Gender ideologies and power relations in proverbs: A cross-cultural study

The current study attempts to explore gender ideologies and sexism taking into account the representation of women and men in European Spanish and French proverbs. Basing their research on an interdisciplinary approach, the authors aim at critically reviewing the construction and representation of gender identities in proverbs using Glick and Fiske's Ambivalent Sexism Theory and Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis of proverbs culled from published collections and Internet sources. The study focuses among other things on how men are represented in proverbs as opposed to women when it comes to physical, emotional, intellectual, financial, and leadership qualities. Amongst other things, this study shows how discourses of biological essentialism are used to justify what is presented as a natural gender order and the effects of these perceptions on the social order.