Stereotypical Representations Of Gender Research Articles

Fortolkning, betydning og magt

Advertising images have been a focal point of feminist activism and protest since the 1960s, and criticism of the negative impact of commercially mediated gender stereotypes has also been met with political attention. As an EU member state, Denmark is obliged to integrate the objectives of eliminating the media’s stereotypical representations of gender into their respective national legislation and guidelines. Nevertheless, a review of the Danish Consumer Ombudsman’s (FO) and the Radio and TV Board’s (RTN) practices, which are the two Danish bodies that regulate advertising in Denmark, demonstrates a reluctance in prohibiting the dissemination of advertising that may be perceived as offensive or sexist. Through analysis of advertising examples that have been accused of gender discrimination, and their case processing by the two above-mentioned authorities, the article here focuses on advertising as an arena for different and often conflicting agendas and discourses. The article revolves around the importance of advertising images’ representations of gender as well as their regulation and politicization and it demonstrates how visual messages and their significance for equality are up for constant debate. By questioning the way in which Danish authorities evaluate gender discrimination in advertising it thus enters a broader international and political discussion about the formative power of commercial images.

Reading Gender by the Column Inch: Analyzing Gender Representation in Philippine Print Advertisements

The bulk of literature on reading gender in print advertisements studies magazines, which are a media form tailored for specific audiences. By analyzing gender representations in Philippine newspaper ads, this study aims to provide a reading of gender portrayals published in a more general interest medium. Results of the content analysis performed on 256 ads that appeared in top local publications revealed that while gendered inequalities did not strongly manifest in terms of character count and gender distribution, a closer reading of characters and their gendered differences with specific ad elements in terms of contexts, roles, and physicalities evidence the persistence of stereotypical gender representations in print ads.

Fængslede kvinder er andet og mere end stereotyper

AbstractIn this essay, I discuss the establishment of a women’s prison in Denmark. Until recently, women have served in men’s prisons and sometimes in men’s wings. In 2018, due to questions of safety during imprisonment and ambitions of improving rehabilitative means for women, the political decision makers decided to establish a ‘women only’ facility. Among other things, I discuss the issue of imprisoned women’s rights and problematize the stereotypical representations of gender within existing prison practices.

Real Men Don’t Buy “Mrs. Clean”: Gender Bias in Gendered Brands

Our article examines how products are valued differently depending on if the product has a male or female brand representation and if the consumer is male or female. This research extends previous research that categorizes brands as “gendered” (masculine vs. feminine) using stereotypical gender representations (“soft” vs. “hard”) by showing that male and female brand names are evaluated with a bias that favors male brands. Across five studies (online, field), using a mixed-method approach (implicit association test [IAT], experiments, sales data), we examine gender-neutral product categories (champagne, chips, tea, board games) that have male or female brand representations. We find that men devalue brands with female names, whereas women made no such distinctions, which we explain is due to gender bias created by the “precarious manhood” principle. This bias by men can be overcome using agentic brand descriptions. This research has implications for brand management, marketing communications, and public policy.

Representations of attachment security, attachment avoidance, and gender in Ugandan children

ABSTRACT Researchers returned to the home of Mary Ainsworth’s original attachment study to explore the contributions of Ugandan children’s representations of attachment interactions with their caregivers to their perceptions about gender. Researchers administered the Attachment Story-Completion Task (ASCT) and applied three attachment narrative coding systems and a gender stereotypes typology to the ASCT stories of 51 Ugandan children ages 5–7. Nine attachment narrative variables were applied to the children’s responses to a series of five attachment story stems told using a family of dolls. The narratives emerging from the children’s responses to these story stems were also coded independently for 14 masculine and 14 feminine gender stereotypes. Empathic relations among the dolls and narrative coherence were positively correlated with counterstereotypical gender representations only in girls. Attachment representations of a rejecting father were positively correlated with stereotypical gender representations only in boys. Representations of attachment avoidance were negatively correlated with counterstereotypical gender representations in both boys and girls. The findings suggested two different trajectories for the development of gender representation flexibility in boys and girls. This study contextualizes these findings against the backdrop of a country with rigid sex roles and a fast-growing child population.

Legitimizing Sexist Advertising: A Critical Focus on the Danish Consumer Ombudsman’s Guidelines and Adjudications of Complaints of Gender Discrimination

ABSTRACT Feminist media studies have highlighted gender discrimination in advertising since the 1960s. Despite this focus and political attention on combating sexist stereotypes and prejudicial portrayals in advertising the problem persists. Few scholarly endeavours have thus far probed how the national agencies tasked with preventing sexism perceive and address such representations in marketing. To remedy this research gap this study investigates the Danish Consumer Ombudsman’s (DCO) definition of sexism and its evaluation of stereotypical representations of gender in marketing campaigns by Danish companies. The DCO is empowered to ensure non-discriminatory representations in advertising. Utilizing feminist critical discourse analysis as a theory and methodology the present study addresses two aspects of the institutional and discursive practices of this authoritative body, scrutinizing its latest Guidelines on gender-related advertising of 1 April 2012 and examining its application of these guidelines in adjudications of complaints against sexism. Applying the lens of post-feminism and sexism to the analysis, the article indicates how the DCO legitimizes and normalizes sexist advertising and offers significant insights into practices that perpetuate inequality in the media and its regulatory institutions. Ultimately, the article reveals how the very societal institutions established to safeguard gender equality reproduce gender discrimination.

Female Musicians’ Visual Gender Staging in Music Videos

The design analysis of the media presented in this article focuses on the representation of female musicians, looking at the ways in which they stage both themselves and their gender in music videos. According to my observation, the visual portrayal of female artists has been defined by a long history of stereotypical gender representations that have to be overcome. In the music videos published by female musicians, we can observe design strategies for selfportrayal and gender staging, as well as sources of aesthetic inspirations and trends. Different oppositional design strategies are described that either blur gender, provoke the viewer or overcome stereotypical gender representations.

Gender Construction And Media Narratives: Representations Of Gender In Animated Movies

Media, as an important and powerful social institution, contributes in the construction and reinforcement of perceptions and beliefs about gender. The media images of gender have been found stereotypical and discriminated while there have been many debates on the under representation and biased treatment of gender related issues. This research study particularly analyzed how media narratives play a part in the construction of gender identities in animated movies. The study focused to investigate how femininity and masculinity have been build up in movies, which sort of roles have been assigned to both genders and which identities have been emphasized in the animated movies of Time Warner and Walt Disney during the time period of 2008 to 2013. Gender schema and social learning theories gave implications to the research findings. Both quantitative and qualitative content analysis of fourteen animated movies was conducted. The study concluded that there is stereotypical representations of gender in movies. The women are under-represented and usually negatively portrayed while the men have shown with more societal powers.

New Brazilian feminisms and online networks: Cyberfeminism, protest and the female ‘Arab Spring’

In the last decades, the region of Latin America has been through many changes, with the reduction of inequality levels and a political trend which has seen the election of female politicians throughout the continent, including a revival of gender politics and feminist movements. Countries like Brazil are still home to gender discrimination and inequality, with high levels of domestic violence towards women, low levels of political representation, a culture of machismo and the predominance still of stereotypical gender representations in the media. Questions asked include how the media can better contribute to assist in gender development and nation-building. How can online platforms make a difference? This article provides a critical summary of feminist theoretical perspectives on the potential of online communications for the advancement of women’s rights, further providing a brief case study of contemporary Brazilian feminism and the mobilization around women’s rights, particularly in 2015.

Free to Be … You and Me : Revisiting a Feminist Classic

Free to Be ... You and Me was a remarkably prescient project for its time, with a profound impact on the history of feminism in the United States. Placing Free to Be in the history of the womens movement brings and childhood to the center of an already multifaceted movement and reveals that they were there from its beginning. Free to Be used material developed in Ms. magazine from its first issue and its royalties supported the Ms. Foundation for Women through its early years. Similarly, the Womens Action Alliance began the Non-Sexist Child Development Project in response to demand for a national feminist agenda that included and the impact of sexist stereotypes. In the 1970s, chapters of the National Organization for Women led the fight against violent and sexist childrens toys with pickets and protests at toy manufacturers (Rotskoff and Lovett 2012). For feminists focused on childhood, toys could reinforce sexist stereotypes as easily as they could inspire creative potential. In 1974, Letty Pogrebin challenged parents not to buy toys that insulted, offended, or excluded one sex, usually females. In her words, refusing to buy toys 'for girls' that teach hypocrisy, narcissism, and limited aspirations. We're avoiding toys 'for boys' that promote militaristic values and a must-win attitude (49). Instead, Pogrebin urged parents to apply feminist values when considering toys for their kids. This faith in the power of socialization and the impact of parenting placed at the center of the women's movement.The history and continued relevance of Free to Be inspired historian Lori Rotskoff and me to use its fortieth anniversary as an occasion to revisit the fight against gender stereotypes in our collection When We Were Free to Be: Looking Back at a Children's Classic and the Difference It Made (Rotskoff and Lovett 2012). We wanted to create a history in four voices: the voices of the creators of the original Free to Be book, album, and TV special; the voices of the of those creators; the voices of contemporary thinkers on gender, feminism, and parenting; and the voices of scholars seeking to place Free to Be in its historical context. We weren't seeking an oral history or a collected memoir but a form of collective history and commentary written for a contemporary audience still facing stereotypical representations of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and ability.When we called Free to Be a classic, we were making a claim about its place in history, its legacy, and its life in our contemporary culture. Free to Be remains in print, with a new edition issued in 2010. That it continues to inspire both adults and does not mean that its interpretation has remained unchanged or unchallenged. Contributors in When We Were Free to Be, like commentators in this journal and elsewhere, have questioned the stories, skits, and songs of Free to Be, pointing out a range of inconsistencies and shortcomings, especially when viewed from a contemporary perspective. For instance, contemporary commentators, such as sociologists Karl Bryant and Karin Martin, are much more open about the implications for male sexuality suggested in the story and song William's Doll than were the creators of Free to Be in 1974 (Bryant 2012; Martin 2005). Bryant recounts being drawn to the gender-nonconforming William as a child but realizing as an adult that William was redeemed only by becoming a father and conforming to a heterosexual and familial ideal that valued masculinity over femininity for boys and men. The framers of Free to Be were not blind to the issue of sexuality. In 1980, Letty Pogrebin, a framer of Free to Be, addressed the secret fear that sex roles somehow determined sexuality and she railed against homophobia as a malevolent enforcer of sex-role behavior and an enemy of children (289). …

Gender representations in East Asian advertising: Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea

Gender representations in television advertisements have been a subject of academic research for many years. However, comparatively few studies have looked into television advertising’s gender representations in Confucian societies, particularly from a comparative perspective. This study compares the representation of males and females in 1,694 television advertisements from Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea. It uncovers stereotypical gender representations related to age (females were predominantly young, males were middleaged), clothing/nudity (females were more suggestively dressed, males were fully clothed), work (females were depicted more often at home, males were typically depicted in the workplace), authority (males were used for voiceovers more than females, with males being the so-called “voice of authority”), and beauty (more females than males advertised for the cosmetics/toiletries product category). Overall, gender representations were highly stereotypical in all three cultures, which may be due to a shared common cultural background based on Confucianism. In terms of the degree of gender stereotyping, Hong Kong was more gender-egalitarian than Japan and South Korea; this finding is consistent with results from Project Globe’s gender egalitarianism index and the Gender-related Development Index (GDI) by the United Nations, but not with Hofstede’s masculinity index. These results suggest a relationship between gender representations and some gender indices. Finally, this article discusses the possible effects of stereotypical gender representations on audiences in relation to social cognitive and cultivation theories.

“Sexual Ornament” or “Spiritual Trainer”? Envisioning and Marketing to a Female Audience Through the NHL’s “Inside the Warrior” Advertising Campaign

This study investigates the unique association between female hockey fans, dominant conceptions of gender in sport, and the role of cultural intermediaries in the cultural production of media texts. In particular, it focuses on the National Hockey League’s “Inside the Warrior” advertising campaign created by marketing agency Conductor (for the relaunch of the League after the 2004–2005 lockout), that was, in part, envisioned for and marketed to target female audience. Using insights revealed through in-depth semistructured interviews with two cultural intermediaries, the critical analysis in this article focuses on how the cultural intermediaries from Conductor imagined and conceptualised female hockey fans as a target audience, engages in a comparative analysis between the creative strategies in the production of the “Inside the Warrior” campaign and characteristics of female narratives to attract a female audience, and discusses the accommodation of resistance to the stereotypical representations of gender in the “Inside the Warrior” campaign by the cultural intermediaries. These insights serve to highlight the hegemonic position of cultural intermediaries and the disjuncture between the encoding by producers and the interpretation by consumers and fans.

Analysis of 1st Grade and 5th Grade Textbooks and Primary School Student's Views About Personal Traits in Gender Role in Society

This study investigates whether the textbooks used in Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) schools carry stereotyped images and whether students view stereotypical representations of gender on personal traits are different with the respect of their gender and grade level. For the aim of this study, the primary 1 st and 5 th and 17 grade school textbooks were read in detail to find out gender stereotypic representations that matched with the categorie of personal traits. The questionnaire were developed to see the primary 1 st and 5 th grade students view about gender role releted to personal trait. Female and male are generally represented in a stereotyped way in the school textbooks; The numbers of personal traits representations were evaluated, “being brave”, “being dependent”, “independent”, “clever”, “leader”, “creative”, “supportive”, “rich”, “hardworking”, and “lazy” are for male personal traits. “Beautiful”, “sweet”, “emotional”, “happy”, “sad”, “surprised” and “friendly” are given for female personal traits according to the school textbooks content. “Active”, “passive”, “aggressive”, and “sensitive” are equal for these two gender representations. Students views with the respect of their gender show the similar results with the textbooks. Female students see most of the personal traits for both gender however male studnt's views reflect the stereotype personal traits in gender roles in society.

Gender Role Portrayal and the Disney Princesses

The popular Disney Princess line includes nine films (e.g., Snow White, Beauty and the Beast) and over 25,000 marketable products. Gender role depictions of the prince and princess characters were examined with a focus on their behavioral characteristics and climactic outcomes in the films. Results suggest that the prince and princess characters differ in their portrayal of traditionally masculine and feminine characteristics, these gender role portrayals are complex, and trends towards egalitarian gender roles are not linear over time. Content coding analyses demonstrate that all of the movies portray some stereotypical representations of gender, including the most recent film, The Princess and the Frog. Although both the male and female roles have changed over time in the Disney Princess line, the male characters exhibit more androgyny throughout and less change in their gender role portrayals.

BETWEEN FEMINISM AND FUN(NY)MISM

This paper presents a first analysis of popular Internet humour about gender. The focus is on the extent to which such humour encodes sexist, feminist, and post-feminist ideologies. Utilizing a novel sampling protocol, a corpus of 150 highly popular verbal and visual comic texts was retrieved from eight English-based websites. The findings of a content analysis suggest that although men and women are mocked to an equal extent, traditional stereotypical gender representations still prevail, along with the emergence of new postfeminist portrayals. The postfeminist, essentialist thesis of gender differences is revealed to be central, while feminist humour about gender inequalities is marginal. The discussion contextualizes these findings and argues they express backlash interpretations of postfeminism. Finally, the results are discussed in relation to the high hopes held for the potential of the Internet to be involved in women's empowerment and the transformation of gender relations.

Gender representations in East Asian advertising: Hong Kong, Japan, and Shouth Korea

Gender representations in East Asian advertising: Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea Abstract Gender representations in television advertisements have been a subject of academic research for many years. However, comparatively few studies have looked into television advertising’s gender representations in Confucian societies, particularly from a comparative perspective. This study compares the representation of males and females in 1,694 television advertisements from Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea. It uncovers stereotypical gender representations related to age (females were predominantly young, males were middleaged), clothing/nudity (females were more suggestively dressed, males were fully clothed), work (females were depicted more often at home, males were typically depicted in the workplace), authority (males were used for voiceovers more than females, with males being the so-called “voice of authority”), and beauty (more females than males advertised for the cosmetics/toiletries product category). Overall, gender representations were highly stereotypical in all three cultures, which may be due to a shared common cultural background based on Confucianism. In terms of the degree of gender stereotyping, Hong Kong was more gender-egalitarian than Japan and South Korea; this finding is consistent with results from Project Globe’s gender egalitarianism index and the Gender-related Development Index (GDI) by the United Nations, but not with Hofstede’s masculinity index. These results suggest a relationship between gender representations and some gender indices. Finally, this article discusses the possible effects of stereotypical gender representations on audiences in relation to social cognitive and cultivation theories.