Representation of Gender in the Media

11 Key excerpts on "Representation of Gender in the Media"

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  Media Studies: A Complete Introduction: Teach Yourself

  • Joanne Hollows(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Teach Yourself

    (Publisher)

  12 Media, Representation and Gender

  This chapter focuses on how media texts construct the meaning of gendered identities. Building on what you have already learned about representation and identity, it examines how the media play a crucial role in defining what it means to be a man and a woman.

  The binary opposition between men and women shapes the way that people understand and experience their identities. This opposition creates the sense that men and women are fundamentally different. As you will learn in this chapter, these differences matter because they reproduce inequalities between men and women.

  Media representation helps to construct and reproduce the meanings associated with masculinity and femininity. If you take a look at advertising, computer games or films, you should quickly realize that men are associated with very different qualities to women. This chapter will help you to learn about how the media represent gender so you can make sense of these differences.

  Although media representations continue to define the meaning of masculinity and femininity in different ways, this does not mean that these meanings are fixed. Because the meanings associated with gendered identities change, they need to be studied historically.

  The media are frequently criticized for the ways in which they represent women. However, the media do not operate in a uniform way. Some TV shows and films challenge aspects of gender inequality while others reproduce these inequalities. Campaigners use social media to protest against the representation of women as sexual objects while facing sexist abuse from trolls. The media operate as a site of struggle over the meaning of gender.

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  Screening Gender on Children's Television

  The Views of Producers around the World

  • Dafna Lemish(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  status quo and the general subordination of women by reproducing social perceptions that legitimize dominant ideologies, such as patriarchy (based on gender differences), capitalism (based on economic-class differences), and colonialism (based on ethnic differences).

  However, given that representations are discursive constructions (i.e. they are realities constructed through discourse), they are not perceived to be enduring practices. Rather, they assume different forms and meanings in different places and times under varied political, cultural, social, and economic contexts, and within diverse ideologies. As a result, gender representations are understood to be dynamic, fluid, changeable, and contested sets of social practices and perceptions. Accordingly, the investigation and analysis of representations serves as a central way to understand gender. And, as advanced by feminist media researchers, such investigations are an important part of the feminist project of problematizing and critiquing ways of knowing, as well as taken-for-granted assumptions about our lives.

  Representations and Reality

  The complex relationships between gender representations and reality have been the focus of much academic debate, particularly in the Cultural Studies tradition, in general, and more specifically the branch that developed in England since the 1950s. The latter tradition, and specifically the Birmingham School, was important in the formation of second wave social and cultural feminist thought, particularly in drawing insights from structuralism and post-structuralism. These approaches take the view that representations do not have an original, authentic “reality” that can be represented or misrepresented accurately (i.e. a concrete reality of being a woman and a concrete reality of being a man), but rather see gender as a form of “performance” involving the acting out of expected social scripts.32

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  Gender and Family Entrepreneurship

  • Vanessa Ratten, Veland Ramadani, Leo-Paul Dana, Robert D. Hisrich, Joao Ferreira(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  Representations of gender The media as the mirror of gender roles

  Marlene Loureiro, Galvão Meirinhos, Carmem Leal and Vanessa Ratten

  1. Introduction

  Our society currently believes in the “equality” between Man and Woman; both have the same skills, attitudes, feelings and aptitudes. However, what has been proven is that, as far as their representation and role in society are concerned, there are still traces of stereotypes and traditional roles. In this sense, in this chapter we try to present a brief exploration on the role of the mass media in the communication and transmission of social ideas of gender and of gender roles.

  The mass media are one of the social and political places of identity construction, and mass media also construct definitions and ideologies of the different age groups, ethnical and social classes, culture and sexual groups (Silveirinha, 2004). In this perspective, we postulate that the media function as a mirror of the society they portray, perpetuating their values, ideologies, laws and norms.

  Thus, this work of reflection seeks to raise the main research topics related to gender presented in the mass media, with an initial focus on the role of gender in the “positioning” of the viewer. This includes the role of male and female images in the mass media (movies, television, photographs, publicity). Later, the subject of research turns out to be the role played by the mass media in the transmission of patriarchal ideology and the place of women in society. Nowadays, there are more connections between gender studies focusing on gender discourse and gender roles and identities presented and/or conveyed by the media.

  The issue of gender touches almost every aspect of the relationship between the mass media, society, mass communication and the definition of gender. Therefore, this chapter will cover the following topics:

  • the media and society;
  • gender as social construction;
  • studies of gender and feminism;
  • the media as the mirror of gender roles.

  2. The media

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  Media Studies

  Key Issues and Debates

  • Eoin Devereux(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Media Representations of Social Structure: Gender

  8

  Joke Hermes

   

  DEFINITION

  Gender is the cultural significance given to biological difference of reproductive organs. It refers to men and women, as well as to appropriate and less appropriate ways to be a man or a woman (masculinity and femininity). Gender is closely related to sexuality and to difference more generally. Often gender is seen as the ‘original’ difference and as a universal divide in all human groups. This, however, is arguable. There are more than two biological categories. Gender does not assume the same cultural significance everywhere, and gender codes have changed significantly over time. The analytical importance in using gender as a concept is to denote how society is structured in terms of power relations. It points to the huge difference between social categories and the qualities we ascribe to groups. In turn, it is of vital importance to understand that categories never fully describe how actual individuals live their lives.

  Introduction

  This chapter will show why it is important to understand how the media represent gender. It will argue that constructions of femininity and masculinity are part of a dominant ideology that prescribes ‘proper’ behaviour for men and for women (Goffman, 1976; Macdonald, 1995). Central to such proper behaviour is to have the ‘correct’ sexuality. In the Western world dominant ideology, however, is not currently imposed on us dictatorially. There are varieties in proper and less proper ways of being a woman or a man. There is room for different sexualities. The media, in their capacity of informing us about the world and as entertainers, show us an immense range of possibilities and practices of ‘doing gender’. The value attached to these varied possibilities is not equal, nor is it always possible for all of them to be shown. To be or become aware of the many ways in which gender can have meaning, and the weight attached to different forms in different contexts, is what we need to train in order to understand both the media and the societies in which they operate.

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  The Media

  An Introduction

  • Daniele Albertazzi, Paul Cobley(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In a consumer society we are constantly exposed to sexually-charged images through advertising. These images predominantly seek not to broaden our attitudes to sexuality, but to persuade us to part with our cash by acquiring products that may enable us to emulate dominant, idealised modalities of sexuality. While the representation of sexuality is obviously not in itself a problem, much mainstream portrayal of it, as in the example of advertising, seems bound by narrow, stereotypical notions of what is acceptable or unacceptable, or of how people ‘should’ experience and express their sexuality. Scholars debate the ways and the extent to which different social groups are influenced by the representations of sexuality they encounter or seek out, but there is general agreement that our sexual behaviour is indeed influenced by what we read and see in the media, which provides a pervasive form of sexual socialisation (Brown 2002). Moreover, the ways in which a particular culture represents sexualities can tell us a great deal about that culture’s priorities, anxieties and concerns. It therefore becomes essential to question the messages embedded in the representations of sexuality by which we are surrounded.

  Critical discussions of sexuality emphasise its socially-constructed nature: that is, sexual acts, identities and behaviours do not result purely from our biological instincts, nor do they carry a universally valid, fixed meaning. Instead, sexual identities and expressions of sexuality differ in meaning and form depending on the context in which they occur; in other words, cultural contexts influence both how our sense of ourselves as sexual beings is produced, and how, why, where, when and with whom we may choose to engage in, or refrain from, sexual activities of any kind. Gender theory is based on the premise that gender identity (masculinity and femininity) does not derive from our biology, but is formed through a series of culturally imposed, learned acts and behaviours (see Chapter 28

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  The Handbook of Children, Media, and Development

  • Sandra L. Calvert, Barbara J. Wilson, Sandra L. Calvert, Barbara J. Wilson(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  We identify common gender stereotypes in different kinds of media content, and then briefly introduce key theories that help explain how the media affect gender. We then look at what social scientific studies have found about the effects of media portrayals on children’s and adolescents’ understanding of themselves and others as males and females. Finally, we offer some suggestions for future research on the role of the media in gender socialization in a culture that is increasingly defined and known through the media. Throughout the chapter we consider the array of media now readily available to young people, often in the privacy of their own bedrooms (Scantlin, this volume, Chapter 3), including not only television, but also music, movies, magazines, Internet sites, video and computer games, and the advertising that permeates all these media. Sex and Gender Biological sex characteristics (differences based on chromosomes and genitalia) typically identify individuals as male or female. Early research, particularly from an evolutionary psychology tradition, considered sex a binary variable, male and female, but these categories did not cover some important anomalous situations, such as when a person born with female biological characteristics chooses to live as a male. To address such possibilities, the idea of “sex category” was developed. Membership in a sex category is clear when individuals use “identificatory dis-plays that proclaim one’s membership to one or the other category” (West & Zimmerman, 1987, p. 27). Gender can then be defined as the socially constructed conduct that is perceived as acceptable for the members of a sex category, regard-less of how one was born. In this chapter we use the term “gender” rather than “sex” or “sex category” to suggest that what it means to be male or female depends on what the culture makes of it (Zinn, Hondagneu-Sotelo, & Messner, 2001).

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  Researching Language, Gender and Sexuality

  A Student Guide

  • Helen Sauntson(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  6  Researching linguistic representations of gender and sexuality in the media

  Cameron (2014b) makes an important observation that ‘the media’ isn’t just one thing – it is many things which can include a range of mass media outlets (e.g. TV, radio, newspapers, magazines) as well as social media and other forms of online media. What all media have in common is that they are considered to be central sites where discursive constructions of, and negotiation over, gender and sexuality take place. Media texts play an important social role in offering representations of social practices and in constructing, producing and circulating cultural values and meanings. Media texts are considered important to study from a linguistic perspective because they are powerful – they reproduce and represent realities. No representations in written, oral, visual or multimodal media are ever neutral in terms of gender and sexuality. All present selective versions which can confirm or challenge the status quo through the way they construct, or fail to construct, images of femininity, masculinity and sexuality. Scholars of language and media argue that there is a dialectical relationship between media and society in that media both shapes and is shaped by society (Chouliaraki, 1999; Fairclough, 1995). This is important for the field of language, gender and sexuality as it indicates that media texts can play a role in shaping ideologies about gender and sexuality.

  In the past, researchers have employed non-linguistic methods to investigate gender in media texts, such as content analysis and thematic analysis. However, these approaches have been criticised for lacking criticality and only focusing, for example, on how many characters and news sources in prime-time news are women (e.g. Gauntlett, 2008; Ross, 2012). What they do not do is focus on how language is used to construct certain kinds of men and/or women. For this reason, within linguistics, studies of the media have more commonly made use of F/CDA (see Chapter 4 ), an approach which investigates how power, dominance, inequality and abuse around gender and sexuality are enacted through language. As explained in Chapter 4

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  Women, Media and Sport

  Challenging Gender Values

  • Pamela J. Creedon(Author)
  • 1994(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  The Media's Role in Stereotyped Images 29 women-and their bodies-through an institutionalized socially con-structed system of gender roles and values. When we speak of gender roles and values, we are focusing on the social definitions of female and male that have traditionally represented two mutually exclusive, dichotomous polar opposites. Whereas male and female are biological terms that represent physical differences in size, structure and reproductive capacity, feminine and masculine correspond to social, historical and cultural meanings that have been associated with these biological differences (Betterton, 1987; Birrell & Cole, 1990; Smith-Rosenberg & Rosenberg, 1987; Vertinsky, 1987).Wesuggest, however, that the relationship between sexual difference and gender difference is more than a mere associ-ation-s-sexual (physical) difference becomes gender (social) difference. Thus, the biological signifiers of being female (e.g., physical attri-butes, size, structure and reproductive capacity) require individuals to look, dress and act differently,in terms of gender roles and gender values, than those individuals who carry the biological signifiers of being male. Although few would argue that, for the most part, women and men conform to these gender role expectations, our analysis extends beyond gender difference and how that difference is linked to sexual or physical difference. We are suggesting that gender difference is translated into gender hierarchy, because in existing social arrange-ments females are defined not only as other than but as less than their male counterparts. In Western culture, normative expectations hold that males are active, aggressive, and spontaneous whereas [females are] weak, passive and responsive (Nead, as cited in Duncan, 1990, p. 25). The critical point underlying these normative expectations is that being active, aggressive and spontaneous is considered superior to being weak, passive and responsive.

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  A Beginner's Guide to Language and Gender

  • Allyson Jule(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Multilingual Matters

    (Publisher)

  Part 2

  Understanding Gender and Language Use in Various Contexts – Brief Introductions Passage contains an image 3 Gender and Language Use in the Media and Technology Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a rigid regulatory frame which congeal over time to produce the appearance of a ‘natural’ kind of being. Judith Butler

  The first two chapters (Part 1) laid out some necessary understandings in regards to gender studies, feminism, and how gender and language closely connect with each other. The study of gender and language focuses on understanding the relationship between gender and language in various contexts. Modern media are such contexts, and they have much to offer the field of gender and language. It is clear that we live in a world which is increasingly saturated by media and the media’s presentations and representations of gender. In particular, one wonders how are the media’s ‘images and cultural constructions’ connected to patterns of inequality, domination and oppression (Gill, 2007: 7)?

  Feminist media scholars such as Rosalind Gill (2007) have offered ‘rigorous analyses [of media] in the context of ethical and political commitments to creating a more just world’ (p. 7). Gill explains how the second-wave feminist campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s faced a significant challenge that earlier women’s movements had not experienced: ‘a world dominated by media’ (p. 9). Second-wave feminists were bombarded with representations of womanhood and gender relations in magazines and on television, in films and on billboards on an unprecedented scale. According to Gill, it is not surprising, under such circumstances, that the media became ‘a major focus of feminist research, critique and intervention’ (p. 9).

  It is not hard to see that gender as social performance aligns with sexuality and sexualization. When it comes to advertising, it is no secret that hyper-masculine and hyper-feminine images sell well. If we agree that society has been patriarchal in its power relations, then we can better understand how women have been presented and used as an object of men’s desire. A prime example of this is the persistent use of attractive women for the purpose of selling cars. In this view, the need for a heteronormative/heterosexual gendered identity requires men to associate power with sexual desire and women to see themselves through men’s eyes and as consumers of products needed to embellish aspects of themselves that are portrayed as desirable by men. Men are also used as consumers of certain products that enhance the illusion of masculine success (e.g. car advertisements appeal to semiotics

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  Gender and Social Psychology

  • Vivien Burr(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 5

  Representations and language

  IMAGES OF WOMEN AND MEN, whether written, spoken or visual, suffuse our everyday lives. Sometimes these very obviously carry stereotypical messages about the sexes, and so it is not surprising that, for example, pornography or television advertising have attracted criticism for the way they represent (and misrepresent) gender roles and relations. However, it may be argued that gender messages are also transmitted in much less obvious ways, and that questionable assumptions about women and men, and relations between them, are present in sources we might think of as quite harmless and indeed may even be embedded in the very language we speak.

  Identifying the existence of such images does not in itself demonstrate that they are instrumental in bringing about gender differences and inequalities, and there is some debate over the extent to which such messages are really taken in by people. Male and female models in the child’s environment have been thought to be a prime source of sex-role information (Kohlberg, 1966; Mischel, 1966) and the mass media are a rich source of such potential models. Other writers argue that the media are used and read in different ways by different individuals and that we cannot make assumptions about their effects. In this respect the situation is similar to the debate over the harmfulness of television violence. This is a debate which in the end cannot adequately be resolved through empirical (and in particular positivistic) research. There is no ethical or practical way of isolating the possible effects of representations in order to observe them.

  However, in trying to understand how such images might be influential, it seems fair to say that we cannot take as our model the ‘hypodermic syringe’; people do not simply and straightforwardly act upon messages to which they have been exposed. Those who argue that we should take gender representations seriously do not always fully theorise how this influence operates at a psychological level. Nevertheless, they have identified several issues which deserve consideration and which suggest that we cannot assume representations to be disconnected from the real world and its inequalities.

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  Diversity in U.S. Mass Media

  • Catherine A. Luther, Carolyn Ringer Lepre, Naeemah Clark(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Music videos have been shown to be a powerful source of information about social roles and culture, and an “agent of socialization.” 54 The images seen in these and other country music videos offer up an alternate perspective for teens and adolescents, who make up the primary audience for music videos, showing them that behaving as strong women or as sensitive men is both acceptable and the norm. Given the tremendous popularity of country music in the United States, these music videos reach have the potential to reach enormous audiences: compared to every other genre of music other than jazz, country music album sales dipped the least in 2008, only 3.2 percent versus 12.7 percent for total album sales, and Taylor Swift, country-pop crossover singer, holds the title for the top-selling digital artist in music history. 55 CONCLUDING REMARKS Without a doubt, defining gender and gender roles is confusing. There is no one singular experience, and no one universal mass opinion on how a particular social group should behave or should be depicted in entertainment media. Not only are there many dimensions to any gender identity, and how a person’s gender identity Representations of Gender in Television, Film, and Music Videos 178 is formed, but over time, and with societal and cultural changes, definitions of what constitutes femininity and masculinity change as well. When racial or ethnic identity is added to the mix, which of course it must be, as it is impossible to separate one from the other, the gender role changes too. Whether the argument is made that entertainment media reflect gender and society or whether society draws conclusions about gender as created in entertain- ment media, there has been a shift over the last half century toward a more complete depiction of women and men, though there is certainly still evidence that stereotypes of mainstream femininity and masculinity are alive and well in television, film, and music videos today.

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