1. GENDER & MEDIA
Viddyansh srivastava
IIPS MUMBAI
viddyanshsrivastava223@gmail.com
1
GENDER & MEDIA
2. INTRODUCTION
The power of media plays a big role in our everyday life. People
construct their knowledge about gender roles and identity by
seeing and understanding activities in everyday life. In this
regard, media is one of the determining factors aiding to shape
the social perception about gender roles and identity.
Over decades, print media like books, magazines,
advertisements and internet has played a profound role to define
gender identity by stereotyping and segregating gender roles.
Men and Women are constantly being sexualized on television,
movies, book covers, advertisements and other forms of media.
Women are objectified and degraded to sell products and
onlookers are lead to believe it is normal behavior and given
unrealistic expectations to attempt to achieve. How gender is
depicted in media is a problem that seems to only be getting
worse, not better
2
GENDER & MEDIA
3. MEDIA
media influence how people dress, what they eat,
what they look like, the games they play, the music
they listen to, and the entertainment they watch.
Media convey these messages in two ways:
1. In the message content of the television shows,
magazine articles, news items, music, and movies
2. In the advertising that surrounds these
messages.
Media create false consciousness, making people
believe they exert control over what they view (and
what they think about what they view) when in reality
they have little or no control
3
GENDER & MEDIA
7. •Media has defined how females and males should look
and act. Stereotypes play a huge role in this.
•Though advertisements, performers, actors and
actresses, the standard male should be masculine,
dominant, physically fit, has abs, handsome and so on
like depicted in the image on the previous slide.
•The standard women is feminine, soft, pretty, treated as
property, objectified, should be submissive, thin, have
large breasts and so on, Because of the heavy usage of
these types of individuals in media, what is actually a
normal body type for either gender is not acceptable, so
everyone who doesn’t process the unattainable image/
especially for women, doesn’t measure up and is
deemed unworthy.
• Women are often represented negatively thereby
promoting negative stereotypes about them
7
GENDER & MEDIA
8. MEDIA CONTENT AND PORTRAYAL OF MEN
AND WOMEN IN THE MEDIA
Stereotypes are also prevalent in every day media.
Women are often portrayed solely as homemakers and
carers of the family, dependent on men, or as objects of
male attention.
Men are also subjected to stereotyping in the media. They
are typically characterized as powerful and dominant and
breadwinner.
8
GENDER & MEDIA
10. OBJECTIFICATION
Objectification occurs when people are viewed as
objects existing solely for the pleasure of the viewer,
rather than as agents capable of action. The person
being objectified often is reduced to body parts:
breasts, genitalia, muscles, curves, buttocks, and hair.
The person is no longer human but commodified—
turned into a market commodity like other inanimate
products, free to be bought and fondled
10
GENDER & MEDIA
14. SEXUALIZATION OCCURS WHEN
a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual
appeal or behavior, to the
exclusion of other characteristics;
a person is held to a standard that equates physical
attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy;
a person is sexually objectified that is, made into a
thing for others’ sexual use, rather than seen as a
person with the capacity for independent action and
decision making.
sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person
14
GENDER & MEDIA
15. I talk a lot about
how badly women
are represented in
advertising, but men
are sexualized as
well, whether it is in
an advertisement,
on a book cover, or
other mediums.
15
GENDER & MEDIA
17. A LOT OF MAGAZINES HAVE SEXUALIZED IMAGES ON THE COVER OF WOMEN.
IMAGES OF WOMAN WITH LITTLE CLOTHING, OR THAT FOCUS ON CLOTHING
YOU MUST WEAR, OR THINGS YOU NEED AS WELL AS ARTICLES ABOUT BEST
DRESSED STARS AND WHO WORE IT BETTER BECAUSE IT IS THE END OF THE
WORLD IF TWO INDIVIDUALS IN THE PUBLIC EYE WEAR THE SAME OUTFIT,
ESPECIALLY TO THE SAME EVENT. MEDIA AND MAGAZINE ARE TEACHING
PEOPLE AND CHILDREN THAT THESE THINGS ARE WHAT IS IMPORTANT
INSTEAD OF ACTUAL IMPORTANT THINGS GOING ON IN THE WORLD.
17
GENDER & MEDIA
19. they also affect children and
young adults. It is already
difficult for children and young
adults to figure out who they are
and their place in this world, but
with the pressure of media, it
makes it impossible. That is why
a large portion of young adults
suffer from an eating disorder,
when a lot of them are probably
normal and healthy to begin with.
Most ads don’t promote healthy
women, and they should. The
textbook by Sterlin says, “It’s
well established that seeing
images of underweight women
make normal or overweight
women feel bad about
themselves,” which shouldn’t be
acceptable
19
GENDER & MEDIA
24. DURING INTRODUCTION SEQUENCES, DESCRIPTORS FOR MALES ARE
PROFESSION-DRIVEN WHEREAS WOMEN ARE ASSOCIATED WITH PHYSICAL
APPEARANCES, EMOTIONAL STATES, OR THEIR RELATION TO A MALE, SUCH AS
THE “WIFE OF” OR “DAUGHTER OF” SO-AND-SO.
24
GENDER & MEDIA
25. UNDERPAID
Bollywood is a completely male dominated
industry. Women are not only given trivial or
insignificant roles in the movies, but are also
underpaid. In most of the cases, the actors
are approached for the movie and then they
are asked to choose the actress they want to
work with. The female-leads today perform
item-numbers because they fear losing
grounds to the ever increasing starlets.
25
GENDER & MEDIA
26. SAHU, G. K. & ALAM, S. (2013). MEDIA AGENDA ON
GENDER ISSUES: CONTENT ANALYSIS OF TWO
NATIONAL DAILIES. PRAGYAAN : JOURNAL OF MASS
COMMUNICATION
26
GENDER & MEDIA
27. Not much attention is paid to women's issues
unless these are related to rape, murder and
other sort of violence against women.
what issues heed to be covered and what not is
decided by the policy makers of media
organizations and unfortunately majority of them
are men.
Studies have found that although the number of
women working in the media has been
increasing globally, the top positions (producers,
executives, chief editors and publishers) are still
very male dominated (White, 2009).
Women are seen rarely in holding key positions
in the media organizations.
27
GENDER & MEDIA
28. CONCLUSION
It is important to be aware of how gender is portrayed in media,
especially as consumers, so we can stop being passive
consumers and be active about what is important instead of
feeding into the unhealthy trap that is gender in media.
Using the media in promoting gender sensitive media productions
is crucial in improving social gender relations. If media is to
change the portrayal of women by projecting positive images of
them in media productions, it will lead to improved gender
relations in society
It is important to be aware of how gender is portrayed in media,
especially as consumers, so we can stop being passive
consumers and be active about what is important instead of
feeding into the unhealthy trap that is gender in media.
28
GENDER & MEDIA