Media, Gender Stereotypes, and Their Effects on Society

Introduction

Being born male or female signals the bearing of certain biological sexual characteristics. Socialization takes individuals through a path that inculcates specific norms and codes of conduct depending on whether one is born male or female. In other words, the rules that one adopts and follows are guided by one's biological sex. Therefore, one's communication, expression, and behavior are shaped by pre-existing cultural and social norms, including non-verbal language. Consequently, people's behavior may differ because it is shaped by cultural and social norms from varying socio-ethnic and cultural contexts. 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. That function is what enables units of social influence—including peer groups, family, and media—to transmit common beliefs, values, and stereotypes within their communities (Gerino, Marino, Brustia & Rollè, 2014). The media plays a central role in the provision of images that carry collectively shared meanings. Those meanings are then reconditioned by the behavior and attitudes of individuals (Kay, Matuszek & Munson, 2015).

New studies continue to explore the role of the media in shaping individual behavior. The media, especially social media, plays a major role in shaping cultures, attitudes, and behavior. It also presents a fresh viewpoint for examining the complex interaction between bottom-up cultural trends and mainstream ones (Rolando, Taddeo & Beccaria, 2016). It is a commonplace occurrence for the media to portray certain cultures negatively, and this is even more significant when reflecting gender stereotypes. Gender constitutes socio-cultural differences between women and men as designed by the social setup. The media often overlooks the socio-cultural development that influences the formation of gender roles, and the continuing shift in social positions and roles in the modern day is rarely reflected in media sources (Šramová, 2014).

While the media audience is at liberty to choose what content to follow, it is the media that possesses the ultimate power to decide which gender roles are made visible and which are not. This is precisely what the agenda-setting theory explores: the media decides what is to be talked about and what will not be. Radio, TV, music, drama, movies, discussions, reality TV, newspapers, magazines, and other electronic media sources—including the internet—all present the public with an agenda that shapes their social deliberations. The content presented may reinforce previous stereotypes, values, and beliefs regarding gender roles, or it may help to reset them. At the same time, research suggests that when media exposes individuals to groups with varying gender stereotypes or cultural perspectives, it may also help to positively influence behavioral change. The media thus has an opportunity to help people overcome sexist stereotypes (Giomi, Sansonetti & Tota, 2015). An analysis of the role of the media with regard to gender stereotypes is therefore necessary to enable effective communication both with others and within our own group settings.

Background: Gender Roles and Media Influence

Gender-based stereotyping reveals how gender roles are carried out in the socialization process. Stereotyping points to the roles that females and males in society have been assigned arbitrarily, roles that form part of a society's way of life and are determined by the sex of an individual. Gender roles therefore inform an individual's activities as guided by belief systems, and such systems often limit one's abilities and talents because they are predetermined. Consequently, gender roles determined by society frequently lead to a waste of human resources, because individual talents are not exploited to their fullest. Such predispositions also influence the formation of gender identities among young people, shaping their choices across a broad spectrum of social life, including career choices and private relationships. The gender-stereotyping 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 identity formation among young people. Youth are exposed to a wide range of social images that function as social symbols. According to Dennis McQuail (2010), this phenomenon represents a negotiated form of influence. He further argues that the role of the media is more constructivist in nature: the media develops meaning and hands it to its audience, and the audience in turn incorporates such meaning into their personal meaning systems. Meaning is therefore a product of the audience, arising through a process of negotiation and mediation that is highly influenced by the social context of the receiver (McQuail, 2010). Consequently, the media plays an ambivalent role, seeking to attract the largest audience possible while preferring to touch only on socially acceptable trends and avoiding social extremism. It relies on simplistic, often stereotyped representations of social reality, social phenomena, and group images. Stereotypes have been found to help people understand complex phenomena and provide a sense of security by alleviating the anxiety that emanates from uncertain situations. Gender stereotyping is no exception (Giomi, Sansonetti & Tota, 2015).

The emphasis here is that the media plays a central role in the formation of opinions at both the individual and group level. It therefore bears a responsibility to promote human dignity, discourage and prevent discrimination against women, and promote equality between the two genders. By encouraging equality between men and women, it is assumed that a shift in cultural and social patterns will follow, aimed at eliminating prejudices leveled against either sex (Giomi, Sansonetti & Tota, 2015).

Media stereotypes help listeners, readers, and viewers understand messages with ease. Such stereotyping aims to demonstrate the perception of the majority and thereby contributes to their confidence and social stability. Stereotypes are an essential ingredient in the construction of social reality: they assist people in orienting, conceptualizing, evaluating, and categorizing the world. However, stereotypes are often used to sustain a position in an argument rather than being grounded in evidence and fact-based information. In advertising, stereotyped symbols and images distort and oversimplify reality, undermining its true cultural and social dimensions. With regard to content stereotyping, advertising strongly oversimplifies and distorts both individual and group images, basing generalized concepts on unimportant or insignificant characteristics. The content of advertising creates expectations of behavior based on membership in a specified stereotyped group—expectations that are not aligned to facts and realities on the ground, and may even obstruct their correct representation. The media must therefore subject itself to considerable research and critical reflection (Šramová, 2014).

It has been generally accepted that advertising influences and promotes gender inequality by normalizing sexism and presenting it as acceptable. Sexism involves the portrayal of women as inferior beings in terms of what they can or cannot do. Such portrayals are expressed through traditional advertising themes that confine women to certain roles and functions. Exposure to this kind of advertising has been noted to generate anti-women attitudes. The sexualization and victimization of women tends to be valorized through advertising, and this has also been found to work against the efforts of women to increase their societal influence and power (Zotos & Tsichla, 2014).

The Role of Media in Shaping Gender-Linked Identities

Gender is, by definition, a social construct—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 biological sex alone. The media, alongside other socialization agents such as the education system, friends, peers, and family, plays a significant role in providing symbolic elements—role models, images, values, and narratives—that people use at a personal level when constructing their identities. While the audience can refuse or accept the media content they are exposed to, the media is responsible for ensuring that what is presented is positive and helps to resolve the gender biases that burden society. All sources of media information are important in shaping and reshaping public perceptions of gender and gender roles as they relate to sexuality.

Mainstream media aims at attracting as much public attention as possible. To achieve this, it relies on simplistic means that make content easy for audiences to follow, offering stereotypes of social groups and social reality that appeal to preconceived ideas. In such a scenario, men and women are assigned arbitrary characteristics and roles limited by their biological sex attributes. The outcome is the promotion of an asymmetrical vision of men and women filtered through stereotype windows (Giomi, Sansonetti & Tota, 2015).

Research focused on advertising and gender reveals broad usage of stereotypes when representing women. Women typically feature in promoting bathroom and kitchen products or operating within the home; when they are featured outside the home, they often appear subservient to men. Authoritative voiceovers are usually male. When advertisers use feminist discourse to promote the purchase of their products by women, this is sometimes referred to as pro-feminist utopia. Studies further show that advertisers tend to portray women in sexual roles, and there is an overhyped and physically narrow standard of beauty on which advertisers focus.

How women are portrayed in news is a relatively understudied area. The broadest research effort along these lines has been conducted by the Global Media Monitoring Project, which observed that women are underrepresented in news. The study further noted that women appear less frequently as spokespeople and experts, tending instead to be portrayed as representatives of everyday concerns or voices of personal experience. The use of women as news presenters is not exclusively due to their competence but is tied to their perceived attractiveness and the quality of their voices. Women are also noted to add dramatic aspects to events and to offer a welcome distraction from, for example, the horrors of war coverage. For a journalist to advance quickly in their career, they need to demonstrate expertise in politics, sports, and economics—areas traditionally regarded as male specialties—meaning female journalists are often required to prove they can go beyond traditional female competencies. The internet, or new media, has had critics claim it is a female-dominated space, yet studies have shown that women participating in online discourse face significantly high levels of negative feedback from male counterparts, including deception, sexism, and other forms of inappropriate social behavior (Giomi, Sansonetti & Tota, 2015).

Conclusion and the Case for Gender-Sensitive Communication

The stereotypes relating to gender allot specified roles to men and women and presuppose that only the allotted sex can effectively perform those roles. It is an arbitrary assignment not based on any evidence—in fact, the available research points in the opposite direction, highlighting the need to assign roles based on the talents and capacities of individuals rather than their sex. Furthermore, the practice of arbitrary role allotment is retrogressive to the extent that it encourages a waste of human resources, preventing many talented individuals from achieving their full potential. Studies show that where such practices are strongly embedded socially, they negatively affect a wide range of life activities and empowerment avenues including education, economic opportunities, health services, and career choices. The use of gender stereotypes as marketing tools in advertising reinforces them and encourages their spread through the fabric of society and across generations. It is, indeed, a means of promoting inequality. Written, visual, and verbal communication all determine the extent of human behavior and thought.

There should therefore be a deliberate effort to change harmful and retrogressive attitudes through the responsible management of the media content to which audiences are exposed. The choices we make in our daily visual and verbal communication carry a far-reaching impact on social decorum and the treatment of stereotypes, including negative perceptions of gender roles and skewed beliefs in the superiority or inferiority of the sexes. Gender-sensitive communication means using inclusive language and ensuring that the visual portrayal of either sex provides an objective expression of their talents and capacities across the full spectrum of life tasks. It should also portray equal access to resources, balanced roles, and an equal stake in decision-making across social, economic, and political spheres. Ideally, such representation should provide an opportunity to question pre-existing stereotypes, to disprove and abandon perceptions that lead to unfair treatment and wasted human potential, and to propel gender equality to the mainstream platforms of socio-economic and political engagement (Koç Holding, 2017).

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