5 - ‘Innovative Leaders’: A Progressive Era of Princesses
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2024
Summary
Brave (2012) was released two years after Tangled, and no significant cultural changes had happened during the interim. However, as Frozen was released in 2013, Moana in 2016, and Frozen II in 2019, several events and ‘firsts’ had occurred. Within legislation and the workplace there were changes, but also setbacks. In 2012, The Paycheck Fairness Act that would have reduced gender discrimination in the workplace failed in the Senate after Republicans blocked the bill (Bendery 2012). In 2013, the US military began allowing women to serve in combat roles (Harris 2013). The Violence Against Women Act (2013) was also renewed, providing further protection for Native American women and members of the LGBTQ+ community (Human Rights Watch 2013). In 2015, the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage and the recognition of out of state same-sex marriages through Obergefell v Hodges. Within society several changes were taking place as well. In 2016, Hillary Clinton was the first woman to run for president for a major political party, however despite receiving more votes (but fewer states), she lost to Donald Trump after an incredibly misogynistic campaign (Jamieson 2017). Despite this, 53 per cent of white female voters helped Trump to get to the White House (Jaffe 2018: 19). Although Sarah Jaffe commented exit polls do not usually separate voters by more than one or two demographics, she identified five general categories ‘of Trump-voting women: the wealthy, the white supremacist, the evangelical, the security voter, and the worker’ (2018: 19). She noted Trump was able to gain 58.2 per cent of white women over 65 (Jaffe 2018: 20). Despite being a woman, Clinton was unable to gain the votes of the more traditional, older woman. Trump's win caused outrage across the world, with women organizing demonstrations, now known as the Women's March, to protest the election of Donald Trump who had been publicly presenting himself as discriminatory before, during, and after the election (Freedland 2016; La Ganga and Jacobs 2016; Tamkin and Gramer 2017). The march was also highlighting a need for more legislation and policies on minority rights (Women's March n.d.). Trump went on to appoint Nikki Haley as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations in January 2017, but she resigned in late 2018 (Haberman et al 2018).
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- The Disney Princess PhenomenonA Feminist Analysis, pp. 119 - 154Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2023