Kingston University is raising awareness of gender equality with a week-long campaign launched yesterday to coincide with the national 16 Days of Activism.
The Gender Week campaign has been put together by the sociology, criminology and psychology department.
Today featured a magnificent talk by Surrey University professor in Health Psychology, Jane Ogden, who concentrated on the representation of genders in the media.
A KU student said: “The studies obviously said women are generally unhappy with their body regardless of what weight they are.
“I know I am not exactly big but I’m still unhappy.”
https://soundcloud.com/news-associates/genderequalityweek
Professor Ogden concentrated on the ways media portray women and how that makes a number of them feel fat or out of shape.
She also argued about how people could ignore those images which would make them feel better about themselves.
She said: “The media sends us very strong images about what the ideal should be.
“Because of that people compare themselves to these images and then feel bad about themselves.
“What the media should do is to send us a much wider range or variation of images to develop a sense of ‘good-enough’.”
Dr Cecilia Cappel, criminology professor, was one of the organisers of today’s talk and will play an active role this week.
She said she hoped that Professor Ogden enabled students to think about how they see themselves regardless of what they read or understood from key concepts.
Gender Week is linked with the 16 Days of Activism campaign happening around the country to tackle gender-based violence.
