Gender Stereotyping
Draft:
Of the several types of influences on how men and women are perceived is the portrayal by the media. Media plays a big role in the how the media is deeply interwoven in to the daily lives of men and women. Media communicates with the images of different gender that perpetuate within the minds of the people a limiting, stereotypical and unrealistic perception. There are three major themes through which the media represent the gender. Firstly, women are shown to be underrepresented, this implies that men have a cultural standard while women are invisible and unimportant. Secondly, the women and men are portrayed and represented in a stereotypical way which endorse the stereotypical views of gender (Carter, 2012). Thirdly, the traditional relationships between men and women entirely emphasize on the traditional roles and tend to normalize the different types of violence committed against women. The stereotypical depiction of the men and media is dependent on the images of relationships between men and women. There are again four major themes and the first one highlights the men’s independence and women’s dependence; women’s incompetence and men’s authority; men as breadwinners and women as primary caregiver; men as aggressors and women are depicted as sex objects and victims. There is another aspect which involves the media portraying the passivity in females and aggression in males. It has been seen that media exposure to the sexual violence has greater linkages with the approval of violence and greater tolerance (Coyne et al., 2014).
Reference
Carter, C. (2012). Sex/Gender and the Media From Sex Roles to Social Construction. The Handbook of Gender, Sex, and Media, 365.
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.
