Hegemony, Gender, and Race Stereotypes in Media Culture

Defining Hegemony and Its Everyday Effects

Hegemony refers to social and political power, and entails the domination of political, economic, and social institutions. That domination can be covert — as in the ways male discourse dominates politics and the media — or it can be overt, as when one group passes laws that directly infringe on the rights of others. Not all forms of hegemony are acknowledged or articulated, which is why hegemony can be particularly sinister and difficult to eliminate.

One of the ways hegemony is visible in everyday life is that subordinate groups define themselves in relation to the dominant group. For example, it is presumed that masculinity and heterosexuality are normative, which is why we say things like "gay marriage" and "lady doctor." Before gender-neutral language was widely adopted, the terms "he" and "man" were used to describe all people, as if women did not exist. This is one of many examples of male hegemony.

Cultural hegemony refers particularly to the ways in which elements of European and North American culture come to dominate other cultures. Stemming from colonial attitudes toward non-European peoples, cultural hegemony has meant that brands like McDonald's and Coca-Cola are available virtually everywhere in the world, making it more difficult for local brands to succeed. As a result, subordinate cultures are gradually being erased — a pattern also evident in the dying out of local languages, as English increasingly becomes a hegemonic tongue.

Hegemony is evident with regard to race as well. Racial hegemony is visible in the way whiteness is treated as normative, so that everyone who is not white becomes a "person of color." White hegemony has contributed to the biased interpretations of history published in school textbooks, just as male hegemony has led to the telling of history exclusively from the perspective of men. The concept of "white privilege" suggests that people who are white enjoy unspoken advantages most often taken for granted: the privilege of walking into a boardroom without being stared at; the privilege of being served or seated first; or the privilege of being assumed to be intelligent and powerful.

The effects of hegemony are visible in everyday life across social, cultural, and political spheres. Men dominate at nearly every level of actual power — in boardrooms and in positions of political authority. The hegemony of social class also manifests as a vicious cycle in which the wealthy make important political decisions that affect the poor, while the poor remain too economically, socially, and politically disenfranchised to challenge those decisions.

Hegemony shapes which elements of the dominant culture become most visible and normative. Heterosexuality is hegemonic in this sense: because it is perceived as the norm, all other sexual orientations and gender identities are perceived as deviant. This perception produces real and tangible consequences in people's lives, such as the historical inability of same-sex partners to obtain hospital visiting rights or inheritance rights. Although its power has diminished somewhat, Christianity continues to function as a hegemonic religion. Religious Christians have influenced public policy to a degree disproportionate to their actual numbers — highlighting the fact that power does not necessarily reside with a numerical majority, but with those who possess access to social and cultural capital. That capital can then be wielded to achieve a desired result, which is generally the perpetuation of the existing hegemon.