Acceptance of gender roles/ views of men and women in 2nd wave feminism

Conventional gender roles basically assign women to the home and men to work. Consequently, there are many fewer women in top-level jobs (there are only 15 female CEO's in the FTSE 100) as they are presumed to want to take maternity leave and are generally less aggressive than men so would find it harder to survive in the harsh business world. OK, I'll be honest, Google hasn't helped with the images- this is what came up when I Googled 'acceptance of gender roles':

                                                    

 What I found from my little bit of research is that actually gender roles are getting more hazy and less well-defined. While it is true that there is still a huge difference in some areas- particularly in the workplace where the pay gap between men and women is a rather large 19.9%- we are starting to become more accustomed to finding men and women in non-traditional gender roles, such as the increasing number of 'stay-at-home dads' and women being involved in professions previously dominated by men, such as the law and medicine.

Second wave feminism wanted women to be treated on an equal basis with men- it had the slogan 'feminism is the radical notion that women are people'. Therefore, it wanted women to have the same opportunities as men regarding work and lifestyle choices (they were particularly vocal on the issue of abortion).



                     

  

Significant writers of fairy tales

The modern definition of a fairy tale is that it is simple and anonymous and written by a single identifiable author- though how would that mean it's anonymous? Anyway, many of the common fairy tales we see today are written by (well, attributed to) just a few authors. For example:

• The 18th century German Grimm Brothers (Jacob and Wilhelm) appear to be responsible for a number of famous fairy tales, including Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. 

• Hans Christian Anderson was a 19th century Danish poet who wrote such tales as The Little Mermaid, Thumbelina and The Ugly Duckling.

• There was also a Russian folklorist who didn't specifically write fairy tales, but collected over 600 Russian folktales such as the Fox and the Geese and the Swan-Geese.

Though a number of fairy tales can be pinned down to be written by one author, many remain anonymous (like the Arabian Nights collection) because they have grown out of an oral tradition. Even when tales are attributed to specific authors this does not guarantee sole authorship as what they write down is often just one version of a story which may have been around for generations.