Stereotypes Of Women In Media

The fight for gender equality is neither a new nor diminishing topic. From as far back as history writes, women have always played the domestic role, while men took on the provider and overpowering role. Men have always been viewed as the dominating sex, and women the less capable and less successful. A woman’s role is supposedly to answer to any male figure, especially her husband. Her ambition is to fully care for her family; not to provide and income by working forty hours a week, because that is what the man is supposed to do. The notion for so many years was that women did not need to earn an education because they would not need it to take care of children and keeping the house. This view of women even carries over into television
and other forms of media. In an article titled Work- Family Imagery and Gender Stereotypes: Television and the Reproduction of Difference, Lori Wolin stated, “compared to men characters, women in the advertisements were less prevalent more likely to be shown in families, less likely to hold jobs, less likely to be employed in professional occupations, more likely to display active/instrumental behavior, and more likely to be pictured as sex objects.” This statement alone has highlighted the exact description of how men and women are not equal to men. Throughout this article, the material we have learned in this course, and another article
Titled Gender Issues in Advertising- an Oversight Synthesis of Research, work, television and media have influenced the stereotype that men and women are not equal.
Media has a major influence on our opinion and view of the world.
And like everything else, television and other media sources have a great influence on the stereotype of women. As mentioned before, women are advertised as domesticated women who aren’t always employed. Lori Wolin wrote, “generally speaking, a frame acts much the same way in media analysis that a schema does in cognitive psychology by selecting out certain aspects of a perceived reality and making them more salient than others. “Advertisements can play a crucial role in the process of stereotyping gender by depicting how we think men and women behave rather than how we actually behave as men and women” Scott Coltrane quoted. Whether it is deliberate or not, we are all influenced by the images we see and the words we hear. If we continuously hear something or watch it eventually becomes an influence on our overall opinion. “Televised male characters are generally shown as knowledgeable, independent, powerful, successful, and prone to swift decisive action. Televised female characters are most often depicted as passive, emotional, dependent on men, and eager to serve others.” (Scott Coltrane) On television and in other media such as magazines, women seem to only be given certain roles; roles that a man would be embarrassed or emasculated by. For example, only women appear in magazines such as Cosmo, Seventeen, and Playboy. This notion of women only participating in and representing certain products in
commercials and magazines is very similar to only thinking women should be nurses and men should be CEO’s. Although the reasoning is often questionable, women in the workforce use to be scarce. Only those who were widowed or divorced would seek employment to provide for their families. Even then, women were only given jobs such as cashiers and nursing jobs. As times went on, women worked hard to change the notion that only men could provide for the family and be successful. New hopes started to arise for women as more and more wanted to make their own destinies. Education plays a major role in the type and level of job attainable, especially for a woman. Also noted by Lori Wolin in Work- Family Imagery and Gender Stereotypes: Television and the Reproduction of Difference, “The overall gender segregation of college majors in the past three decades has steadily declined, and women now outnumber men in colleges across the country.” The 1960’s were a time when men dominated college campuses. But by the 1980’s there wasn’t much of a difference in the number of men and women. Later in the article, Lori Wolin continued with a comment of, “Some surveys even found that girls had higher occupational aspirations than boys.” Women have been limited in the work force by a “glass ceiling” which only allows them to hold certain levels of occupation. The glass ceiling is the main motivation for women who wish to see equality with men. This has pushed women to increase their ambition and motivation in order to break the barrier, surpassing men who rely on the stereotype to maintain their position. Throughout this course, we spent a lot of time discussing the difference in roles between men and women.
When writing this analysis, and throughout this entire class I was under the impression that stereotyping women and men into certain responsibilities was something that needed to be altered. After going through the first chapter of this course, one of the quotes I had passed stated, “Women and men don’t have equal opportunity because inequality is built into our capitalist economic systems. Inequality is linked to class structure.” This quote caught my attention because in the articles I have reflected on, illustrating how men and women are treated differently and essentially discriminated against by men is a harsh reality. If both sexes were deemed equal, would be worse. The very same reasoning is behind our three branches of government. If all the power was granted to both sexes, catastrophe is guaranteed to
strike. In conclusion, although there are definitely stereotypical views of the characteristics of men and women, they are in fact somewhat necessary. The media has always, and will most likely continue to greatly influence our views and opinions. By only casting women for certain television commercials and other media items, our notion of women and their roles in society will continue. It is in our very nature to rank and only hold certain people to higher powers. We as humans will continue to judge who is more entitled for a job or responsibility. Even though women are making changes in their education and setting higher goals and ambitions, gender stereotypes will continue to be a struggle.