Gender construction and the media

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Gender construction and the media
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The construction of gender

• Gender and sex are closely related but not
  identical
• Gender is the socially recognized/assigned/
  enforced set of behaviors tied to sex
• While the basics of sex are biologically
  universal, gender (sex roles, etc.) vary from
  time to time and culture to culture
• You are born with your sex, but must (for the
  most part) learn your gender

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Learning your gender

• The teaching begins early
• Girl babies are pink, boy babies are blue
• Girl babies are treated differently than are boy
  babies
• They receive different toys
• They do not seem to be all that different in
  their behavior without coaching

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Toddlers and preschoolers
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Media for preschoolers

• Are the gender treatments in media for
  preschoolers stereotypic?
• Yes and no
• Many educational TV programs are pretty gender
  neutral

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Grade schoolers
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See Jane Key Findings

• In the 101 studied G-Rated films, 1990-2004,
  there are three male characters for every one
  female character
• Fewer than one out of three (28 percent) of the
  speaking characters (both real and animated) are
  female
• Fewer than one in five (17 percent) of the
  characters in crowd scenes are female
• More than four out of five (83 percent) of the
  films narrators are male

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G-Rated Films
Source SeeJane
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Of the 3,039 individual speaking characters found
across the films 28 percent (n851) are female,
and 72 percent (n2,188) are male. This is 257
males for every 100 females.
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• When looking at characters that comprise groups,
  an even more distorted picture emerges. Out of
  the 1,210 characters shown in groups, 83 percent
  (n1,010) are male and only 17 percent (n200)
  are female. Gender bias also is found in
  narration. Only 17 percent of storytellers are
  female.

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SeeJane (Smith)
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What about boys?

• Male characters in G-rated films are only half as
  likely (34.6) as females (66.3) to be
  identifiable as parents. They are about half as
  likely (31.9) as females (60.7) to be
  identifiable as married or in a committed
  relationship.

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Male roles by race
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Aggressive/violent characters
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• Children are influenced by what they see around
  them, and the repeated viewings of these movies
  make them a powerful force in shaping childrens
  developing ideas about gender. Research
  conducted in the 1970s showed that when young
  children see someone on the screen that looks
  like them but engages in non-stereotyped
  activities, they are more likely to try out those
  activities themselves.
• Lawrence Cohen, PhD, psychologist and author of
  Playful Parenting

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• In a 2003 nationwide survey, the Kaiser Family
  Foundation found that over half (53) of parents
  say that their zero to six-year olds have at
  least 20 videos or DVDs in the home. Further,
  almost half (46) of the caregivers surveyed
  reported the children they care for watched at
  least one video or DVD per day. Content in
  G-rated movie videos and DVDs may have a
  particularly strong influence on childrens
  social learning about gender because children
  tend to watch the same movies over and over.

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Teens

• Midriff and Mook (Frontline)

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Adults