Introduction to Gender Stereotypes
Gender roles and stereotypes are the expectations society has about how individuals from a specific gender are supposed to act, dress, communicate, among other characteristics. For men, the stereotypes include that they are tough, powerful, insensitive, logical, primarily interested in their careers, and do not have a primary interest in marriage and parenthood. Women, meanwhile, tend to get portrayed as helpless, sensitive, unstable, irrational, not primarily interested in a career, and having a primary interest in a long-term relationship and parenthood (Firestone, 2014). In 21st-century society, we try to hold moralistic values about how we should view women and men, whether it is out in public, or through the media content we consume. If we see a gender getting incorrectly portrayed, we try to zero it out and try not to let the perceptions distort our views. However, since the stereotypes occur so often in the content that we take in, whether it is film or television, it can be challenging for us to remove the false representations from our mind, and return to the ideal views that we should have about gender. These views come in many shapes and sizes for women and men, and some of the stereotypes lead to folks seeing one gender be dominant over the other, with it typically being men over women.
Impact of Gender Stereotypes
The following video by AMAZE Org offers a background behind these stereotypes, a few of the most prominent between men and women, as well as how these perceptions have changed over the years.
As children grow up, their views of gender stereotypes change as they take in more adult programming, as well as how the traditional attitudes get reinforced by their peers to how each gender should act and behave. As Dr. Lisa Firestone discusses,
The media [are] guilty of exploiting the differences between men and women and of exaggerating gender stereotypes of men and women to sell products. The residuals of these sexist prejudices in our lives today portray men as masterful, powerful, paternalistic and uncommunicative, and women as emotionally responsive and communicative, yet childlike, helpless and incompetent. These distortions of the sexes are divisive, and interfere with our being intimate and loving in our close relationships. The social pressure exerted by these attitudes is as damaging to couple relationships as racial prejudice is to relations between people of different ethnic backgrounds. (Firestone, 2014)
The approaches the media take to portray women and men results in both genders getting characterized by their traditional norms and quirks. A lot of the content we take in overlooks the true qualities that women and men are supposed to have, and instead, we are left with the old-school perceptions that have been around for as long as we can remember. Children are extremely vulnerable to having these stereotypes click in their heads since their brains are still developing, and given how impressionable they are, they will assert them in their daily interactions (i.e., boys with tough and dominant characteristics in playtime due to high consumption of programming with action and violence). Likewise, if they see their peers holding beliefs for any stereotype to be true, they will join along and think that is the way they and the opposite gender are supposed to act, dress and communicate.
Gender Depictions in Advertising
One medium that tends to stamp itself with the negative and distorted stereotypes are advertisements. Hannah Goodall mentions how viewers take up to 16,000 advertisements each day, and not every viewer is consciously aware of their effects on their psyche with the ways they portray gender. Moreover, Goodall, along with Rebecca Bullen, note that women are more at risk to have negative perceptions portrayed in ads than men. As Goodall discusses, “Seeing these advertisements could affect how young girls present themselves. If most images present passive women, rather than smart capable women, then young girls may think that they will be rewarded for mimicking the media’s representations.” (Goodall, 2012) Since the 1940s, ads that feature women tend to relate to their role in a domesticated setting, or as a reward for choosing the product in question. The reason why gender stereotypes make their way into ads is because most of the time, men create the content and think about how the product or service can help a man win a woman over, or how to improve her life with new products to her homemaking, but it ultimately helps the man by giving him minimal housework. As the following ads show, they portray women as sex objects to please men, and showcase their traditional roles as housewives.
By seeing these advertisements, young girls will think that the only way to success on their part is to only work as a housewife or make themselves an inanimate sex object for the satisfaction of men. There are very few ads that showcase women as the intellectual human beings they are, which is why men do not have a strong perception of them in that regard. Advertisements must do a better job of showing women as smart and capable of doing the best in what they do, so girls can have a perception of themselves, and can show men they can be as powerful as them in any capacity. It will take some time, but as men develop moral ideals about the true characteristics of women, ads and media content will showcase why women matter in society. Having that setup will allow girls to be their natural selves in life, as well as that they can aspire to work in any field, even if that business is male-dominated.
How to Talk to Children about Gender Representations
Regardless of how hard we try to prevent children from seeing gender representations by the media, they will still end up seeing them regularly. Although the stereotypes will not prominently appear in children’s programming, they are likely to get exposed to them in public in an urban setting (i.e., advertisement on a billboard), or if they stumble upon a TV show or film that is not designed for their age group. To recognize how these representations can distort perceptions, Media Smarts offers several tips to help kids understand how men and women get portrayed by the media. A few tips they provide are to start talking about stereotyping early on, notice how many female and male characters appear in children’s programming, look for how parents get portrayed, and notice how advertising can influence perceptions on sex roles. Having children educated about the facets of gender stereotypes in a rhetorically-sound manner will allow them to understand right from wrong when they consume their media content. They will see the stereotypes and know if they are accurate or not, and if they are inaccurate, they will think about how they can get changed to make the representations more realistic and less biased. Children need to incorporate the moralistic views of genders into their developing minds; otherwise the distorted perceptions will continue to exist for generations to come.
Sources Used
Charlotte McKinney - Carls Jr Ad Commercial - Super Bowl Xlix . (2015). Retrieved from Charlotte McKinney - Carls Jr Ad Commercial - Super Bowl XLIX.
Firestone, L. (2014, February). Introduction to Gender Stereotyping. Retrieved October 15, 2019, from https://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/app/uploads/2014/02/Introduction-to-Gender-Stereotyping.pdf.
Gender Roles and Stereotypes. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulh0DnFUGsk.
Goodall, H. (2012). Media’s Influence on Gender Stereotypes. Media Asia, 39(3), 160–163. doi: 10.1080/01296612.2012.11689932. Retrieved October 15, 2019, from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1291075912/fulltextPDF/907C74310C2A4C2FPQ/1?accountid=29121.
Krutt, H. (2018, March 1). Then and Now: the Evolution of Gender Stereotypes in Advertising (and How Far We've Yet to Travel). Retrieved October 15, 2019, from https://landt.co/2018/03/the-evolution-of-gender-stereotypes-in-advertising/.
Perrigo, B. (2019, June 14). The U.K. Has Banned 'Harmful' Gender Stereotypes In Adverts. Retrieved October 24, 2019, from https://time.com/5607209/uk-gender-stereotypes-adverts/.
Talking to Kids about Gender Stereotypes - Tip Sheet. (2017, September 15). Retrieved October 15, 2019, from http://mediasmarts.ca/tipsheet/talking-kids-about-gender-stereotypes-tip-sheet.
35 Extremely Sexist Ads That You Should See. (2013, January 31). Retrieved October 15, 2019, from http://neatdesigns.net/35-extremely-sexist-ads-that-you-should-see/.
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