Changing Gender Roles in Media | Discussion

Running head: CHANGING GENDER ROLES IN MEDIA
CHANGING GENDER ROLES IN MEDIA
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CHANGING GENDER ROLES IN MEDIA
CHANGING GENDER ROLES IN MEDIA
Media are the contact sources or devices used to collect knowledge or data and
distribute it. The concept applies to elements of the mainstream media marketing industry,
such as print newspapers, news services, imaging, publishing, entertainment, radio and
television broadcasting, and advertisement. Across too many cases, society is shaped and
influenced by the press. It is the mass media that ensures everyone gets details on a variety of
information and often shapes views of the population as well as interferes with the judgment
about different topics. It's the newspapers that keep people up-to-date and make people aware
of the present situation around them, including the news around the world (O'shaughnessy,
Stadler & Casey, 2016). Gender roles can be described as the social beliefs, attitudes, actions,
and behaviors appropriate for males and females, respectively, according to the society. For a
long time, the gender role for men and women are opposite to each other, creating a
stereotype for each, and the media play a pivotal role in building these norms. This essay will
shed light on the significant change in gender roles portrayed in the media with time, the
change in female representation in media, the brief history of gender roles of women in
media, and the modern scenario of gender roles in media (Lindsey, 2015).
The nature of gender stereotype has evolved over the period of history in response to
the social shifts in the structure of the relationship between men and women. Media promotes
the concept of gender stereotyping by its content representation, whether it entails under-
representing women in the media or depicting inequalities of various media formats.
Previously, the central dogma of media representation revolves around masculinity and
femininity for men and women, respectively (Coyne et al., 2014). The dominating presence
of the idea of masculinity and femininity reflects the generally recognized distinctions
between men and women and is a product of cultural acceptance. The area of communication
studies has experienced significant changes with the advent of the internet by changing the

CHANGING GENDER ROLES IN MEDIA
shift from one-way sender controlled communication medium to two-way recipient oriented
presentation. A study integrated and challenged theoretical data research with perspectives
from the critical aspect of polysemy and intersectional. The finding of the study states that
gender representation aligns strongly with time, location, and, in a particular professional
role. Models reflect the fashion field's unique 'aesthetic capital,' which is represented in very
precise forms. With time, in Italy, the differences between men and women in
representation increase significantly. Though male and female depictions in the Netherlands
adhere to classically 'feminine' versions. This modern style utilizes different signs and
symbols to reflect gender and professional status. This distinction between females and
males, and models with a non-model individual (Kuipers, van der Laan, and Arfini, 2017).
The history of women's role in media is not very delightful. The mass media
neglected women or misrepresents them with flawed and distorted perceptions and facts. The
media primarily equalise the role of a women to their body and exploited them for a long
time. Women's output consisted primarily of subjects concerning entertainment, sexuality and
tabloids . Media most often depicted women as secondary, tied and reliant on male
characters. The media not only declines to promote and empower women in their legal rights,
but it also confirms their oppressive and unequal beliefs of society. The media more often
depicts women as perpetrators, sex objects, supporting character or dependent on others. Not
only does reporting struggle to change women's condition, but it further worsens things and
leads to their suffering. Continually, women were objectified without any apparent attempts
to change the distressing norm. Women's role was to get dressed up and advertised, which
were represented as the emancipator for women (Sharda, 2014). A study that calculated the
amount of provocative skin displayed in the highest-grossing domestic films by major and
minor female protagonists over a 20-year period and analyzed the findings to assess if the sex
objectification differed in scale and meaning. He studies significantly fills the gap of an

CHANGING GENDER ROLES IN MEDIA
abundance of literature explaining women's sexual objectification in the film in general and
lack of studies demonstrating how objectification changes as women measured by race. The
research stated that until 2013 women protagonists were not given the speaking part more
than 15% in the highest-grossing films. Films directed toward female viewers frequently fail
in representations of independent women with whom actual representatives of the audience
can connect. The commercial films primarily depicted women as the symbol of a sacrifice
considering their role to play in the family, bringing up children, and so on. Objectification
Theory offers the rational basis behind a lot of the studies carried out during the past decade
on women's sexualization. The theory-guided examination of body portrayal and attire of
female artists in their music videos has done to assess whether musicians 'self-objectivation
ranged from race to genre in a material review of the top 10 "Hot 100" Billboard songs. The
finding states that women are significantly more sexually objectified than men in the media
(Murphy, 2015).
The shift of the role of women in media changed with time, but the equalization has
not still built, and the stereotypic representation is still on the table concerning gender roles.
Researcher findings state that women's magazines contain ten and a half times more
advertisements and stories than men's magazines, encouraging weight loss, promoting
specific acceptance of body image. Television and films are promoting the relevance of a
slender body as an indicator of the beauty of women. The majority of the women protagonists
in the mass media are underweight, whereas a scanty number of them have a size more than
average. The body-shaming does not only stop there, but the overweight female artists are
also found to get negative comments in the visual media, lowering their acceptance in the
society and audience (Zotos & Tsichla, 2014). The female model weighted eight percent less
than the average woman twenty years earlier, but the weight of today's models is 23 percent
less than an average woman. The advertisements the media communicates to people

CHANGING GENDER ROLES IN MEDIA
regarding thinness, health, and appearance convince "average" women that they are always in
need of improvement, and the female body is an item to please (Perloff, 2014).
Newspapers has own segment to reporting on violence, abuse, elections,
controversies, sports and economy, substantive conversations, and articles about women's
problems, in general, are mostly ignored or suppressed. Newspaper columnists are very rarely
female. Most of those on leadership sites are liberal supporters or so-called socialites. In
vernacular news, women's inclusion just gets a part in colorful pages, which contains a ton of
speculation around T.V's star. One explanation for this condition is the lower number of
females in these fields. However, in contrast with their male equivalents, even the current
number of women was underrepresented. Media was controlled entirely by men at the initial
stage of its existence. The representations of men and women in the media have been adapted
to the tastes of men from the beginning. To put it another way, men produced public
representations of men and women on the basis of their wishes that they want to implement in
reality (Mandelbaum, 2019).
To tackle gender inequality needs imaginative and inventive solutions because some
of the more incremental methods have not been entirely effective. There is an increasing
volume of work on equal opportunity reform, and its gender ramifications, while most of it
centred on the adoption process, with analyses frequently ending at the stage that a proposal
is officially developed. The recent massive success of films, series, and advertisements
showcasing a strong female protagonist widen the path for gender equality by breaking the
stereotypic measure of masculinity and femininity. This creation eroded the requisite of the
institutional basis for political activism (Lourenço, 2016). Gender and media research, which
can be more precisely called the feminist media studies, are embedded in the second wave
of the feminist movement (Devereux, 2014). Since the late 20th century, women across the
world have concentrated on introducing political and legal changes to expand women's

CHANGING GENDER ROLES IN MEDIA
empowerment and exposure to government services and to ensure their freedoms are secured.
During liberation struggles, many women were politicized when nations split away from
colonial powers, and the activism's history has been passed to women's media. Several
feminist politicians have been inspired by suffering from exclusion problems. Several
feminist politicians have been inspired by suffering from exclusion problems and the
misogynistic inclusion in mass media to start up their own publishing companies, figures are
thousands today. Women's groups such as the South African group Gender network have
conducted concurrent missions to establish their magazines, such as the Gender and Media
Diversity Journal, including programs of educating journalists to address pervasive
oppressive biases in reporting, advertisement, films, and television programs. Another
problem of mainstream journalism was the scarcity of women's exposure to the journalism or
core media fields (womenintheworld, 2020). Women in print media, television, radio stations,
film making, and media company management are significantly underrepresented. According
to the policymakers, the inclusion of a massive number of women in media will eliminate the
gender inequality and objectification of women in media. Women made gradual strides in
media administration and policymaking at both the regional and foreign levels. Schemes like
the USAID-funded Women's Edition have provided women firm platforms for careers in
mass media (unesco.org, 2020).
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that the representation and gender role
of women in media is an area of concern for many years. The history of the women
objectification, oppressed, under-depicted, and sexualized visualization in media influenced
the cultural norm and social ideology of the people. Their exposure of women in the
administrative level of media was infrequent, and there is still a lot more to do to equalize the
human resource based on gender in the media houses. The gender role of women in media
was so much ignored that there is not enough research or evidence to depict the actual picture

CHANGING GENDER ROLES IN MEDIA
of their life. However, the modern society are much more liberal giving opportunity based on
talent but not on gender. There is also the feminist movements to empower the female role in
media. The movements and the approaches can draw a better tomorrow for the women in
media representation. Strict law, policy, legislation are need to be implemented to ensure the
biasfree, respectful and objective free representation of the women in media including
efficient creative team to enhance the gender role keeping a firm balance.

CHANGING GENDER ROLES IN MEDIA

CHANGING GENDER ROLES IN MEDIA
References
Coyne, S. M., Linder, J. R., Rasmussen, E. E., Nelson, D. A., & Collier, K. M. (2014). It’sa
bird! It’sa plane! It’sa gender stereotype!: Longitudinal associations between
superhero viewing and gender stereotyped play. Sex Roles, 70(9-10), 416-430.
Devereux, C. (2014). Hysteria, feminism, and gender revisited: The case of the second
wave. ESC: English Studies in Canada, 40(1), 19-45.
Kuipers, G., van der Laan, E. and Arfini, E.A., 2017. Gender models: changing
representations and intersecting roles in Dutch and Italian fashion magazines, 1982–
2011. Journal of Gender Studies, 26(6), pp.632-648.
Lindsey, L. L. (2015). Gender roles: A sociological perspective. Routledge.
Lourenço, M.E., 2016. Gender equality in media content and operations: articulating
academic studies and policy–a presentation. Studies in Higher Education, 41(5),
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Mandelbaum, M. (2019). History, man, and reason: A study in nineteenth-century thought.
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CHANGING GENDER ROLES IN MEDIA
unesco.org. (2020). unesco.org [Ebook]. unesco.org. Retrieved from
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