education

1. Postfeminism and equality: gender representations in the
media and why they matter
Lecture presented at Southampton Solent University
Dr. Carolina Matos
Lecturer in Media and Sociology
Department of Sociology
City University London
E-mail: Carolina.Matos.1@city.ac.uk

2. Gender and the media

3. Core points
 Gender and equality: why it still matters
 Gender and the media: from the 1950s to the contemporary contexts
 Post-feminism in the media: “choice feminism”, individuals and
consumerism
 The anxieties over the female body
 Advertising
 Film
 Journalism
 Examples: Bridget Jones, Joy and Always#Like a Girl commercial
 Conclusions and questions for thought

4. Gender inequality: why it still matters
Some reasons not to be cheerful:
Violence against women and girls is still a serious problem: at least 1 in 3 women around the
world has been beaten, coerced into sex or abused
The 2014 PwC’s second Women in Work Index underlined that the UK lags behind most
European countries on gender pay equality, occupying the 18th
position out of 27 OECD
countries for female participation and pay.
A report published last year by the United Nations highlighted that, given the current slow pace
of change, the achievement of full gender equity will take at least 80 years
Some reasons to be:
Since the 1980’s, women are living longer than men in all parts of the world
Over half a billion women have joined the world’s labour force over the last 30 years due to the
rise in women’s participation in paid work in most of the developing world
Since the 1980s also, there has been a growth of women leaders in politics and government
throughout the world, in businesses and in the other traditional male areas (journalism)

5. Challenges to gender equality:
understanding progress and barriers
 Gender equality matters. Why?:
 Because it enhances productivity and improves development outcomes for the next
generation
 Gender equality has becoming a pressing concern. Feminism has seen a new revival
 In short, gender equality can be good for economic growth. This has been
recognised from across the political spectrum, from the World Bank, to the IMF as
much as governments throughout
 It can also make institutions more representative of a range of voices (World
Development Report, 2012)
 Empowerment and women’s agency
 Sen (1999) sees a correlation between high levels of education for women and
employment with the reduction of fertility rates, decreasing mortality rates of
children.

6. How can we account for women’s
subordination?
 First, second and third wave feminism: what were these feminism
movements and what did they achieve?
 First wave feminism and its legacy (i.e. Suffragette, 2015)
 I.e. Absence of women as citizens throughout the history of mankind
 Second wave feminism of the 1970s and the debate on the reasons for the
subordination of women
 Third wave feminism: diversity, fragmentation and new technologies
 Post-feminism and the complexities surrounding popular culture and
media representations

7. Third wave feminists, popular culture and
new technologies

8. Gender representations in the media: how they
were and what has changed
 How were women represented in the media in the early days of television?:
 Feminist analyses of the media have been interested in understanding how images and
cultural constructions are linked to patterns of inequality and oppression in wider
society (Gill, 2007).
 Tuchman’s et al’s 1970s study on the representation of women in the US media
(concept of symbolic annihilation)
 Researchers analysed television’s content from 1954 through 1975 and found that
males dominated the television screen. Tuchman’s study concluded that American
women had no value in the US. According to her, women were portrayed as child-like
adornments in need of protection from children’s shows to commercials to prime-time
and situation comedies, with soap operas showing more favourable images.

9. Gender representations in the media: how
they were and what has changed
 Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) was a major work which questioned the
images of the “happy housewife” (Gauntlett, 2008, 51; Kearney, 2012).
 She was the first to examine the representation of women in magazines, surveying
women’s magazines from the early to mid-20th
century (Kearney, 2012). She pointed to
the figure of the “happy housewife” who subjugated her own ambitions in order to take
care of her children and husband, further arguing that the idealization of the feminine
suburban middle-class white women was responsible for deep unhappiness among women
who saw their lives constrained by such limitations (Richardson and Wearing, 2014).
 Slow change which reflected the growing participation of women in work:
 Gauntlett (2008, 47) points out that there were only 20 to 35% of female characters in the
1950s, 60s and 70s, with the rise of female roles in the mid-1980s although there were
twice as many men on screen.

10. The “Happy housewife”: still a
representation in the media?

11. Postfeminism, consumerism and “choice
feminism”
 Post-feminism: what is it?
 Gill (2012, 145) has argued that one of the things that makes the media today more different
from what it was in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s is precisely the presence of feminist
discourses. These are identified by her as being part of a sensibility that seems to pay lip
service to consumerism, neoliberalism and to what some call “choice feminism” (Lazar,
2011, 2013).
 McRobbie (2009, 11) sees post-feminism as a process by which feminist gains of the 1970s
and 1980s are undermined. She claims that there is an “undoing of feminism” in the cultural
field
 “Choice feminism” – Products are targeted to women, who are given the “choice” to buy
them and thus empower themselves if they do
 Anxiety and control over the body – the body is under constant surveillance, and women
are invited constantly to control it (i.e. Bordo, 1993, 2003).

12. The body under control and the “sexualisation of
popular culture”
 The changing nature of gender media representations since the
1990’s have thus been contested:
 There has been an increasing eroticisation of the images of girls and
women, as well as men, and their bodies in popular culture. Men
nonetheless are presented as complex, whereas women are seen as
focusing on their underwear and on sexual fantasies.
 Popular “post-feminist” media culture thus emphasises the
monitoring and surveillance of women over their own bodies in order
to reach a particular successful performance of femininity
 Women from a very young age are constantly pressured to have
perfect bodies, leading to all sorts of eating disorders and other
problems of low self-esteem and anxiety (Bordo, 1993, 2003)

13. Women in film: from Bridget Jones to Joy
 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3vQPmO3i7Y)

14. Reactions to the “perfect body” image: from
feminists to celebrities
 Winslet has long been critical of the excessive
photoshopping of images due to the detrimental effect it
can have on the self-esteem of girls and women. In a 2009
interview with Harper's Bazaar, she shared that she would
ask that photos to be returned to their original state after
she viewed the retouched versions: "I have wrinkles here,
which are very evident. And I will particularly say when I
look at movie posters, ‘You guys have airbrushed my
forehead. Please can you change it back?’ I'd rather be the
woman they're saying 'She's looking older' about than
'She's looking stoned.'”

15. Sexism in everyday life: how can you tell if a
media text is “sexist”?
 The difficulties of dealing with contemporary gender
representations in the media:
 Feminists who criticise the media for “sexist” images can
frequently be accused of “being puritan” or of “having no
sense of humour”
 Sexy girl images: Women are seen as being empowered,
and are choosing to present themselves in this manner,
pleasing themselves, all of which are aspects of this post-
modern sensibility (Gill, 2012, 140).
 Many young girls find also pleasure in these images, and
some for them can be seen as empowering (Gauntlett,
2008)

16. Sexism is a daily reality for girls, says Girlguiding
(BBC News, 29/11/13)
 The report Equality for Girls, from Girguiding, which was based on a survey with more than
1.200 girls and young women aged 7 to 21, found that sexism is widespread in the UK
 “Girls identified sexism as a priority issue for their generation”, with three-quarters saying
sexism affected “most areas of their lives”, said the report
 Of the 11 to 21 year old questioned, 87% thought women were judged more on their
appearance than their ability
 More than a third (36%) of all those surveyed had felt “patronised or made to feel stupid”
because of their gender
 Most of the 13 year olds questioned said they had experienced sexual harassment, rising to
80% of 19 to 21 year olds. This included being shouted and whistled at, sexual graffiti and
pornography, sexual jokes and taunts as well as unwanted sexual attention.

17. Advertising and female magazines
 Commercials and advertising have had a long tradition in stereotyping women, with many
encouraging rigid sex roles and supporting the reflection hypothesis, of reflecting society’s
rigidly stereotypical gender roles (Tuchman, 1978, 16).
 Gauntlett (2008) argues that the more obvious stereotypes from the past are not present in
the media as before, stating nonetheless that sexism has become much more subtle.


18. Women in UK journalism and in the
media⃰
 What are the implications of all of this on women’s life chances and work opportunities?:
 The 2013 study Women and Journalism, by Professor Suzanne Franks for the Reuters Institute for
the Study of Journalism, found that female journalists are falling behind their male counterparts
 They are less likely than men to achieve more senior and well paid positions. In 90 years, there has
never been a female director general of the BBC. This is despite the fact that more women than men
enter the profession.
 The pay gap between male and female journalists is not just a British phenomenon, but a global
one. An International Federation of Journalists study in 2012 compared journalist’s salaries in
16 nations across the world and found out that there was a gender pay gap in favour of men in
both developed and developing countries alike.
 Moreover, statistics as late as 2010 show that there is still less roles for women in film and
television, there are a few female directors and the gender pay gap exists in Hollywood as much as
anywhere else and are evidence that little has changed. As Richardson and Wearing (2014, 21) state,
“in 2011 only 33% of characters in the 100 highest grossing US films were female.”

19. Women in UK journalism⃰
 “In the early 1990s there were three national newspaper editors who were women,” said
Franks. “A top News International figure said in 1994 that, on this basis, ‘there should be
ten women editors by the year 2000’. However, there are currently two female national
editors, Dawn Neesom of the Daily Star and Lisa Markwell of the Independent on Sunday.
 “We need to get over this assumption that it is all improving, that it’s all onwards and
upwards. My argument, it’s the same in a lot of other professions, is that unless you
hammer away and continue to focus on the issue, nothing changes.” Suzanne Franks,
Professor of Journalism, City University
 This was before Katharine Viner was appointed editor in chief of The Guardian
(03/20/2015)
 ( ⃰ “New study suggests gender inequality still a major issue for UK journalism”, Press
Gazette, 04/09/2013).

20. Always#Like a Girl commercial
 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs )

21. UK government and the gender pay
gap
 Sky News – Pay Women More
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUITlPXFL9Q

22. How to achieve wider gender equality*
 Fraser (2013) calls for a two dimension on gender justice, focused on both
redistribution (i.e. economics, poverty alleviation) as well as recognition
(cultural values)
 The need to tackle persistent patterns of inequalities and discrimination:
 * Income growth by itself does not deliver greater gender equality by itself.
Where gender gaps have closed, it is because of how markets and have
functioned and evolved (i.e. opening new employment opportunities for
women)
 * Gender gaps persist where girls and women face other disadvantages, such as
in poorer countries. These disparities are larger when poverty combines with
other forms of exclusion, such as ethnicity and class
 * Markets, institutions and households can combine to limit progress. Gender
gaps in productivity are driven by deep-seated gender differences in time use,
in rights of ownership, etc.
 * Globalization can help, connecting women to markets and economic
opportunities (* World Development Report 2012 – The World Bank)

23. Conclusions and questions for thought
 How can we achieve wider gender equality in the future?
 What role does the media have here?
 Why do gender representations matter, and what is the problem with “sexist
images”?
 There is a correlation between gender representations in the media and the
structural gender inequalities in society
 In order to achieve gender justice, it is important to focus both on questions of
redistribution (i.e. the economic sphere, such as the gender pay gap and poverty
alleviation) as much as issues of recognition (i.e. of women’s status in society
and cultural values) (Fraser, 2013)
 Representations need to be constantly updated and questioned, problematized
and disrupted, questioned and subverted and constantly discussed in relation to
gender inequality in the world and what is being done.

24. Selected Bibliography
 BORDO, S. (1993, 2003) “Introduction: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body” in Unbearable
weight: feminism, Western culture and the body, Berkeley: University of California, p. 1 – 42
 GAUNTLETT, (2008): “Representations of gender in the past” in Media, gender and identity.
London: Routledge, p. 47 – 62
 GILL, R. (2012): “Postfeminist media culture – elements of s sensibility” in Kearney, M. C. (eds.)
The Gender and Media Reader. NY: Routledge, p. 136 – 148
 ------, R. (2007): Gender and the media. London: Polity Press
 KEARNEY, M. C. (2012): “Introduction” in Kearney, Mary Celeste (eds.) The Gender and Media
Reader. London: Routledge, p. 1 – 17
 LORBER, J. (eds.) (2012): “The Variety of Feminisms and their Contribution to Gender Equality”
in Gender inequality: feminist theories and politics. California: Roxbury Publishing Company, p. 1-
21
 RICHARDSON, N. and Wearing, S. (2014) Gender and the media. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan
 SEN, Amartya (1999) “Women’s agency and social change” in Development as Freedom, Oxford
University Press, pg. 189-203
 TUCHMAN, G. (1978) “Introduction – the symbolic annihilation of women by the media” in Heart
and home: images of women in the mass media. NY: Oxford University Press, p. 3-38