Content Analysis Of Gender Roles Essay

This is the thesis set out by "Miss Representation", a documentary directed and produced by actress, activist and documentary filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom. The documentary gives a good perspective on why the representation of women in the media is so important in our society. The message the film gets across to viewers is that the way women are often portrayed is damaging- to media consumers of all genders and ages. The way the media treats women is the cause of soaring numbers of women who develop eating disorders, the sexualisation of, and violence against women.

Our society seems to have a lot of very stereotypical misconceptions about boys and girls and the role they are expected to play. Media has a pivotal role to play in this front concerning the idea of defining and framing gender. Media consumers transform the messages in that and make demeanors with

In an era where media consumption is constant and influential, understanding the portrayal of women in media is crucial. What struck me most about the film was its ability to highlight the insidious nature of gender bias in media, revealing how it seeps into our subconscious and shapes societal perceptions of women. The interviews with media professionals and powerful women from various fields were particularly compelling, as they provided first-hand accounts of the challenges women face in navigating a media landscape rife with stereotypes and limitations. The topic of Miss Representation is highly relevant to media and popular culture. Media plays a significant role in shaping cultural norms and values, and the representation of women in media reflects and perpetuates societal attitudes towards gender.

The main problem when it comes to gender neutrality is that, “the media creates and maintains gender stereotypes, by displaying men and women in stereotypical gender roles and by promoting characters or media personalities that represent certain gender norms to new generations of viewers” (Issit). This is a negative cycle, that continually makes it more and more difficult for women to find equality on screen. In a study conducted by sociologist Stacy L. Smith, it was found that on primetime television, women were employed for 44.3% of the total roles while men possessed the other 54.5%. Only 38.9% of speaking roles on television were women as well (Bahadur). Off camera, women typically possess even fewer roles making up only 7% of media writers, 13% of directors and 20% of media producers (Issit).

For this paper, I am going to be discussing gender in the institution of films. Specifically, I am going to be discussing femininity in coming of age films. Coming of age movies set an expectation for teens and young adults because it lays out what they should fear and what they should thrive achieve in order to transition into adulthood successfully. The media defines cultural and gender norms that are often very stereotypical. The cultivation theory suggests that exposure to stereotypes in the media can lead to adopting these beliefs in their real lives (Giaccardi et al., 2016). In the media, masculinity is often portrayed as aggression, power, dominance, status seeking, emotional restraint, heterosexuality, and risk taking. (Giaccardi et al., 2016) In most films and media it is hegemonic masculinity that is displayed rather than other types of masculinity (Giaccardi et al., 2016.) In regards to femininity, it is often constructed as white suburban and focused on consumerism (Bickford, 2015). When portraying women and young girls in films and TV shows a common narrative is often the woman deciding between her career and personal happiness, because women can not have it all (Bickford, 2015). In coming of age movies young people in some way often tell the narratives of trying to achieve some form of femininity or masculinity. I will be analyzing the characters in two movies, The Duff and Dope. I would like to discuss and analyze the differences in how gender is portrayed in

Nearly half the population is female yet when observing Hollywood and media there is not a fair and accurate representation. From the ratio of actresses and actors to those behind the scene, it seems that the industry if very male-oriented. The commonly used idiom “Life imitates art” accurate describes the cultural context of how being surrounded by mass media has consciously and unconsciously affected society as a whole. Films especially have shaped how we understand the world and interact with each other. The roles we associate with gender have become a prominent issue in media studies. Women often face more difficulties trying to gain the success their male counterparts have in every aspect and position within the industry. This is due to multiple factors that will be discussed in depth in the following paragraphs. With the imbalance of the sexes and often skewed portrayals of women, an argument is to be made that, while Hollywood has improved on gender equality, there are still harmful depictions caused by lack of females in the industry and typecasting women which has led to misogynistic undertones in films.

Gender and the Media by Rosalind Gill addresses gender stereotypes that are brought onto women and men through the media resulting in objectification and subjectification. Gill discusses how the representation of gender is altered as a result of the media in Western societies. Gender and the Media is aimed to address the rapid transmission of media and how those changes affect the construction of feminine and masculine gender roles in society. Gill uses her interest in the contradictions of gender construction by society, to analyze gender and the media. Using feminism as a backbone for her research, Gill and many commentators support the idea that feminist ideas are common and may even affect the media. Gender and the Media addresses multiple forms of media: postfeminism in advertising, gender in the news and journalism, and gender in magazines. Gild aims to address the construction of gender representations, elements for gender analysis, and feminist culture with Gender and the Media.

In this research report I aim to explore the way in which gender roles have been represented in films through time and to analyse if the representation of each gender role has changed. More specifically, I would like this report to acknowledge, in particular, how women are portrayed throughout the film industry and I want to explore how these representations can affect the viewers of these films by the stereotypes that they create. Introduction The media hold an enormous amount of control and influence over society and the way in which the media chooses to portray each gender can have a massive impact on society and how they perceive and put pressure on each other to live up to these roles. Media is unconsciously filtered

Mass media has influenced gender norms in the United States since the 1950’s when television became a household phenomenon. Per Jacqueline Coombs in an article titled Gender Differences in the Influence of Television on Gender Ideology, she asserts, “television is a powerful source in disseminating information and shaping opinion, exposing people from many different social settings to the same messages” (207). These messages can influence gender norms and reinforce personal gender identity. Throughout the evolution of television, gender roles have expanded portraying women as leading character. However, there is still an undercurrent of patriarchal ideology.

After examining multiple sources, the damaging effects on women that is influenced through media involves many different aspects as it includes body dissatisfaction and body shaming, mental disorders including eating disorders, depression, and low self-esteem, and impacts on sexuality based on how women are portrayed in media. It can be concluded that they hypothesis was correct in the sense that the media is influencing the sexualization of girls and causing these negative effects to occur.

Media is the message and messenger. We can learn more from media than any other source of information. The content deliver by media is shaping our society. Every day 10 hours 45 minutes of an US children is consumed by media. Therefore, media is shaping minds and emotions of children. It is the time we rely heavily on smart phones, computers and internet for many aspects of our lives. These developments in technology bring a great change in the field of media. Is there any change in the representation of men and women in the media? Women hold only 3% of clouth positions in telecommunications, entertainment, publishing and advertising (Youtube, 2013).

As you get older media only has a bigger impact on your life. Teenage girls watch certain television shows weekly. Teenage girls want to be who they are watching. Television reality stars even set unrealistic expectations for teenage girls. “All the different kinds of media there is it’s only caused poor reflection on women’s confidence.

The first research entitled “The representation of gender roles in the media - An analysis of gender discourse in Sex and the City movies ” was constructed by Therese Ottosson and Xin Cheng in 2012.

Gender is a social construct—that is, a society 's assumptions about the way a man or woman should look and behave. It is argued that the media plays a big role in the way that gender is created and is influenced over society. The Mass media plays a significant role in a modern world, by broadcasting information in fast pace and giving entertainment to vast audiences. This essay is going to assess whether a focus on gender can enrich our understanding of contemporary media, by analysing gender roles within the television show Sex in the City.

In today’s mass media world, television is one of the most pervasive and influential form of mass communication for children. Children are now born into homes in which for the first time in American history a centralized commercial institution, Television, rather than parents tells them about the way they need to act according to their gender roles (Signorelli, 2001). The more time viewers spend with television the more likely their conceptions about the world and its people will reflect what they see on television (Signorelli, 2001). Through pursuing an experiment and reading the findings of Signorelli (2001), we can conclude that children’s television shows convey the traditional ideas of gender roles for women but these gender roles are