Gender Equality Vs Neoliberalism

Issues with gender, racial, sexual, religious equality are increasingly spoken about in today’s culture. As these issues become more and more publicized, it seems steps towards equality are being taken, and the concerns of marginalized communities and people groups are not only voiced more, but also seen as more important. Still, a closer look also reveals that there is a long way to go before equality will become a reality. However, gender ideologies are so ingrained and naturalized into culture and language that it is difficult to solve these issues with encountering obstacles.
Inoue (2007) states argues that in today’s culture of neoliberalism, some practices that attempt to promote gender equality have the ability to find fault and problematize
Her analysis concludes that through the modern culture of neoliberalism, these programs promote a shift in thinking that results in women seeing “equal opportunity” more as requiring a shift in attitude about one’s self and improving relationships, rather than suggesting a problem with wages or access to resources and training. Through these programs, women shift their thinking away from how the structure of the company can better promote equality, and more likely to see re-examination of self and one’s ability to fulfillment within the company as the solution, taking the responsibility out of the hands of the company and into the individual workers—particularly the women. In this way, women are now ‘empowered’ to take agency of their own happiness, “making any problematization of institutional or social structure counter-intuitive or ‘irrational’” (Inoue, 2007, p.88), having linguistic implications for men and women given the role of language in the construction of identity.
Media representations play a key role in shaping and emphasizing cultural values. Romaniuk (2014) examines how women are portrayed in politics and argues that women face a “double-bind” that results from opposing ideas about what it means to be feminine and what it means to be a
In more casual contexts, women who demonstrate more stereotypically male characteristics may be seen as “tomboyish” or “down to earth”. In the domains such as the home where women are more typically associated, it is more acceptable to take a place of authority (although these positions are often inherently more “gentle”). However in positions of power such as in politics, women can be subject to scrutiny both for being not feminine enough and for being too feminine (such as in the case of Hillary Clinton’s cackle). As shown in Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s documentary “Miss Representation” (2011) portrayals of “powerful” women are often involve using their sexuality or their bodies as a means of gaining power; even in positions of power, much more emphasis is often on the appearance of the woman compared with