Gender in the WW

[krista7]

No: HPFGUIDX 143598


Irene writes:

>>Who is the Minister of Magic 
is book six and before that? Both men.
>There were female ministers of magic.

When? Are they prominent players now? (This is akin, to me, to the fact 
Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister--fabulous, but where are the other
 major women political figures, in her cabinet or afterwards?) 

 >>Headmaster of
Hogwarts? To the 
>>best of our knowledge, MM will be the first female
in 100 years. 

>It's not her fault that headmasters tend to stick in...

I didn't intend to make it sound as if it were poor MM's fault; 
mea culpa if it sounded like I did!

>>their job for 50 years and more. There was a female
>>headmaster in 19th century (she is mentioned in OoTP)
>>and she also was the manager of St. Mungo before
>>coming to Hogwarts. That's a powerful job in the
>>wizarding society.

Again, where is she now? Where are major women leaders
in the WW? 

>>And Madame Maxime is a contemporary Headmistress.

She's a headmistress at an all-girls' school; my assumption--just 
assumption here--is that the whole staff is female.

(Total aside: I never had the mental picture that Durmstrang is all-boys, 
as we saw in the movie. Do we know Dumstrang is all-boys?)


>>Show
>>me a 
>>woman in power, other than Judge Bones! 
>What about that top civil servant, Miss Umbridge? :-)

*shudders with horror* Okay, well, I have no idea what
to do with her, I admit. (Other than call the centaurs.)

>>Women in jobs? Pomfrey's a nurse, Madame Malkin runs
>>a *clothing 
>>shop*, and there's whatssherface who runs the tea
>>shop (don't kill me
>> for forgetting her name), none of which rock the
>>boat in terms of 
>>making feminist advances.
>Women can be Healers, Aurors, quidditch players (have
>you noticed that all the chasers on Irish team are
>females?), Triwizard champions, members of Slug club
>etc.
>I'd say it's more equality that muggle world has.

I did mention the nurse because healing, stereotypically, is an acceptable
 "woman's job"--comes from the nurturing female idea. I also pointed 
out that the female Aurors (example: Tonks) aren't really giving a good 
example for women (right now in the books).

The Slug Club is just anybody Slug thinks is socially connected/potentially 
prominent in society, so I don't think of that as an indicator of anything beyond
his mind.

I *did* forget the female athletes--the captain of the Quidditch team comes to mind. 

>>Women at Hogwarts teach
>>herbology, 
>>transfiguration, divination (mocked as *not* a hard
>>science), 
>But Tranfiguration is a harder science than Charms,
>and a woman was a better teacher of Care for the
>Magical creatures than a man, why do you discard the
>fact that don't fit your theory?

Not to be snarky/rude, but I didn't discuss either because I don't 
see how these are very strong points about gender stereotypes in 
the WW. E.g., Hagrid was inept. The fact that a woman replaced 
him and did a better job is not a major feminist statement on 
JKR's behalf--she'd made it clear just about anybody would do better. 
It's hard for me to judge the assumptions about the job itself simply because
the situation is so individual. 

In re: the "harder" science of Transfiguration or Charms, let me back 
up a sec to clarify my points. First of all, I was attempting to point 
out a.) the plethora of female teachers is consistent with the 
view that teaching children is a "female" job and 2.) of the women 
teaching/working at Hogwarts, most of them fit fairly stereotypical
 images of "women's topics." Beyond the nurse, there's
 Divination (seen as fluffy) and Herbology (a "nurturing" teaching job). 
I listed Transfiguration in order to include all evidence, even though,
in this case, I can't make much of it: I see as neither stereotypical 
nor mold-breaking, simply because there's nothing equivalent in 
the muggle curriculum. 


>>Ron refers to Hermione jokingly as a "scarlet woman"
>>for
>>being seen with multiple men in Rita's reporting,
>>and I think
>>that is *very* telling about the conservative gender
>>ethos in
>>the Wizarding World. 
>Nope, it only tells us that Ron is a MSP. ;-) I'll
>grant you that.

I'll quote Ginny here--he's a "filthy hypocrite"!

Krista