Perspectives of Children on Gender Roles Shown on Television

Abstract

A child is born in a culture and learns the culture to be able to survive in that society. This process starts at birth and ends with death which is called socialization. Family, school, friends, media, etc. are effective on socialization. Children learn gender roles by socialization. Since we are at a technology age, children mostly socialize through media. At small ages, the most important socialization object is television. They learn most of the things from the television. This study aimed to find out the effect of television on children’s perceptions of gender roles. 15 secondary school students in Denizli Turkey participated in the study. Document analysis method as qualitative research was used to gather data. Participants were asked to draw a picture of a woman’s role that s/he has seen on television. Pictures were analyzed by the researcher and two other experts. Six themes emerged from the pictures of students. These are women are at contest shows, film series, alone at home, working woman, powerful woman, and violence against women.