Gender role biases on Indian television.

Abstract

Gender role biases in Indian television have served to reinforce and even enhance the degradation of women in the broader society. A content analysis of 20 news programs, 20 fictionalized serials, and 100 commercials conducted over a 3-week period in 1988 indicated that women are portrayed as victims, caretakers, and sex objects while men are presented as masters, doers, and intellectuals. Of the 400 hours of news programs studied, men newsmakers accounted for 71% of the content while women were featured in only 10% of the segments. Even then, women's portrayal in the news tended to center on their roles as beneficiaries of welfare schemes, victims of accidents, or as the wives of male dignitaries. Fictionalized dramas reinforced the sex role stereotypes of men as decisive, assertive, dominant, and career- oriented, and of women as emotionally dependent, eager to please, sentimental, and primarily concerned with family relationships. Female characters in these series were most often housewives, secretaries, teachers, or nurses. Women were featured more often (56% of content) than men in Indian commercials, yet were shown performing stereotyped female activities such as shopping, preparing meals, and dressing to obtain the sexual approval of men. This sex role stereotyping in the media is seriously impeding the struggles of women in India to achieve economic and political autonomy. To promote more positive role modeling and change women's self-image, Indian television must move immediately to portray women achieving self-realization through their careers and social participation and to depict cooperation between men and women in performing household chores.