GENDER

Gender

Gender

Gender and Sex

Gender refers to the social aspects of being male or female. Sex Combining physical, psychic, and spiritual dimensions, sexuality ranks as one of the core aspects of the human personality. In the past, human sexuality has been regarded as instrumental, that is, subordinate to some other aim, usually procreation. Yet just as there is sex without procreation, so—thanks to advances in medical technology—offspring can be conceived without sexual contact. Sexuality is not tethered to procreation.

For centuries, Western society sought to confine sexual congress within the bounds of marriage. In this context, commercial arrangements (prostitution) and homosexuality were discouraged or proscribed. Today, a broader understanding of sexual freedom prevails.

Oprah Winfrey Show

It is hard to overstate the importance of Oprah Winfrey as a business and cultural force over the past ten years. Perhaps better than any other American, Oprah Winfrey symbolizes a brand celebrity whose opinions shape which authors make the best-seller list and which products come to be seen as “must buys” by the public. One magazine article stated that Winfrey has “more influence on the culture than any university president, politician, political, or religious leader except the pope” (Vanity Fair).

The fact that her talk show is watched by more than 22 million people every week, that she is the first African-American woman (the second person of African-American origin after Robert Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television) to make it to Forbes magazine's list of billionaires, and that Time magazine named her one of the hundred most influential people of the twentieth century overshadows the important impact of her multifaceted leadership style on the American private and public landscape (Sellers 2002). She is only the third American woman to own her own production company (her company name, Harpo, is Oprah spelled backward); she was preceded by the silent movie star Mary Pickford and the comedy queen Lucille Ball.

Winfrey's power is that she tells her own, divulging that she once ate a package of hot-dog buns drenched in maple syrup, that she smoked cocaine, even that she had been raped as a child. She turned the focus (of talk shows) from experts to ordinary people talking about personal issues” (Tannen 1998, 198).

Examining the importance of leadership is not new to Oprah Winfrey. She was appointed an adjunct professor of management and strategy at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management and co-taught a course called “The Dynamics of Leadership” in ...