Also, if the ww were really more egalitarian than the muggle world due to magic as a historically equalizing force (or whatever other reason), we ought to see this most clearly in all the historical bits of the Potterverse. Things like seeing Roberta Ogden as an important investigator confronting Morfin about his attack on Tom Sr., Slughorn having a gender-balanced Slug Club gathering back in 1944, Dumbledore serving under Headmistress Antonia Dippet, a textbook by Arsenia Jigger, the Gryffindor staircases' gender bias having been introduced recently to placate sexist Muggle parents if it had to exist at all, Purebloods ranting about Mudbloods introducing sexism into the ww and genuinely seeing it as a problem, old Pureblood family names being allowed to carry on in the female line occasionally, and enough other references to add up to a picture of more or less equality instead of what we have, the same Old Boys' Club with what you might think is slightly more women in important positions if you only know history from Hollywood movies and have no clue about people like, say, Admiral Grace Hopper.
So it definitely reads like JKR defaulted to writing it how she imagines the Muggle world, only later highlighting a couple of women to "prove" it's really better because she doesn't actually know Muggle history very well. And then on top of that, even when she manages to get the numbers equal as with the four Founders or the four Heads of House or the two foreign school Heads, the men are almost always more important to the plot and/or Harry's emotional engagement with the characters. (Sprout? Who's she? Whatever happened to Madame Maxime? Pffft, like it matters, right? Back to the saga of Igor Karkaroff, cowardly Death Eater with a history with Snape!)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2014-06-16 07:06 pm (UTC)Also, if the ww were really more egalitarian than the muggle world due to magic as a historically equalizing force (or whatever other reason), we ought to see this most clearly in all the historical bits of the Potterverse. Things like seeing Roberta Ogden as an important investigator confronting Morfin about his attack on Tom Sr., Slughorn having a gender-balanced Slug Club gathering back in 1944, Dumbledore serving under Headmistress Antonia Dippet, a textbook by Arsenia Jigger, the Gryffindor staircases' gender bias having been introduced recently to placate sexist Muggle parents if it had to exist at all, Purebloods ranting about Mudbloods introducing sexism into the ww and genuinely seeing it as a problem, old Pureblood family names being allowed to carry on in the female line occasionally, and enough other references to add up to a picture of more or less equality instead of what we have, the same Old Boys' Club with what you might think is slightly more women in important positions if you only know history from Hollywood movies and have no clue about people like, say, Admiral Grace Hopper.
So it definitely reads like JKR defaulted to writing it how she imagines the Muggle world, only later highlighting a couple of women to "prove" it's really better because she doesn't actually know Muggle history very well. And then on top of that, even when she manages to get the numbers equal as with the four Founders or the four Heads of House or the two foreign school Heads, the men are almost always more important to the plot and/or Harry's emotional engagement with the characters. (Sprout? Who's she? Whatever happened to Madame Maxime? Pffft, like it matters, right? Back to the saga of Igor Karkaroff, cowardly Death Eater with a history with Snape!)