If you order your research paper from our custom writing service you will receive a perfectly written assignment on The Media Pertaining to Woman. What we need from you is to provide us with your detailed paper instructions for our experienced writers to follow all of your specific writing requirements. Specify your order details, state the exact number of pages required and our custom writing professionals will deliver the best quality The Media Pertaining to Woman paper right on time.
Our staff of freelance writers includes over 120 experts proficient in The Media Pertaining to Woman, therefore you can rest assured that your assignment will be handled by only top rated specialists. Order your The Media Pertaining to Woman paper at affordable prices!
INTRODUCTION
In studying communications, I have taken interest in the effects the media may have on the human psyche. Being a woman, I concentrated on the discrimination and under representation of women that is evident in the media. Focus has been specifically made on the effects that stereotypes and under-representations of women on television have on the typical viewer. It is the intent of this paper to prove that the media, through television programs, exhibits and enforces specific gender stereotypes to the general public and affects the public's views on gender norms and behaviour.
The issue of gender stereotypes and discrimination against women on television is important on a global and personal level. Men and women around the world are expected to dress, think and behave in ways dictated to them by the programs that they view on television. These views are enforced by an elite few who demand that they public obey their beliefs by controlling our source of entertainment. This issue is also important on a personal level because gender stereotyping inhibits the way I must act and behave as a woman. The media presents the public with only two possible genders, male and female, forcing them to associate with only one (out of a possible four) . Anyone who chooses a gender other than male or female is looked upon as a deviation from the norm. My objective is to focus on the way in which the media presents women and how it has such an immense effect on how they identify themselves as such.
In order to provide evidence supporting my hypothesis, this paper will include articles from Volumes 0 and 6 of The Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. Research is presented regarding women on television in the following articles 'Perceptions of the Traits of Women on Television' by Rita Atwood, and 'Prime Time Pilots A Content Analysis of Changes in Gender Representation' by David Vest. Nelson and Robinson's text, Gender in Canada has also been selected in furthering my study of the portrayal of women in television.
Order Custom Essay on The Media Pertaining to Woman
JOURNAL/TEXT REPORT
In her study, Rita Atwood conducted open-ended interviews among adult television viewers in order to report the diverse opinions and interpretations that were made. This study aimed to gain greater insight on the standards that audience members employ when regarding images of women on television and the factors that are associated with the differences in standards. The audience members were to categorize whether the women's roles viewed were either 'positive' or 'negative'. The audience was allowed to provide their own definitions of which traits were positive and which were negative. "Telephone interviews were completed with residents of 6 households, 154 women and 10 men ranging in age from 17 to 7." (Atwood, 6) Analyses of the open-ended responses involved a development of specific 'positive' and 'negative' categories and coding by authors.
Positive assessments of women were linked to the following trait categories in the following percentages 6.7% of respondents found that women were determined, strong and independent; 5.7% of respondents found that women were professional, intelligent and skilled; .8% of respondents found that women were traditional, care-taking and feminine. Negative assessments of women, however, were linked to the following trait categories in the following percentages 4.% of respondents saw women portrayed as the silly housewife, dumb blonde or sex object; 6.% of respondents found that women were immoral, selfish, aggressive or evil; 0.5% of respondents found that women were exploited, degraded and dependant. (Atwood, 8-) A significant finding with regards to Atwood's research was that the majority of responses reflected a 'contemporary' basis for evaluating characteristics of women on television. For example, most respondents classified women on television as positive because of their strength, intelligence and ability to be professional, while women on television were described as negative because they are shown as weak, exploited victims, demented housewives, or sex objects. The minority of answers given by respondents was based around a 'traditional' basis for evaluation. For example, in this grouping women were seen as positive because they were attractive, moral and caretakers, while they were seen as negative because they were selfish, immoral or aggressive. The placing of the aforementioned traits in their 'positive' and 'negative' groupings presents the 'Madonna-whore' complex that was so largely regarded in the past. The study also found that women and men did not differ greatly on their opinions of positive and negative traits for women in television. "In sum, these results offer support for the assertion that people actively construct meaning from their message environments, and that they are uniquely qualified for and capable of providing useful insight into such experiences." (Atwood, 100)
In this study, David Vest explores the degree to which the production and re-write process is responsible for the limited portrayal of women in television. It was assumed that early versions of scripts had a high presence of women, which deteriorated as the scripts were reorganized towards conventionalization. (Vest, 7) A set of forty programs were identified as being the population of television programs which premiered during the 186-87 television season, however, only twenty one sets of scripts were made available to coders (one undergraduate communication major and two graduate communications majors). The study had to be arranged in groups according to included and non-included shows and 'proven' and 'unproven' producers. "Unproven producers were involved with eight non-included and ten included programs, while proven producers were responsible for eleven included and eleven non-included programs. The changes looked for in the episodes were sex, age, occupation, marital status and scenes. Six, three part hypotheses were made in order to conduct the study.
The hypotheses and their results are as follows
Hypothesis #1- Men will outnumber women in the shooting version of the scripts. The ratio of men to women will be lower in the early version of the scripts. The shift toward under-representation will be larger in programs produced by relatively untested producers. The results of this hypothesis were that proportion of men to women in the shooting script was approximately to 1 in both early and shooting scripts. Furthermore, regardless of producer status, the under-representation of women remained constant.
Hypothesis #- Compared to men, women will have smaller roles in the shooting scripts. This difference will be less pronounced in the earlier versions. The shift toward smaller roles will be less pronounced in the programs of established producers. The results of this hypothesis were that the difference between men and women in terms of role size was not different between early and shooting versions. Also, scripts by unproven producers were more likely to have larger roles for women than proven producers.
Hypothesis #- In the shooting version of the scripts, women will be shown less frequently than men in single-sex scenes. This difference in single-sex scenes will be less in the early version of the scripts. The shift toward a higher proportion of male single-sex scenes to female single-sex scenes will be less pronounced in the programs of established producers. The results of this hypothesis were that the ratio of all male scenes to all female scenes was to 1, but this did not significantly change between early and shooting versions. Moreover, there was no support that the status of the producer had any relationship to the changes made in the scripts.
Hypothesis #4- The age distribution for women will be narrower and younger than the age distribution for men in the shooting version of the scripts. These differences will be smaller in the early versions. The shift to a narrower and younger age distribution for women will be less pronounced in the programs of established producers. The results of this hypothesis explain that the "difference between ages according to status was consistent with the notion that the programs of proven producers offer less conventional fare (in this case, a less dramatic gap in the mean ages of men compared to women)." (Vest, 6) However, in both proven and unproven scripts, the mean age of women decreased from early to shooting versions.
Hypothesis #5 - The range of occupations for women will be narrower than the range of occupations for men, and these occupations will tend to cluster within traditional female spheres of activity in the shooting version of the scripts. This constraint will be less pronounced in the early version of the scripts. The shift toward constraint will be most evident in the programs produced by individuals without and established track record. When researching for this hypothesis, it was found that women were found in as many occupations as men, yet were involved in student or traditional female occupational categories, while men outnumbered women 5 to 1 in professional, powerful and traditionally male categories. In addition, there was no evidence supporting the claim that changes occurred between versions or because of producer track record.
Hypothesis #6- Marital status will be a more evident and central feature for women than for men in the shooting version of the scripts. The differences in marital status between men and women will be less pronounced in the early version of the scripts. The change in focus will be most clearly noted in the work of unproven producers. As hypothesized, the marital status of women was more evident than the marital status of men in the shooting version of scripts. However, there was little change in the early or shooting versions and no evidence supporting that proven producers would change towards a more balanced representation of men and women.
Thus, although it was proved that women are, indeed, under-portrayed in television, there was no evidence to support the claims that early and shooting versions of scripts were altered and that proven producers were responsible for eliciting a change among these versions.
In Gender in Canada, Nelson and Robinson claim that the media often misrepresents or fails to represent women because of gender role stereotypes and socialization. Gender role stereotypes are structured sets of beliefs about the personal attributes of men and women and contain notions of qualities possessed by individuals who belong to a particular manifestation of society.
Television has perpetuated and reinforced traditional stereotypes of men and women. Children's television shows feature more males than females, although females are the primary caregivers in most households. In prime time, male characters outnumber female characters two to one, with male characters more likely to hold high status positions. "Content analysis research reveals that men represent 65.4 percent of all prime time television characters and are more likely to be cast in dramatic roles. Women, in contrast, are not only less visible, but are also found primarily in comedies, implicitly suggesting that they are not to be taken very seriously." (Nelson and Robinson, 1) Males are typically cast as adventurous, aggressive and heroic figures who rescue others from danger and females are cast as submissive and passive characters. Even young children are gender typed boys are more assertive, rational and sarcastic, while girls are always on the phone, reading magazines or helping with household chores.
Nelson and Robinson (pg. 1) point out eleven main types of female characters i) the Imp rebellious and rowdy; ii) the Goodwife a beneficent character; iii) the Harpy an aggressive, single women; iv) the Bitch a strong-willed, self absorbed, and destructive woman; v) the Victim a woman suffering from pain, injury, imprisonment, or disease; vi) the Decoy described as 'bait in chic clothing'; vii) the Siren sexy and sinister; viii) the Courtesan a female entrepreneur/clotheshorse; ix) the Witch a woman portrayed as having some form of special power; x) the Matriarch a competent, brave and socially prominent older woman; and xi) the Androgyne a strong, autonomous female who combines both masculine and feminine traits and behaviours. In the 10'sthe role of the androgyne has become more popular with roles such as Murphy Brown, Xena, and Dana Scully.
Although advances are being made "Meehan claims that 'As we approach the turn of the century, despite massive real-world changes in gender roles, the world of television persists in…stereotyped and sexist images.'" (Nelson and Robinson, p. 14) Women, however, are not under represented in the world of soap operas, and they are not restricted to a life of domesticity, but one of intrigue, adventure and romance. Women may become important and powerful in business, but their careers tend to be in areas that are gender-appropriate (business worlds of fashion, cosmetics or hospitality). Women are often depicted as acquiring this power through their ties to powerful men, or in exercising their devious qualities. Images of men rescuing the interests of weaker females reinforce the stereotypes of women's unsuitability for the high-pressure world of business. Also, women who demonstrate stereotypical femininity are often presented as being morally superior to those who are more masculine. Strong women who are successful, assertive, and highly determined to survive without men are portrayed as villains.
One surely can argue that television is merely for entertainment and should not be taken seriously but that argument lacks strong supporting evidence. Media, specifically television, has an immense effect on how the women (and men) identify with their gender. Roles are neatly categorized into masculine and feminine and characters are played out as such by through fictitious sitcoms. This, in turn, has a direct influence on how people identify with their own gender, through examples of popular sitcoms and television in general a distorted image of women is on a slow route to a positive change. Please note that this sample paper on The Media Pertaining to Woman is for your review only. In order to eliminate any of the plagiarism issues, it is highly recommended that you do not use it for you own writing purposes. In case you experience difficulties with writing a well structured and accurately composed paper on The Media Pertaining to Woman, we are here to assist you. Your persuasive essay on The Media Pertaining to Woman will be written from scratch, so you do not have to worry about its originality.
Order your authentic assignment from and you will be amazed at how easy it is to complete a quality custom paper within the shortest time possible!
