Heaviness, Hardship, Heft: Gender-based Burdens in Images
Gender-based burdens resonate in images populating mass media, social media, and art history. In early world history lack of transportation led to women literally being the conveyors of goods; conversely, the twenty-first century finds women stagnant within burdensome roles despite feminist advancements. Within the societal stratification, images portray hardships—inclusive of poverty, violence, and politics—carried by women. Weight, gender-based burdens, hauled by women can have a palpable physical existence or take on a psychological shape of enormous proportions. This article will examine the personal faces of gender-based burdens by focusing on the illustration of violence, politics, and poverty in images. Fluctuating states of poverty, violence, and politics encumber women on a daily basis. The feminization of poverty reinscribes woman’s identity as mother, wife, and caretaker. Violence and its lingering specter is an unsurmountable weight for many women in the tumultuous modern world. Feminine onus is heightened by entrenched patriarchal institutions and reaches a crest during political unrest and instability. Conceptualization of gender-based burdens manifested in images and their sequential impact on contemporary culture will be interpreted through a global lens.