteem Fund

In this classic video, an ordinary woman's face is transformed into a billboard fashion model's face through the wonders of make-up, lighting, photography, and Photoshop. Although the video takes only a minute to watch, it provides a truly unforgettable illustration of the difference between advertising and reality.

8:40 minutes

ABC News

This clip shows a hidden camera experiment from the ABC News program What Would You Do? with John Quiñones. In the video, a restaurant manager sexually harasses a new employee in plain view of customers. Sociologist Raquel Bergen, who has written widely on the topic of sexual harassment, analyzes bystander reactions. Other episodes of What Would You Do? examine bystander reactions to a woman who is:

• Battered, crying, and in need of help
• Intoxicated and at risk of getting raped
• Sexually harassed by men on the street
• Woman receives unwanted advances
• Criticized for breastfeeding in public

10:37 minutes

Prelinger Archives

This 1944 training film from the U.S. Office of Education explains how to supervise women workers. Warning that "a foreman will always have the eternal feminine to contend with," the clip relies heavily on gender stereotypes and presents women as jealous, sensitive, and argumentative. For other classic videos, see:

• The Trouble with Women (6:10 minutes; 1959)
• Marriage Is a Partnership (16:21 minutes; 1951)
• I Want to Be a Secretary (15:52 minutes; 1941)
• Ad for Cream That Removes Radioactive Dirt (1950s)