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.

Top Issues Facing Women in Film and Television

If film and television offered accurate pictures of the most pressing issues facing women, those issues might appear to be "What should I wear? How do I look? And what does my husband or boyfriend need?" Unfortunately, film and television do a poor job of portraying the real challenges women face. The three most important issues confronting women are the achievement of political parity, the achievement of economic parity, and the achievement of social parity.

The achievement of political parity is a top issue facing women. Universal suffrage was granted less than a century ago, meaning it has not been long since women were not considered full citizens. Women have certainly come a long way in the past hundred years but still have a long way to go, even in the United States. There remains a disproportionate number of men — white men in particular — in positions of political power, a reality reflected as faithfully in film and television as it is in real life. Most films and television programs depict female characters in traditional gendered roles as wives, mothers, and helpers rather than as leaders, movers, and shakers. When women are portrayed in positions of power, they are often depicted negatively. For example, the film The Devil Wears Prada features a female editor-in-chief of a major fashion magazine — a position of considerable wealth and influence — yet the woman is portrayed in an unflattering light. This sends the message that women in power sacrifice their capacity to be good human beings, a dangerous signal to send young women looking for role models.

The achievement of economic parity is another critical issue, since more women than men live in poverty. Women have traditionally been economically dependent on men, a dependency reinforced by a domestic labor structure in which women's household work goes unrecognized and unpaid. As a result, women who lose their male partners through death or divorce are often left without independent income. Entering an unforgiving job market, many find only low-paying positions that offer no meaningful opportunity for advancement — let alone the chance to encounter the glass ceiling. Those who do reach the glass ceiling often discover they cannot attain the highest positions; and when they do, their salaries remain a fraction of those earned by male counterparts. Equal pay for equal work is still not guaranteed, a reality seldom portrayed in film and television. Instead, women on screen are depicted as housewives, secretaries, schoolteachers, and nurses — professions that are typically gendered and typically undervalued.

The third pressing issue is the achievement of social parity. This manifests in many ways, including a mother's ability to choose whether she will be the primary caregiver. Film and television more often than not depict the female partner as the default primary caregiver, while portraying working mothers as unavailable or emotionally distant. Fathers who assume the primary caregiver role are framed as anomalies or as bumbling men who cannot change a diaper. Other dimensions of social parity include the ability of women and men to socialize together outside strictly gendered contexts — a dynamic occasionally explored in shows like Sex and the City, which depicted women's friendships and agency as central rather than peripheral.