Gender, Creativity, and Invisibility

Throughout the course, we discuss gender ideology and how it impacts creative expression. Gender ideology is simply ideas about how a persons gender (distinct from a persons sex) is shaped through a socialization process, particularly prescribing characteristics and behaviors for a certain sex. From the moment a baby is placed in a pink blanket or a blue one, our culture begins to socialize a person a woman or man.

Over the centuries, this debate about womens nature, the woman question, included such claims as it is in womens nature to be weak and fragile. The debates often claim that weakness is inherent in females, rather than focusing on the way women are taught and/or socialized. Furthermore, the debate goes, women are suited only for domesticity because of their nature. It has even been argued that women have no souls. Most importantly in our discussion throughout this course is the way these restrictions on womens lives have impacted their creative expression. In Week 1, we learn how gender ideology has impacted womens creative expression and its visibility in society.

Our focus is on Renaissance women in Week 1, but we look at how contemporary women are still resisting ideas about women that began as early as the Renaissance period. The Renaissance ideal lady was an idealized woman who was defined as virtuous, pious, and modest, and though she may have been encouraged to be artistic, because of persistent ideas about womens gender her creativity was deemed important only to charm and entertain men in the court or was relegated to remain in a convent or the home. As we have seen, these ideas about women (ideology) restricted her creativity and visibility. Significantly, the visibility of womens creative production is still an issue partly because of gender ideology centuries old.

For this weeks journal, discuss in three to four pages how gender ideology impacts womens creative expression. Illustrate your discussion with examples of creative women from the Renaissance period. Your examples should come from our required or recommended resources and represent at least two different genres (for example, poetry, painting, sculpture). Explain how ideas about womens nature and role impacted womens work. Finally, after viewing the multimedia, conclude with a reflection on how the contemporary activism of the Guerilla Girls addresses similar issues in todays art world.