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Essay Subject: Effects of gender stereotyping of TV characters. TV as message-giver, advertising, ratings, family roles, sexism, socialization.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Effects of gender stereotyping of TV characters. TV as message-giver, advertising, ratings, family roles, sexism, socialization. Paper Introduction: INTRODUCTION Television is considered a powerful force in American life, whether for good or for ill, and the latter distinction has been much argued over the history of television broadcasting. One of the issues raised in recent years involves how television serves as an example in teaching gender roles to children, and this issue has become more heated as gender roles in society at large have been challenged, analyzed, and tested with the shifts in thinking and behavior that have taken place over the last two decades. It is not surprising that critics of television cannot agree on the effect of gender role presentation in the media when they cannot agree among themselves on what types of gender roles should be projected in the first place. Some theorists have simply approached the issue with the question as to whether or Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Some theorists have simply approached the issue with the questionas to whether or not television has any effect on gender role at all, andif so, what do current television presentations portray and what effect dothese portrayals have. "Home Is Where the Venom Is." Time, 85-86.----------------------- 1 In general, children's real-life and television-viewing experiences reinforce traditional gender stereotypes (Calvert and Huston, 1987, 79).Television activates existing schemata and also influences the acquisitionof new schemata, and the particular schemata that are activated affect howthe content will be processed: They influence program selection and selective attention within a program, encoding and storage in memory, transformations in memory, and inferences about missing events. Parents often use television as a form of babysitter, andchildren take easily to the viewing experience. Barnouw (1978) notes the huge success of television and the power oftelevision advertising as well as the way network executives realized theyhad been wrong to view television as another form of radio: Network leaders had long chafed over the degree of control they had yielded, early in broadcasting history, to advertising agencies and sponsors. Network Television and the Public Interest. Television still shows women as less aggressive than men and morelikely to take orders than men. In terms of formaloccupational roles, males are generally employed and enjoy highlyprestigious positons such as doctors, lawyers, and law enforcementofficials, while women are assigned marital, romantic, and family roles.On children's Saturday morning television, there was a greater diversity ofmale jobs, with 42 different male jobs and only 9 different female jobs ina 1974 survey. Nor does the television world adequately acknowledge the importance of homemaking and raising children: as in the real world, on television the woman who stays home has less status than the one who has a career (Signiorelli, 1991, 7 -71). Lexington, Maryland: Lexington Books.Jones, G. When they ventured into the occupational world their roles were stereotyped (Commission on Civil Rights, 1977, 8).Sexist stereotypes were noted for television advertising as well. Sprafkin & E.S. Window Dressing on the Set: Women and Minorities in Television. At the same time, schemata are formed or modified by exposure to new information. Thus therepetition of television only adds to the degree to which these ideas ofgender (among other things) are ingrained: Gender stereotypes are an important kind of role schema by which one's prior knowledge and expectations about people are defined by gender. Channeling Children: Sex Stereotyping in Prime-Time TV. . For most of its history,television was dominated by the three major networks, and only recently hasthere been a shift with the advent of cable television. New York: Pergamon Press.Miles, B. 94). The Commission found that in the 197 s the situation changed somewhatas programmers attempted new types of program with new roles for women.The situation comedy now included a number of shows featuring women, andthe commission cited The Mary Tyler Moore Show as different because itexplored the status of the main character as a single, professional womanwho did not have marriage uppermost in her mind. Signorella (eds) Children's Gender Schemata. Contemporary situation comedies often present themselves as differentfrom the norm or from earlier stereotypical presentations, but they are notnecessarily any better at creating non-stereotypical schema concerninggender roles. 3) The ability to comprehend content, format, and form featuresincreases with cognitive level, but even among young children, salient formfeatures attract and hold visual attention. TELEVISION AND GENDER ROLES Television does not sell gender roles the way it sells viewers toadvertisers or soap to viewers. Onexclusively children's programs, females were shown as generally passive,deferential, and likely to be punished for displaying high levels ofeffort, while males were seen as planful, constructive, and generallyrewarded for their efforts. (199 Winter). Commission on Civil Rights (1977 August). But the behavior of women characters is even more negative than that of men; thus, while fewer women are seen at all, children see a higher percentage of those that do appear performing negative behaviors (Miles, 1975, 36). TELEVISION AND CHILDREN Television is presumed to have a particular effect on children overand above what it might have on adults. Government Printing Office.Williams, F., R. "Roseanne: Unruly Woman as Domestic Goddess." Screen 31(4), 4 8-419.Signorielli, N. ANational Organization for Women report in 1972 found that women in whateverrole on television "were portrayed as dependent, unintelligent, submissivecreatures who were adjuncts of men" (Commission on Civil Rights, 1977, 12). . Barnes & Company.Ferris, C.D. A good program schedule is not a critic's schedule but a salesman's-- one that will sell rapidly at the prices asked (Brown, 1971, 61-62).The system dictates the type of programming that will be provided within avery narrow range, as Comstock (198 ) notes: The dependence of profits on audience means that for any one competitor--station or network--it is always more desirable to attract as large a body of potential consumers as possible, thereby maximizing the price that advertisers will for access to them, than it is to expand the total audience in any given hour by offering something appealing to a smaller audience composed of individuals who would not ordinarily watch television (Comstock, 198 , 23). (198 ). The researchers note: The realization of the undesirable components of their standard becomes evident much earlier to girls than to boys, who are less likely to perceive that society has limited their choices in what they might become. Liben & M. Sitcoms: Selling the American Dream.New York: Grove Weidenfield, 1992.Larson, M.S. Children take time tolearn some of the vocabulary of television and may misunderstand therelationship of one shot to another or one image to another (Greenfield,1984, 9-11). Questionsabout programming occupy one niche in the analysis of television, whileanother concerns the effect of television commercials on children--a childsees perhaps 2 , television commercials in a given year (Lowe, 1981,115). Anotherfinding of studies reported by Liebert, Sprafkin, and Davidson was thattelevision conveys different messages for males and females in terms of thevalues attached to both youth and marriage. Lowe. Washington D.C.: U.S. Gender is inherent in the way men andwomen are portrayed on television, and these roles have changed over thecourse of television history. Mind and Media. (199 , April 16). The commission found that women in situationcomedies in the 197 s still tended to be subordinate to the men in theirlives, though some female characters had become stronger over the years andsome new situations were explored: The new situation comedies are attempting to portray women more realistically than in the past. Television in America. New York: Praeger.Zoglin, R. Males had a wide variety of occupations onSaturday morning cartoons, while females were nearly always pretty teens orhousewives. Researchers have found that children do not always understandtelevision in the same way adults do. In a real sense,television now does not sell programs to viewers but viewers toadvertisers, with the programs being only the means to gather those viewerstogether at a specific time. Content analysis shows thatthere are far fewer females than males in the world of television, withmales filling between 66 and 75 percent of all roles. Furthermore, the attempt to deal with issues such as these seems to have enriched the portrayals of the females in situation comedies (Commission on Civil Rights, 1977, 23). In the 195 s, the nuclear family was widelyrepresented in situation comedy, while in contemporary televisionprogramming, divided families, single-parent families, and non-traditionalfamilies vie with the nuclear family for television time. Liebert, Sprafkin, and Davidson (1982) find a number of sources ofgender stereotypes for children on television. Youth is emphasized for bothsexes, but the emphasis is considerably greater for females. 8) No matter what the cognitive level, temporally related scenes arebetter recalled than independent successive scenes. A Sourcebook on Children and Television. (1981). Women more than men on TV areconcerned with family and marital/romantic problems, have problems solvedwith the help of others, and if employed are supervised by others (Liebert,Sprafkin, and Davidson, 1982, 163-166). Wilson.Greenfield, P.M. Paik (1991). Miles notes: Surprisingly, all adult characters observed showed more negative than positive characters, so that child viewes may sense an overall tone of grimness in adult life as portrayed on television. Ferris (1981) notes that young children in a survey were askedwhether they would give up their toys, their fathers, or their television,and the majority said they would give up their toys and even talking withtheir fathers before they would give up their television (141). In the 195 s, says theCommission, women had particular roles as homemakers: Television households were always spotless and smoothly managed, but the women who maintained them usually looked as though they spent most of their time in the beauty parlor. Beebe, and W.G. (198 ). Owen, Beebe, and Manning (1974) find that the new system iscompetitive and that no single network possesses sufficient power withadvertisers to "corner the market" (p. New York: Greenwood Press.U.S. The medium of television has a symbolic code,and how we understand this code determines the messages we receive and theinterpretation we place on those messages. ReferencesCalvert, S.L. They are still limited in their employmentpossibilities, and television does not recognize that woman cansuccessfully mix marriage, homemaking, and children with a career: Rather, television programs in which married women work outside the home (for example, Claire Huxtable on The Cosby Show) focus more on the character's home-related role than their work persona. The basic stereotypes prevalent in the 195 s are still seen ontelevision today in spite of changes in society and on television alike.At heart, television continues to fail to do justice to women in particularin programs, the news, and commercials. The manner in whichwe use the term "stereotype," however, implies something negative. Rice. Some of the elements the viewermust decode are visual, and others are auditory. (198 ). Frost. New York: A.S. TV males are portrayed as more powerful, dominant,aggressive, stable, persistent, rational, and intelligent than females,while females were more attractive, altruistic, sociable, warm,sympathetic, happy, rule abiding, peaceful, and youthful than males. Portrayals of women in occupational roles were infrequent and wererestricted to relatively few occupations, and women were also rarelydepicted as working wives (Commission on Civil Rights, 1977, 13). As to thedesirability of marriage, marriage on television generally reduces a man'spower and enhances a woman's power. Williams, LaRose, and Frost (1981) note that the sex-rolestandard in society comprises the behaviors and characteristics culturallyassigned to one sex or the other, and the components of this standard maybe assumed to be primarily positive characteristics. However, there arenumerous unanswered and disturbing questions about what effect long hoursof television watching may have on children. Brown (1971) can thus describe televisionas follows: American television is a business before it is anything else, and within the broadcast companies the sales function is pre-eminent. Televsiion thus perpetuates the stereotypesthat have existed in American media presentations at least since the timeof radio. (1991). In terms of the way women areportrayed, she finds that little has changed since the studies of the197 s. (1975). & A.C. Jencks notes that the network at that time was "primarily inthe business of selling airtime, and selling it in accordance with theterms of published rate cards, just as a print publisher sells space"(198 , 37). 4) Congruencies between content, format, and form features, theregularly employed conventions of television. Lexington, Maryland: Lexington Books.Rowe, K.K. The sort of problem that can arise with a well-intentionedshow like The Cosby Show has been noted above. The issue of televisionviolence and its effect on children remains a volatile one. 2) The implicit recognition and response to form features precede theability to define or describe these features. Sex roles are a hook, not an issue (Jones, 1991, 255). "The FCC Takes a Hard Look at Television." In C. Manning, Jr. Women were rarely portrayed outside the home or family situation. . Since the shift from sponsored programs to a system in which stationsand networks control the programs and sell time, television has become moreof a business geared to the maximization of profits and less to publicservice or even entertainment. THE NATURE OF TELEVISION Television is an advertising medium, and this fact determines muchabout what is shown, its content, and the messages that may be includedboth intentionally and unintentionally. In the sex-rolestandard, the child is presented a highly attractive constellation ofcharacteristics, most of which are usually adopted. Situation comedies are one area in which sex roles play animportant part and in which stereotypcial representations are seen over andover again. 2nd ed. Television and the American Child. Aside from philosophical questions, it had resulted in schedules that were haphazard and often senseless (Barnouw, 1978, 46).The federal government was also unhappy with the system for differentreasons: In its famous 1946 Report on Public Service Responsibilities of Broadcast Licensees, which came to be known as the 'Blue Book,' the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) vigorously asserted its view that advertiser influence was responsible for deficiencies in network program offerings (Jencks, 198 , 38). The clear message girls receive--that theirs is the less desirable sex--renders the sex-role standard, as well as sex- stereotyping, a much more negative experience for them than for their male peers (Williams, LaRose, and Frost, 1981, 8). & H. Yet, we do not have to resort to questions of misunderstanding oftelevision to analyze how children learn about issues such as gender, forthe overt messages of television are such that there are certain attitudesand trends which can be discerned and which are likely to have an effect onall viewers, with children gaining much of their knowledge of the worldthrough television, which in any case they see as more real-world than doadults. Television Economics. Willingness to explore controversial issues has resulted in the treatment of issues pertinent to women: rape, unwanted pregnancy, or job discrimination. New York: Academic Press.DeLuca, S.M. Males were presented as worldly, dominant authorityfigures, while females were shown as domesticated and submissive. The Report of the United StatesCommission on Civil Rights (1977) found that minorities and women wereunderrepresented on television: "When they do appear they are frequentlyseen in token or stereotyped roles" (3). DeLuca (198 )explains the development of the network system for television as a holdoverfrom radio: Television was deliberately created by the radio networks, and so it is hardly surprising that our television system was conceived in terms of a network from the very beginning (DeLuca, 198 , 128).Jencks (198 ) extends this to the advertising system as well, a system with a different type of control than is exercised today: During the entire history of network radio entertainment, and during the first decade of network television, program decisions were largely made, not by the networks themselves, but by advertisers and their agencies (Jencks, 198 , 37).Such control was thorough, extending to decisions on the format and natureof programs, the selection of stars and supporting players, supervision ofday-to-day production, and the monitoring of the programs for taste andpropriety. The Early Window: Effects of Television on Children and Youth. An analysis of sex roles in television commercials in 1974concluded that women were inaccurately presented as sex objects and rarelyas professionals. (1989 Summer). CONCLUSION Television is a powerful influence on children. L. (1974). Most formerly-marriedwomen in situation comedies at the time were typically widowed, though twoprograms in the 197 s featured divorced women--Fay and One Day at a Time.Women have always been more frequently portrayed in comedy roles than inserious roles on television. Davidson (1982). 9) Because there are many factors on which comprehension depends,visual attention is an imperfect predictor even among young children as towho would be least equipped to learn from television (Comstock, 1991, 25-26).Comstock concludes: This pattern leads to a principle: Attention rises with the ability and need to assemble a narrative successfully, and falls when elements can be comprehended individually or missed elements can be readily supplied by the viewer. New York: H.W. this cuts too close to real Ameican anxieties--to male fears that break up families and turn to violence--and so is never allowed to become a conflict. "Interaction Between Siblings in Primetime Television Families." Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 33(3), 3 5-315.Liebert, R.M., J.N. This idea infuses governmentalefforts to control and regulate children's programming while it does not sointerfere in "adult" programming. The networks purchased this airtime wholesale throughaffiliation contracts with stations and made a profit based on thedifference between what they paid affiliates for the time and what theadvertisers paid them. More common today are showswith deliberate distortions of gender roles and family life, as in TheSimpsons or Married with Children. Children, Television, and Sex- Role Stereotyping. One of the issues raised in recentyears involves how television serves as an example in teaching gender rolesto children, and this issue has become more heated as gender roles insociety at large have been challenged, analyzed, and tested with the shiftsin thinking and behavior that have taken place over the last two decades.It is not surprising that critics of television cannot agree on the effectof gender role presentation in the media when they cannot agree amongthemselves on what types of gender roles should be projected in the firstplace. Television and American Culture. Television has become more andmore dependent on ratings as a way of proving that there is an audience,and as the taking of ratings has become most sophisticated, demographicshas been used to sell specific age groups and types of consumers toadvertisers in a way that was never possible before. Signorielli (1991) notes the degree to which television plays a partin the socialization of children today. The way the issue is treated, though, issuperficial, and so does not challenge accepted assumptions to any greatdegree: . 6) Younger children are more dependent on appearances than behavingin forming beliefs about a character or the likely outcome of a story. "Children, Television and Gender Roles: Messages and Impact," Journal of Adolescent Health Care 11(1), 5 -58.Signorielli, N. A show like Roseannepresents a very different picture of the female in the family, in this caseas what Rowe (199 ) calls "female unruliness." In addition, this showprojects a sense of female control that is different for television andthat carries over to off-television: Perhaps [Roseanne's] greatest unruliness lies in the presentation of herself as author rather than actor and, indeed, as author of a self over which she claims control (Rowe, 199 , 4 9-41 ). While studies of the effects of television on children have beenshown to have numerous difficulties in creating a situation transferable tothe real world, such studies continue to be made. (1981). To some children, the screen is areal-world space, and they feel that everything that happens in this samereal-world space is related. When these viewers are children, particularconcerns arise. Huston (1987). "Television and Children's Gender Schemata," In L.S. For the most part, suchstudies show that some children model their own behavior upon behavior theysee on television (Miles, 1975, 13). Botein and D.M. (199 January). Children learn from the televisionthey watch, both children's programming and prime time programming, as wellas from commercials, and they learn that there are more men than womendoing interesting things and with interesting occupations. A sex-role stereotype is thus defined as a belief about a biological categorywhich tends to be exaggerated and which serves as a mechanism through whichequal opportunity to resources is denied to its members. LaRose & F. "How Network Television Program Decisions Are Made." In M. attempts to justify itself as relevant byintroducing a sex-role reversal. Thus, attention is maximal generally for movies and, among children, for children's programming (1991, 26). It reflects the sexroles in society and changes in those roles, but it also helps shape theway those roles are perceived. Princeton: Women on Words & Images.Owen, B.M., J.H. Calvert and Huston (1987) point out that children's comprehension ofthe content of television is an active process guided by schemata, orlearned expectations of what is likely to happen in the story. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc.Comstock, G. One problem noted for television is the distorted image given ofwomen and minorities in particular. . Comstock (1991) reports on a number of studies that have providedinformation regarding how children process television and what cognitiveprocesses are utilized. It is only as theindividual grows older that the less desirable aspects of the standard maybecome evident, and this is the sex-role stereotype. CHILDREN AND GENDER ON TELEVISION A number of studies have attempted to determine the effect of genderstereotypes in both children's and prime-time television shows on childrenas viewers. (1992). help young people learn fromtelevision. Zoglin (199 ) notes that these showsare against the romantic picture of family life portrayed on television(85), but while the satiric nature of these shows may be apparent to mostadults, it is not clear how children view them. The heaviest viewers of television arechildren. A show like Who's the Boss? A number of important findings have emerged fromthis research: 1) Children as young as 14 months can translate the two-dimensionsevents of television into an internalized representation for behaving inthe three-dimensional space of the real world. Angela remains self-doubting and deferential enough never to threaten Tony's manly authority, and Tony is so boyishly simple and secure that he never thinks about the ironies of his life. In a broad sense, they have changed toreflect shifts in gender roles in society at large, but at the same time,it is believed that television's portrayals have helped to shape thoseroles and continue to do so. 5) Younger children comprehend portrayals better that resemble invarious ways their own circumstances, while older children are lessdependent on such congruence. Gender is alsorepresented in the advertising, and this can often be more problematic.Commercials have as their object selling products, and they generally treatall viewers as malleable clay to be shaped into the sort of buyer desired.Children are particularly vulnerable to advertising for products ofinterest to them and pick up messages about gender roles from charactersand situations in commercials as in programs. Television's Transformation: The Next 25 Years. Honey, I'm Home! 7) Skills at assembling stories ease the task of cognitiveprocessing and enhance the likelihood of comprehension. INTRODUCTION Television is considered a powerful force in American life, whetherfor good or for ill, and the latter distinction has been much argued overthe history of television broadcasting. Television may contribute to establishing stereotyped schemata by the redundant and uniform presentation of messages about women and men (Calvert and Huston, 1987, 79). Beverly Hills: SDFE.Comstock, G. Children learn from what they seeon television and carry behaviors and attitudes over into real life. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.Jencks, R.W. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.