We have read in textbooks about the countless fights and protests women had to endure to finally accomplish the right to vote. Receiving this award was a sign of equality between men and women. This amendment was passed in 1920 however, today in the year 2020 we still see the inequality women face. Although history tells us that women have finally found equality, that is completely wrong. Many events are contradicting these arguments of women being equal. I have seen it happen to my mother, aunts, sisters, and even myself. For many of us women, we are viewed as the ones responsible for taking care of children, cooking, and cleaning. Many women stop going to school or quit their job because their husbands want them to be housewives. In other words, we are subjected to stay at home wifes because that’s where we “belong”. In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Stetson we see many instances where women were treated hostile by their male role models. In this story, feminism is a powerful topic manifested throughout the story. I will be using the article, “Gender Inequality in 500 Popular Films: Examining On-Screen Portrayals and Behind-the-Scenes Employment Patterns in Motion Pictures Released between 2007-2012” by Dr. Stacy L. Smith, Marc Choueiti, Elizabeth Scofield, & Dr. Katherine Pieper because it accentuates the dilemma of inequality in gender we are having and how Hollywood isn’t helping us. Hollywood has shown the public that the only ones capable for these jobs are men. Behind the camera there are mostly men working and on screen it’s the same idea. 

      In this story, it appears how the main character’s husband ignores her opinions over and over again. Not only does her husband reject her point of view, but so does her brother. The protagonist tells us how upset she is at being fully ignored by the men she loves. The only way the character finds a way to cope with this is by plainly falsifying her happiness. The protagonist expresses, “Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do? I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal- having to be so sly about it.” (page 2). The character emphasizes why she hides the thing she loves doing. I can associate this experience with my own. I was about 10 years old, walking home with my mother after enrolling for some basketball classes, thinking about all the new friends I was going to make, and the new skills I was going to learn and show off to my friends in school. It was a 10-minute walk that seemed to last forever. I was so anxious about getting home and telling my whole family I was going to play basketball! I finally got home to my aunts and older cousins and I remember going up to them and singing “i’m going to play basketball, i’m going to play basketball”. I expected to receive the same excitement and joy but instead, I was faced with confusion and disappointment. My older, guy, cousin rubbed in my face the fact that I was a girl and basketball was a boy sport. My aunts were confused as to why I wasn’t dancing ballet-like any other girl. Within a matter of seconds, my excitement and joy were thrown out the window. The disappointment didn’t stop there. As I was entering the court I saw how all the boys were staring at us girls and making little comments like, “what is she doing here” “she doesn’t belong here” and “she won’t last here”. As a result, I only took a few classes. Looking back at this memory I realize how the male figures around us affect a lot of the things we do. We let them control what we do or what not to do as if they dictate our every move. This may be the explanation as to why jobs in hollywood are only taken by men. Society believes that these jobs are male based such as sports are for men and not women, explaining why women can’t get the same job opportunities. Similarly to the protagonist in the story, we fake to be okay with the situation when in reality we want change. 

          Significant others are meant to help you at the lowest and highest points of your life. They should be there listening to the things that make you sad, mad, or happy. For the main character of The Yellow Wallpaper, this doesn’t apply to her marriage. Through the story, there’s a fracture between what we can see and what the narrator informs us. The dramatic irony here makes the story even more devastating. We can see how her husband neglects her feelings but the readers know that she does nothing to change it. In the story her husband, “John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him.” (page 3). Men think that because we are women we don’t suffer, that everything is given to us. It was a regular class day in middle school and we were learning about women’s rights. I then hear one of my male peers spurt out, “ well its 2015 all women are equal, now everything is handed to them they have men to protect them, a job with equal pay. Sounds like they’re living the life”. It was then that I realized how ignorant these boys were. These kids aren’t aware of the reality of the struggle it is being a woman in this country. They aren’t aware of the battle their mothers face everyday at work or even in their homes. My parents work together in a demolishing company. They receive the same jobs, the same location, and the same schedule, but the one thing they don’t share is their paycheck. My mother doesn’t get the same job opportunities as my father based on the fact that she’s a woman. My mother’s paycheck appears to be significantly lower than my father’s. I once asked my mother as to why she gets paid less than my father and she simply replied, “ because I am a woman”. It makes me wonder, will this situation ever end? Will I have to fight for the same paycheck that my male coworker gets so easily? Or will I agonize in silence like the character from our story. This correlates to the jobs 

       How will the epidemic of inequality between genders stop if we see it happen in movies without even realizing it? Behind the drama and action that we see on the big screen, the vast majority of the jobs belong to men. These jobs are said to be open to both genders, but coincidentally the only people who are hired are males. Only, “ 16.7% of the 1,228 directors, writers, and producers are female across the 100 top-grossing films of 2012. Women accounted for 4.1% of directors, 12.2% of writers, and 20% of producers. This calculates to a 2012 ratio of 5 males to every 1 female behind the camera”(Smith, Dr. L. Stacy (2013). Gender Inequality in 500 Popular Films). Women can’t get the same jobs men do because we don’t get the opportunities they do. Connecting back to The Yellow Wallpaper, both the protagonist of the story and women from today can’t change the way things are in their society. Just like my mother can’t make her boss pay her more, and I can’t change the perspective of my family or my peers. The inequality continues to the characters in movies. Females continue to, “ be underrepresented on screen and behind the camera. No meaningful increases in the prevalence of girls and women on screen are observed across multiple measures. 2012 featured the lowest percentage of female speaking characters across the years studied.” (Smith, Dr. L. Stacy (2013). Gender Inequality in 500 Popular Films). Not only are women being robbed from jobs as writers, producers, and directors but they’re also not being chosen for roles in movies. Women and men have equally studied and worked for the same job opportunities but producers only give chances to men. Once more, binding it back to the story The Yellow Wallpaper, if the story were to take place in the present time, the main character would not only feel the oppression of her husband and brother but also from the men in her industry. She would face the hate comments and the looks, the same way I did when I entered that basketball court 8 years ago. The only way change would happen for women in this industry is if people change their perspective and pay close attention to the capabilities of many of these women. Other than that, we can only hope that one day there would be more job offerings to let women demonstrate their skill, talent, and passion.

     As women, we have to stand together to fight for equality, we need to change what seems “normal” today. The story The Yellow Wallpaper gives great examples of the inequality and oppression women face daily. Women are approached as delicate and incapable, which is seen when we want to play the same sport as the opposite gender, or when we want to work like the opposite gender. The problem appears to reach Hollywood where authors of Gender Inequality in 500 Popular Films inform the public of the lack of opportunities we are given in the film. There is an absence of women working on screen and behind the cameras. Overall, if we continue to ache in silence and accept the “normal” behavior we face every day like, we won’t see change and we won’t prosper.