The Role Media Plays in Relation to Gender Stereotypes

Introduction By being born a man or a woman signals to bearing certain clear sexual characteristics. Socialization takes individuals through a path that inculcates certain norms and codes of conduct depending on whether one is born a male or a female. In other words, the rules that one adopts and follows are guided by whether they are biologically male or female. Therefore, one’s communication, expression and behavior is shaped by the preexisting cultural and social norms including non-verbal language.

Consequently, people’s behavior may differ because they are shaped by cultural and social norms from varying socio-ethnic and cultural setups. All these forces define gender; which is effectively a social construction of one’s biological sex. It allows for the recognition and distinction between men and women. According to Lippman (1922), stereotypes were important because they were an offshoot of a people’s ideas and heritage and, thus, served important purposes. Stereotypes helped to facilitate homogeneity in beliefs and values.

The latter reason is what enables the units of social influence including peer groups, family and media to transmit the common beliefs, values and stereotypes within their own (Gerino, Marino, Brustia & ROLLÈ, 2014). The media plays a central role in the provision of images that bear meanings collectively shared. The meanings are then reconditioned by the behavior of the individual and their attitudes (Kay, Matuszek & Munson, 2015). There are new studies about the role of the media is shaping the behavior of individuals.

The media, especially social media plays a major role in the shaping of cultures, attitudes and behavior. It also presents a fresh viewpoint for the confusing interaction between the bottom-up cultural trends and mainstream ones (Rolando, Taddeo & Beccaria, 2016). It is commonplace occurrence for the media to portray certain cultures as negative. Such a scenario is even more significant when reflecting gender stereotypes. Gender constitutes socio-cultural differences between women and men as designed by social setup.

The media overlooks the socio-cultural development that influences the development of such gender roles as shown. The continuing shift in social positions and roles in modern day is rarely reflected by the media sources (Šramová, 2014). While the media audience is at liberty to choose what media content to follow, it is the media that possesses the ultimate power to decide the gender roles that are visible and the ones that won’t be. Such a stance is what the agenda setting, tendency by the media, theory explores.

In short, he media decides what is to be talked about and what will not. The radio, TV, music, drama, movies, discussions, reality TV, newspapers, magazines and other electronic media sources, includes the internet all present the public with the agenda that they pursue their social deliberations. The content presented may play a reinforcement role or help to reset previous stereotypes, values and beliefs with regard to gender roles.

At the same time, there is research to the effect that when media exposes individuals to groups with varying gender stereotypes or cultural perspective, it may also help to positively influence a positive change of behavior and perspective. The media has an opportunity to help people to overcome sexist stereotypes (Giomi, Sansonetti & Tota, 2015). An analysis of the role of the media with regard to gender stereotypes should be done to enable effective communication between with others and ourselves in our group setups.

Background Gender based stereotyping shows how gender roles are carried out in one’s socialization process. The stereotyping points to the roles that females and males in society have been assigned arbitrarily by the society and which form part of such a society’s way of life. These roles are assigned and determined by the sex of an individual. Thus, gender roles inform an individual’s activities as guided by belief systems. Such systems often limit one’s abilities and talents because they are predetermined.

Consequently, gender roles, determined by society, often lead to a waste of human resource because individual talents are not exploited maximally. Such a predisposition also influences the formation of gender identities among the youth. They inform their choices across a broad spectrum of their social life including career choices and private life. The gender stereotyping societal phenomenon views males and females asymmetrically and leads to an imbalance in the distribution of resources across the socio-economic spectrum.

It is therefore clear that gender stereotyping leads to gender inequality (Giomi, Sansonetti & Tota, 2015). The media plays an important role in the identity formation among the youth. The youth are exposed to a wide range of social images that work as social symbols. According to Dennis McQuail (2010), the phenomenon is an influence that is negotiated. He further argues that the role of the media is more of a constructivist one. The media develops meaning and hands it over to its audience.

The audience in turn incorporates such a meaning in their personal meaning systems. It is, therefore, clear that meaning is a product of the audience as a result of a negotiation and mediation process. The process, is, of course, highly influenced by the social context of the receiver (McQuail, 2010). Consequently, the media plays an ambivalent role in which it seeks to attract the largest audience possible. The media, effectively, prefers to only touch on socially acceptable trends and avoids social extremism.

It uses simplistic and often stereotyped form of social reality, phenomena and group images. stereotypes have been found to help people understand complex phenomena. Stereotypes provide a sense of security because they help to rest anxiety that emanates from uncertain phenomena; and Gender stereotyping is not an exception (Giomi, Sansonetti & Tota, 2015). The emphasis is that the media play a central role in the formation of opinions at both individual and group level. They have, therefore, a responsibility to promote human dignity.

The role extends to discouraging and preventing discrimination against women and promoting equality between the two genders. By encouraging quality between both men and women, it is assumed that there is a shift on cultural and social patterns aimed at eliminating prejudices leveled against either sex (Giomi, Sansonetti & Tota, 2015). Media stereotypes help the listeners, readers and watchers to understand messages with ease. Such stereotyping aims at demonstrating the perception of the majority and hence contributes to their confidence and social stability.

Stereotypes are an essential ingredient in the construction of social reality. They assist people to orient, conceptualize, evaluate and categorize the world. Stereotypes are often used to sustain and maintain a position in an argument as opposed to evidence and fact-based information. In advertising, stereotyped symbols and images distort reality and simplify it so that they undermine the true cultural and social reality. With regard to content stereotyping, advertising strongly oversimplifies and distorts the individual and group images. The generalized concepts are usually modeled based on unimportant or insignificant characteristics.

The content of advertising creates expectation of behavior in certain forms when looking at someone who belongs to a specified stereotyped set. The expectations are not aligned to the facts and realities on the ground. Indeed, they may even bar its correct representations. Thus, the media ought to subject itself to a lot of research and reflection (Šramová, 2014). It has been generally accepted that advertising influences and promotes gender inequality through its sexism promotion and portrays them as acceptable and valid.

Sexism is the presentation of women as an inferior set of beings with regard to what they can or cannot do. Such a portrayal is clothed and expressed in the traditional advertising themes that tend to confine women to certain roles and certain functions. Exposure to such kind of advertising is noted to generate attitudes that are anti women. Victimization of women sexually tends to be exalted through advertising.

It has also been found to work against the effort by women to increase their societal influence and power (Zotos & Tsichla, 2014). The Role That the Media Plays in the Shaping of Gender-Linked Identities In the course of making it clear that the definition of the roles of men and women in society is a matter of, societal beliefs, culture, personal appearance and sexuality as opposed to their sex, gender is a social construct, by definition.

The media, plus the rest of the socialization openings such as the system of education, friends, peers and family play a significant role in the provision of symbolic elements such as role models, images, values and narratives that people are likely to use at personal level as they construct their identity. While the audience can refuse or accept the media content they are exposed to, the media is responsible for making sure that what is presented is positive and helps in resolving the gender biases that society in burdened with.

All sources of media information are important in shaping and reshaping the perceptions by the public regarding gender and gender roles as relates to sexuality. The mainstream media aims at attracting as much attention as possible from the public. Consequently, they use simplistic means that make it possible for the audience to follow what it offers. They offer stereotypes of the phenomena of social groups and social reality which appeal to ideas that are preconceived.

In such a scenario, men and women are assigned arbitrary characteristics roles that are limited by their biological sex attributes. The outcome is the promotion of an asymmetrical vision of men and women through stereotype windows (Giomi, Sansonetti & Tota, 2015). Research focused on advertising reveals that there is a broad usage of stereotypes when representing women. Usually, women feature in promoting bathroom and kitchen products, operating within the home, or when they are featured outside the home, they appear subservient to men.

The usage of voiceovers that are authoritative are usually male voices. Advertisers that use feminist discourse to promote the purchase of their products by females is referred to as pro-feminist utopia. Further, studies show that advertisers tend to portray females in sexual roles and intentions that they use men. There is an overhyped standard of beauty, physically that is focused on by advertisers. How women are portrayed in news is rarely studied. The broadest research effort along such lines has been done by Global Media Monitoring Project.

It observed that there is underrepresentation of women in news. It was further noted in the study that women appear less as spokes people and experts. They tend to be portrayed as people representing the concerns of the majority and expressing their personal experiences. The use of women as news presenters is not exclusively due to their competence but their attractiveness to the viewers and the quality of their voice that is perceived to be pleasant.

It is indicated that women add dramatic aspects to the events and offer a welcome distraction to the development of war such as horrors therein. For a journalist to advance fast in their career, they need to prove their prowess in the knowledge of politics, sports and economics. Such standards tend to be a little more demanding because the areas are traditionally regarded as male specialties. Consequently, female journalists are required to prove that they can go beyond the female traditional competencies.

The new media, which is the internet, has had some critics claim that it is a female dominated media. The stereotype is now widespread and remains unchallenged. Studies in the recent past have, however, shown that women taking part in online discourses have been subjected to significantly high negative feedback from their male counterparts. Such feedback includes deception, sexism, and other forms of inappropriate social onslaught (Giomi, Sansonetti & Tota, 2015).

The Stereotypes Observed in the portrayal of Women in Advertising Texts and the Media According to the social constructivism theory, no mistake should be made to think that the media is a passive participant in the social shaping and reshaping. Studies have shown that the media creates social reality alongside preexisting reality and culture. The standardization of content from the media is informed by the most frequently used and effective, even though the most problematic strategies in mass communication and advertising.

The communicative behavior of humans generates products that are aligned to culture. It also generates a complete social and cultural reality in the process in the process. The communicative behavior of humans is in turn dependent on such reality since it functions an arena where all human communication occurs and offers a standard measure to assist the humans to interpret behavior and the cultural products (Šramová, 2014). The advertising world is a rich platform that fronts the stereotyping of women agenda with gusto.

It remains poorly exploited as far as the stretch and length of such preoccupation and tendency goes. Literature from experts indicates that there are several forms of stereotypes that depict women and the meanings associated with them. Sexism is one of the most common stereotypes. It influences the rise of negative views about women the convincing stereotype regarding the role presented and encourages their being discriminated. Women and girls are depicted as inferior in most advertising when the superiority of men considered is put in perspective.

The declining of the social role of women is yet another form of stereotyping that is emerging. When women are presenting products and services, women are assigned a decorative role. They are presented in such a way that they do not have any factual connection to the product that they are advertising. The objective in such ads is to attract the attention of men. The women in such ads are portrayed dressed provocatively and posing in erotic ways. They are, therefore, presented as sex objects to charm men.

They are posted looking perfectly poised with attractive looks. It suggests a subsidiary aspiration designed for women. It is an obligatory standard that women should strive to attain if they hope and wish to be at the center of the arena, and therefore happy and loved. In some instances, such themes are much stronger than the intended purpose, and allow the erotic factor to become the core message; that women are objects of sexual purpose and exist for the purposes of satisfying the sexual desires of the men.

Because of these developments and resultant perceptions, a dictionary was crafted with proxemic elements, mimics and gestures that highlight the idea. Advertising, therefore, portrays women as young beauty objects, attractive and seductive. The myth that is the young and beauty obscure the important aspect that is the true perception of women. The central design focuses on the body of a woman as the significance of womanhood. Any aspect that could distract the viewer and the audience from the beauty theme is overlooked.

Such perceptions as women being submissive and indecisive are common stereotypes about women and womanhood. The concepts commonly depict women while bending or bowing to demonstrate submissiveness. Women are less commonly depicted as authoritative. Even when they are given such roles, they are presented directing men how to use home appliances and products. The social and human dishonor stereotype uses the body of a human with no head. In the context, a woman is viewed as a being with no needs, devoid of thinking and without feeling.

Depicting women in positions of humiliation is a phallocratic and aggressive form. In these depictions, women are portrayed as meek and passively accepting violet acts from their male counterparts. Apart from encouraging violence, it is also seen as a standard for the social behavior of women. It legitimizes male violence against women too. When portraying women in cases of rape, there is an escalated perception of violence. Strikingly, such portraits are used by a renowned international fashion brand (Šramová, 2014).

Advertising fails to portray the increasing richness and diversity that women continue to show in the modern world. It ignores the achievement of women and the ranger of attributes and skills that women possess in the professional realm. Texts in the media, commonly depict women in the sexism stereotype perspectives, dishonor and eroticism. They are frequently shown to be socially inferior, submissive, helpless and widely indecisive.

Since children are sensitive and respond to the portrayed image of the workings of the world, the way women are portrayed in advertising presents a dishonoring model and are harmful to the way children are taught to perceive women. Small children cannot distinguish between reality and fiction; therefore, they form contorted and rather skewed image of a woman. For instance, such presentations of women as submissive, accepting violence, and the portrayal of violence against them as a near norm could be passed from generation to generation inadvertently (Šramová, 2014).

The Effects of the Media on Their Audience and the Implications on the Wider Society The issue of media effects has been examined for a long time by scholars in various fields including political science, anthropology, sociology, education and communications. The use of the term effects signals to a widely used model of research in Communications. The model classifies studies that seek to delve in the identification of specified effect which is an outcome of exposure to certain content in the media.

The perspective tends to associate media with a lot of power over its audience. From different viewpoints, Max Horkeimer, Thodor Adorno and Hubert Mercuse also arrived at the same conclusion. In their view, the industry of culture generates products which hook the audience and keep it entertained blandly. It reinforces the status quo by giving leads to conform and extinguishing the urge to resist. the Resistance Theory by John Fiske points to the opposite direction.

As opposed to playing submissive zombies, the audience plays an active engagement full of creativity and incorporating the popular culture. It has been accused of employing gorilla strategies to derive new meaning from the text and use it to serve their purpose (Gauntlett, 2008). Both views, from Adorno and the Resistance Theory are regarded as overly extremist. Recent research in the area demonstrates that a two-way interactive process exists in which the medium has an influence on the audience but the latter shapes the sender.

For instance, the media influence on its audience might be guided by a variety of factors such as media consumption levels, race, age, the socio-economic status, the values of upbringing and even the surrounding. It has been shown that media can negatively affect the spread of cultural, gender and racial biases by expressing roles and behaviors stereotypically or through overrepresentation or underrepresentation of the minorities (Giomi, Sansonetti & Tota, 2015). The Accumulation Theory adequately explains the media influence on the representation of women.

The theory indicates that if media messages are clearly communicated and consistently seen over a period of time, and corroborates across forms of media, end up strongly influencing the perception of the audience. Consequently, it is clear that the accumulation process makes it normal to look at adolescents and pre-adolescents, including women who are adults as available sexually. Other studies outside the media realm also corroborate the view that there is a relationship between gendered spread by the media and the behavior of girls and women.

It has also been determined that objectification and sexualization undermines the self-esteem of women. Such a practice leads to a range of emotional dysfunctions including anxiety, shame and self-hate. The ability of girls to develop sexually in a healthy way is said to be compromised by the hypersexual images of women. Objectification of the self is associated with a diminished self-image and sexual health. Persistent exposure to skewed attractiveness ideals is linked to negative and or unrealistic expectations with regard to sexual health.

Persistent exposure to images from the media portraying girls and women as sexual objects influences how girls understand and view sexuality and femininity. Women and girls who consistently engage with media tend to exalt stereotypes that portray women as objects of sex Zurbriggen & Morgan, 2006) Sexualizing girls also easily impacts negatively on such groups as boys, adult women and men and society in general. The topic of effects of the media on its audience is fodder for a wide range of studies in Communication Research.

It is also a known theoretical problem in the field. The cultural studies legacy has been used in analyzing the audience that follows popular contemporary TV drama series of feminine nature. One such series is Sex And The City. The program was widely viewed as an empowering one by its viewers.

In advertising, the influence of sexist content on the audience shows that the recognition of discrimination powered by gender considerations or elements that are of sexist nature in the advertising realm is directly linked to the gender awareness of the respondent and their self-esteem. The commonplace reluctance to paying attention to gender discrimination and media sexism is noted in the research content and should raise alarm bells.

The study outcomes show por awareness levels regarding gender discrimination and sexism as opposed to being the individuals evidence of their ability to take note of media biases in the representations of women and girls. In particular, the mass media suggests a sexualized portrayal of girls and women, which might negatively affect a range of a girl’s performance including cognitive functions, mental and physical health. Summarily, exposure to media effects from a tender age has been noted to promote education that is gender segregated.

It is noted that even children in preschool come with already formed pre-notions of gender which constitute stereotypes of what women and men do and are. Consequently, such stereotypes limit the range of carer choices children make from a tender age (Giomi, Sansonetti & Tota, 2015). It seems that boys manifest more conspicuous gender bias stereotypes compared to girls. Masculine identity along heterosexual lines is formed in the converse direction of what homosexuality and femininity are.

Thus, it prevents some men from pursuing some roles that have traditionally been stereotypically portrayed as feminine. The employment segregation trend based on gender is in line with the imagery of gender as presented by the media. Or instance, more women compared to men have the natural mothering, equated to caring ability and values. They are also presented as having more values in the private life sphere. Thus, issues of family, romance, love, parenthood, and domestic occupation are portrayed as more significant to women than they are to women.

In addition, while the frequency of portraying women in professional roles has been on the rise, as it has also diversified in recent years, advertising and TV series programs continue want to push women into what is regarded as pink-collar occupations. They present more men in professions that are regarded traditionally as more prestigious and serious (Giomi, Sansonetti & Tota, 2015). The report by UNECE produced in 2009 highlights the representation of women in stereotyped roles and situations that are demeaning remain uncontested.

The report also observes that positive portrayal of women in the media and in advertising is still scanty (UNECE, 2009). It is, therefore not surprising that few women have joined careers that women have been segregated against in the past; given the lack of guidance and exposure to all existing care options without stereotyping. Feminist research reports have provided evidence of the internalization of the gender stereotype roles and role models that circulates across and within cultures in society.

The reports demonstrate how the concept of gender is surrounded by structures and the resultant professionalism notions (Giomi, Sansonetti & Tota, 2015). While it has been demonstrated that the media contributes to the perpetuation of gender biases through the portrayal of girls and women in sexist ways and other demeaning advertisements, it has also been noted that the same media can be used as vehicle.