Sociology G673 power and control Media representations of Gender

• Men know what they're doing
• It's about women a lot
• Funny or try to be
• Moremasculine around women
• Unexpected-doing house work
• Cars, money, brains

• A bit slow
• Moany and don't like a lot of things
• Funny
• Caring
• Gullable
• Appearance important
• Sexual objects
• Limited roles
• Mothers, housewives or sex objects

• 1.  Limited range of roles (women)
  • Women are represented in a narrower range of roles than men.
  • Women are found in domestic settings and rarely high occupational roles, such as...
  • Tuchman (see sociologists set)
  • However increase in stronger roles where women are strong, confident and assertive leaders.
  • In soap operas women are often represented as more independent whilst men are weaker.

• Men in past dominated the media, women absent from top jobs.
• Female issuse marginalised in media.
• Now growing number of female leads in films
• Tuchman (see sociologists set)

• Magazines organised around cult of femininity (ferguson, see sociologists set) which promotes/socialises into girls an ideal/stereotype of caring for others, family, marriage and being attractive.
• Magazines focus on...
  • 'How to look good for him'
• Media present particular idea body/physical image of women (Wolf, see sociologist set)-size zero causes eating disorders?
• However (Winship, see sociologists set) magazines support women and present broader range ofoptions not tackled before.

• Women are presented as sexual objects to be enoyed by men
• Women under the 'male gaze' of the camera lens- 'eyeing' them up (Mulvey)
• However , feminisation of masculinity-'new lad' and 'ladette' trend, girls encouraged to be sexual aggressors and binge on alcohol.

• Concern over media presentation of sexual violence.
• Study-'Hard news'-70% of crime stories focus on ****, victims stereotyped as good women violated by men or bad women leading men on.
• Smith (see sociologist set)
• Portray women as vunerable victims of men's superior strength, women need men to protect them.
  

• 80's action films paraded bodies of male heroes, representing threatening physical form of masculinity
• More recently-Male violence in cinema acquired glamour/stylishness to celebrate traditional masculinity, men gain admiration by solving problems through violence.
• However, also growing number of violent films with leading female characters.

Liberal Feminists

Media representations are laggin behind women's achievements in society, situation is improving.

Radical Feminists

Media reproduces patriarchy. Traditional images by a male dominted media keep women opressed.

Socialist/Marxist Feminists

Stereotypical images of men/women by product of need to make profit. Male dominated media aim to attract largest audience, do so through representation traditiional gender roles.

Criticisms

Underestimate women's ability to see through stereotyping.

• Pluralists-Media simply reflects social attitudes and meets needs of men and women. Who creates these needs?

• Reinforce stereotypes
• Encourage discriminationon those that don't fit the ideal
• Reduce women's self confidence
• Make women feel guilty for not fulfilling the stereotype
• Cause health problems (eating disorders/mental illness)