ABSTRACT
The term “stereotype” initially referred to a printing stamp which was used to make multiple copies from a single model or mold. Walter Lippmann (1922) was the first scholar to adopt the term and use it as a means of describing the way society sets about categorizing people or “stamping” them with a specific set of characteristics. Lippmann (ibid.) identifies four major aspects of stereotypes: simplicity, secondhand acquisition, falsehood, and resistance to change. Accordingly, stereotypes are simpler than reality (often capable of being summarized in only two to three sentences), acquired from cultural mediators rather than from direct experience, false by nature (as they attempt to claim that each individual human being in a certain group shares a set of common qualities with the members of that group), and tenacious (even after centuries of recorded history, the old stereotypes relating to gender and race are still stubbornly present even in the most developed countries). As such, stereotypes are easily transmitted from generation to generation and constitute genuine violence against women.
