In this article we explore young Brazilians’ reinforcement of gender-stereotypical and gender non-conforming expressions on social media, to see how Brazilian teenagers reproduce or contest the hyper-sexualized, heteronormative discourses around femininity and masculinity. Three models inspired the theoretical frameworks, namely the Butlerian discoursive subjectivity and performativity, Karen Barad’s model of posthuman materialism and the concept of intra-action of non-human agents, and Sonia Livingstone’s concept of social media literacy. The sample consists of 12 focus groups (60 respondents, 11 to 17 years old) conducted in metropolitan area of São Paulo in September 2016. Overall, our study showed a reinforcement of the heterosexual matrix, with some notable exceptions of contestation from both boys and girls. Our article offers a contribution to the research on young people and social media in South America through taking into account both local contexts and dominant discourses around gender and sexuality.
The innovative Canadian children’s program Annedroids introduces viewers to “PAL,” a human-like android, whom a child scientist named Anne programmed to choose its own gender. Viewers witness PAL’s explorations of what girlhood or boyhood would mean, culminating in PAL’s series-finale decision to eschew a binary gender identity and “just be me”. While some research has examined counter-stereotypical characters’ influence on children’s thinking, the impact of characters actively constructing gender identities is unknown. To address this gap, we showed twenty-one children (ages 8 to 10) in the US selected Annedroids segments highlighting PAL’s gender exploration. We identified themes in their reactions to PAL’s characterization and tracked their reactions to PAL’s decision, measuring the flexibility of their attitudes about gender before and after viewing. We found that children who believed PAL should choose a gender (as opposed to those comfortable with PAL remaining ungendered) showed increased flexibility in thinking about gender after viewing the selected clips.
Chapter 5, "Axes of power: Examining women's access to leadership positions in the news media", by Carolyn M. Byerly and Katherine A. McGraw examines how and to what extent women have made their way into the reporting and management levels within the profession of journalism, and whether their presence in the higher ranks of the newsroom hierarchy is associated with a larger amount of women-oriented news content. Although women have made significant strides as reporters and news presenters, the advancement to management and governance roles – the positions of power – has been significantly slower. Looking cross-nationally, the authors test the critical mass theory while also considering the extent to which national development, indicators of women’s status, and the numbers of women practicing journalism might affect women journalists’ place in newsroom hierarchies of the 59 nations they examine. The research is based on the largest global-level study to date on women’s occupational standing within the news industry, the Global Report on the Status of Women in News Media, led by Byerly (2011) for the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF).
Beauty is an important currency in how we see ourselves and others. Hong Kong is flooded with commercial messages on physical attractiveness. How do children respond to the beauty culture so prevent in our society? This study aims at (1) examining the cultural concepts of beauty, and (2) how children perceive the relationship between physical attractiveness, personality and friendship. We asked 114 children aged 9 to 12 to draw and verbalize a girl or a boy who was described as good-looking, and a girl or a boy described as not so good-looking. Results indicated that most of the interviewees associated “being not so good-looking” with ugliness. Physical beauty was associated with personality, social relations, happiness, and materialism. Results show a strong stereotype of “beauty-is-good”. Further studies are needed to identify source of the stereotypes and how these perceptions may affect children’s choices in their daily lives.
We examined the influences of being exposed to gender and sexual orientation stereotypes in the media on US-based adolescents aged 12-18. Departing from wishful identification theory, our study allows adolescents to report how TV characters resemble them, rather than whom they emulate, coming from a place of agency. We recruited 639 participants (85% female, 82% heterosexual) to take an online survey. Our findings demonstrated that girls and sexual minorities were less likely to see their gender and sexual orientation reflected in favorite TV characters. Girls and sexual minorities felt more personally affected by stereotypes about women and girls and were more likely to believe that sexism and homophobia needed to be addressed in the media. Across all groups, those who tend to escape their worries through watching television reported feeling more upset at TV content and being more personally affected by negative stereotypes centered on women, girls, and sexual minorities.
While disruption can often be portrayed in a negative light, script disruption is a powerful cognitive tool when it comes to combating gendered stereotypes. Script disruption has been shown to engage the brain, which makes readers more aware of what they are reading – and therefore they are more likely to remember it. Here I analyze Tamora Pierce’s fantasy novel First Test, as it closely focalizes one female character who refuses to be hemmed in by what is expected of her gender. I hypothesize that books that depict empowered female characters, who are portrayed as such through disrupting scripts, offer implied adolescent readers’ real-life coping strategies that they can transmute from page to reality.
In the chapter "Explaining gender equality in news content: Modernisation and a gendered media field" by Monika Djerf-Pierre, the author examines the possible explanations to the variations in gender equality in news media content across the globe, by drawing from two different approaches: the modernisation approach and the gendered media fields approach. The modernisation approach links the level of gender equality in the media to broader processes of socio-economic development and to the standing of women in society at large. The gendered field approach instead puts focus on how conditions in the media field influence the status of women in the news media in different societies. The results show that the media-world of news is considerably less “gender equal” than the “real-world”, but also that both approaches are important to consider; the extent to which gender inequalities in the news have been alleviated depends on a combination of societal and media field factors. Countries where women have a higher standing in society, more women in the journalism field, and more autonomy for journalists, also have more gender equality in the news.
This introductory chapter by Monika Djerf-Pierre and Maria Edström provides the rationale behind the project Comparing gender and media equality across the globe and clarifies the normative theories supporting the strive for gender equality in and through the news media. The project examines equality in news media content as well as in news media organisations and conducts empirical analyses of both the causes and consequences of media and gender equality in countries across the globe. Furthermore, a unique dataset is developed within the project; The GEM dataset pools together existing comparative data on gender equality in the media, making them available for use by the global research community. The chapter also highlights previous research, discusses the key methodological considerations, explains the value of the various datasets used in the project, and provides an overview on the global commitments to improve gender equality in the media, as a context for this study. Finally, we give an overview of the whole book and a summary of the main insights from the project:
In chapter 2, "The GEM Index: Constructing a unitary measure of gender equality in the news" by Monika Djerf-Pierre and Maria Edström, the authors develop a unitary measure of gender equality in news media content. Although gender and journalism has been a prolific area of research since the 1970s, we still lack a robust and easy-to-use measure to quantify, assess, and track the magnitude and persistence of gender inequalities in the news. By drawing from data collected by the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), the authors devise the Gender Equality in the news Media Index (GEM-I) – a composite index that estimate the gender gap between women and men regarding their status in the news. The GEM-I confirms a male bias in the news. Most countries in the world display news cultures that to various degrees marginalises women. Women get a regular but unequal presence in the news and more seldom appear in roles and topics that are gender-typed as masculine, such as politics and economy.
The lack of women’s voices, status, and recognition in the news media is a challenge to both human rights and a sustainable future. Comparing Gender and Media Equality across the Globe addresses longstanding questions in the study of gender equality in media content and media organisations across countries and over time. Drawing on data from the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), and the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF), this book offers new insights into the qualities, causes, and consequences of gender equality in and through the news media. The book contributes to the critical discussion on gender and journalism, showing that the news media do not reflect reality when it comes to the actual progress of gender equality in societies across the globe. The study aims to inspire future research by making existing data on gender and news media equality available to the global research community. The book presents the GEM-dataset, comprising hundreds of indicators on media and gender equality, and the GEM-Index, an easy to use measure to keep track of key aspects of gender equality in television, radio, newspapers, and online.
“A trailblazing collection of high-quality studies from leading researchers all around the world. This splendidly edited book meets the great need for a comparative analysis of gender equality in and through news media in different regions. It is unique, full of useful empirical evidence, new insights, and reflections. This should without a doubt be required reading for anyone dealing with this issue – not least from the perspective of Agenda 2030”.
– Professor Ulla Carlsson, UNESCO Chair on Freedom of Expression, Media Development and Global Policy at the University of Gothenburg
The systematic inequality of gender representations in television programming for preschool and older children throughout the world has been well documented. Very little is known, however, about the nature of gender representations in television programs aimed at children in infancy and toddlerhood. This study aims to fill this gap using the case of BabyTV, which is the first television channel in the world directed at infants and toddlers. The qualitative analysis of 39 channel’s programs has yielded results that are in line with previous research demonstrating the dominance of male characters in programming that targets older children, as well as gender stereotyping along traditional lines. It seems that the freedom afforded this channel by virtue of featuring animated characters is counterproductive: rather than using animals or objects to present gender equality, the creators default to male characters as the norm, and to stereotypical depictions and behaviors of female characters.
This article describes how Swedish teens use selfies for gendered self-representation in online peer-to-peer communication. The aim of the article is to critically question and add on to the extensive tradition of studies of large scale mass mediated stereotypes, by looking at how gender selfie stereotypes are produced and performed in social media through the interaction and participation of school children. The article combines constructionist perspectives on representation and gender with social semiotics. Based on empirical data from focus group interviews with student from grade 7 in four Stockholm schools (N=41) the article show that the way the selfie genre is played out and negotiated among teens is marked by gender stereotypes. These stereotypes are used to confirm a dualistic separation of sexes, the subordination of women, and a heteronormative order for sexuality, but also used for “stereotype vitalization” where prevailing gender norms are renegotiated, jested and mocked.
The central question in the chapter "Fairer sex or fairer system? Exploring the relationship between gender equality in the media and media corruption", by Mathias Färdigh, is whether results from previous research on the share of women in parliament and lower levels of corruption also pertains to the relationship between the share of women journalists and lower levels of corruption in the media. Previous research points out two plausible assumptions. The first is that women possess certain characteristics and therefore do not descend to corruption to the same extent as men (the fairer sex hypothesis). The second assumption is instead that it is the system in which women live and operate that affects the level of media corruption (the fairer system hypothesis). Based on these two alternative assumptions, the purpose of chapter 7 is to examine which of the two is the most appropriate when it comes to understanding the mechanisms behind media corruption: Is it the share of women journalists in the media or is it the system where women journalists live and operate, that affects the level of media corruption or both? The chapter suggests that the level of gender equality in a society has a bigger impact on reducing media corruption than the share of women journalists.
Brazil is a society structured by patriarchy (Teles, 1993, Zapater, Venturini, Godinho, 2013), sexism (Goncalves & Lapa, 2008, Tiburi, 2014), classism and racism (Carneiro, 2017, 2012, Diniz, 2015). In this article, we investigate how advertising to children reflects these values, focusing on learned gender social roles. We argue that advertising to children in Brazil stimulates very limited social roles for boys and girls, reinforcing traditional stereotypes about men and women, affecting negatively children’s social and personal development. We use a feminist approach, combined with studies of consumerism in contemporary societies, to analyze two cases of advertising contested by Alana Institute, a non-profit organization that discusses regulation on advertising to children in Brazil. The cases chosen reflect the gender difference in advertising directed to boys and girls and signal that marketing to children reflect broader gender stereotypes of Brazilian society.
Nordens befolkningsstruktur är under förändring. En åldrande befolkning, migration och urbanisering leder till utmaningar för såväl arbetsmarknaden som välfärden i stort. Den könssegregerade arbetsmarknaden, det traditionellt ojämställda omsorgsansvaret och kvinnor och mäns olika flyttmönster, gör det till utmaningar som det är angeläget att belysa utifrån genusperspektiv.
Syftet med denna rapport är att på en övergripande nivå sammanställa kunskap som finns om den demografiska utvecklingen i Norden, utmaningar kopplade till den och särskilt visa på genusperspektivets tillämpning och betydelse för frågorna. Rapporten har särskilt fokus på frågor om regionala utvecklings- och policyfrågor kopplat till demografi och urbanisering.
NIKK, Nordisk information för kunskap om kön, är ett samarbetsorgan för Nordiska ministerrådet, placerat på Nationella sekretariatet för genusforskning vid Göteborgs universitet.
The Nordic countries are viewed as forerunners on gender equality and women’s labour force participation. However, we note that there are far fewer women than men starting businesses in the Nordic countries. The Nordic countries are often considered to be culturally similar: they have similar social systems, economic structures, labour markets, concepts of democracy, models of the welfare state, and universal public services (Arenius & Kovalainen, 2006). Nevertheless, there are clear differences in the share of female entrepreneurs across the Nordic countries. Why is this?
For decades, music videos have been a key element of the daily social lives of youth. In a series of studies the gender representations in the top 100 music videos in the USA and Germany were analysed and the use of music videos was surveyed among n=748 representatively selected adolescents in Germany. A qualitative study revealed the extent to which girls and boys recognise the sexualisation in the videos and if this was really needed to fulfil what they are looking for. The results confirm that music videos often show highly sexualised representations of women. 13- to 19-year-olds, of whom 80 per cent watch music videos at least once a week, idealise the artists’ representations as self-determined statements, see artists as role models and often misinterpret the sexualisation as a symbol of strength. Here, media literacy is needed and a media pedagogical unit was tested.
Eating disorders are one of the most common psychosomatic illnesses among girls and young women in western industrial countries. This study aims at giving a voice to girls currently receiving therapy for an eating disorder. Our informants were n=95 girls between 11 and 18 years of age. They filled out questionnaires with open and standardized questions regarding the role of TV shows in the context of the participants’ eating disorders. There was one program mentioned, unprompted, above all others: Germany’s Next Topmodel (GNTM). It fosters unrealistic standards and body dissatisfaction when the girls started to compare every detail of their body with the candidates’ bodies. They adopt the implicit logic of the format and disconnect from their own perceptions, feelings and needs in order to succeed. If this happens at a time of identity crisis and among girls with corresponding psychological dispositions it can lead to an eating disorder.
Mediers känsla för kön är skriven i en tid av stora mediala förändringar. Ny kommunikationsteknologi har öppnat för nya sätt att bruka medierat innehåll. Att upprätthålla särskiljande mellan å ena sidan ”producenter” och å andra sidan ”konsumenter” blir allt mer knepigt och irrelevant. Medier kan ses som ett av de viktigaste områdena för hur idéer om kön och om normer kring kvinnligt och manligt formas, representeras och förs vidare.
In this report, the International Clearinghouse on Children, Youth and Media directs its attention to gendered media messages. The contribution of media to the maintenance of the gender order is particularly important to study, considering the situation of children and young people, who have constant access to today’s extensive media output through a multitude of different channels. The report attempts to account for what is going on in the field of gender and media in a broad sense. The main focus is on news content and popular mainstream media primarily targeted at children and young people. Included are studies and reports from different disciplines, as media issues also attract scholars outside traditional media and communications research. Data from media watch and media literacy organizations also form part of the basic material. Awareness is often followed by an urge to work for change, which is why a few tools for improvement are presented: guidelines from the International Federation of Journalists; Child Rights and the Media, Putting Children in the Right; and a compilation of guidelines for gender-sensitive reporting collected from the UNESCO site.
India is the second largest television market in the world after China and the kids’ genre has a high viewership share. However, there is severe dearth of active discussion on the ideology of television content for children. The objective of this study was to mainstream the discussion on the role of television cartoons in perpetuating gender stereotypes in the Indian context. 51 children between 4 to 14 years of age were interviewed on topics including their television viewing habits, description of gender roles portrayed in television cartoons, their attitudes towards gender roles in general among other themes. The responses strongly suggest that children consume highly gender-stereotypic content and that it gets reflected in their perceptions of media content as well as articulations of the world around them. The heterogeneity of the Indian socio-cultural context does not get represented in the dominant media discourse.
Concepts of gender are socially constructed through a variety of influences, including the media. This chapter explores transgender experiences as depicted in Freeform’s tv-drama The Fosters through both a textual analysis of the program with a particular focus on the 10 episodes in which Cole, a transgender teen, appears and an analysis of audience reviews of the program from youth and parents obtained online from Common Sense Media. Results suggest that the narrative can contribute to the construction of transgender identity and tell the stories of every day relationships experienced by transgender teens. Moreover, the audience response suggests that parents expressed more conflicted reactions to the show than kids, indicating more concerns about sexual content than youth. The youth viewers do comment that sex is a part of The Fosters but seem to indicate that lessons about acceptance, tolerance, love, and diversity outweigh the concerns about sexual content.
Due to the media’s normative power to reflect daily life and to shape our understanding of gender, media plays a vital role in constructing – or deconstructing – gender equality. In modern societies, the advertising industry plays a major role in the media landscape. In the Nordic countries gender discriminatory advertising has been on the public agenda since the 1970s and 1980s, the time when gender equality legislation was adopted. However, the Nordic countries have chosen different ways of combating and regulating gender discriminatory advertising. This report presents results of a survey on how gender-discriminatory advertising is regulated in the Nordic countries. The survey was conducted as part of a project on gender equality in the media carried out during the Finnish presidency of the Nordic Council of Ministers in 2016.
This study explored innovations in gender representations in children’s television that depart from the mainstream of conservative formulas and stereotypes of gender. The four finalists of the PRIX JEUNESSE 2016 Gender Prize programs are critically analyzed for their innovative presentation of gender as well as reflected upon during discussion groups of television professionals. Tasmina: The Horse Girl from Bangladesh challenges traditional gender roles; How Ky Turned into Niels from The Netherlands shares the life of a transgender pre-adolescent boy; Annedroids: Paling Around from Canada role models a technological girl and presents a non-gendered character; and Truth Lies – Feminine from Argentina reflects on gender fluidity. While each of the programs takes a different approach to gender equality, taken together, the four finalists are groundbreaking and important milestones in efforts to advance children’s television as among the leading socializers for gender equity
The Clearinghouse Yearbook of 2017 present examples of interventions from around the world attempting to break gender barriers in media and secondly, explore the influence and consequences of exposure to gender representations – both traditional as well as counter-traditional – on children and youth. The initiation of this volume was motivated by many dedicated scholars, practitioners, and activists worldwide to rectify gender inequalities portrayed in the media consumed by children.
Scholarly literature has focused on sexualization of girls through fashion and advertising that has resulted in stereotypes, low self-esteem, poor body image and vulnerability. New Media and social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat among others have become a platform for girls to post their photographs and call for comments on their beauty, clothes and presentation. This article through a content analysis discusses people’s comments on a few Instagram pictures of a young 10-yearold model Kristina Pimenova, described as the most beautiful girl in the world. Results over a period of one year found that most of the remarks emphasize a sexual meaning, physical attractiveness, love and intimacy. Besides, the highly commented categories raise low self-esteem and jealously among kids and confirm the negative effects of sexualization of children. A few also mention the dangers of the exposure to these social networking sites, such as intrusion of privacy and pedophiles.
The chapter, "Gender in economic journalism: Impeccably accurate or smoke and mirrors?", by Sarah Macharia, examines the relationship between the gender gaps in economic and business news content and the gender gaps in the lived economic experience. The analyses suggest that women are marginalised as subjects and sources in economic news content across the globe, that there is some association between the variations and women’s economic rights and freedoms but largely, there are patterns of a disconnect between media content and women’s equal participation in economic life. The analysis confirms that gender inequality is much more acute in the news media than in the version of reality presented in institutional data. Severe under-representation of women is a structural feature of business and economic journalism worldwide. Business and economic news journalism calls for high journalistic standards in view of the personal, immediate relevance of the topics to ordinary people for everyday decision-making on issues such as jobs, medical costs, housing, food, and wages. Rather than the impeccable accuracy and impartiality prescribed for this genre of news journalism what appears instead is a relative erasure, undervaluing and trivialising of women.
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The Nordic countries, including the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland islands, want to work together as effectively as possible to make society more accessible. The Nordic Council of Ministers has commissioned a report with proposals for areas of co-operation with regard to universal design and accessibility. The work is funded by the Council of Ministers’ Sustainable Development Strategy. Since the report was commissioned, the UN has adopted sustainability goals as part of Agenda 2030.
The report is primarily aimed to policy makersat the Nordic level. It may also be of interest topeople who work with sustainable developmentas well as universal design and accessibility atthe national, regional or local level. Differencesin the conditions for participation and equalopportunities between women and men orgirls and boys, respectively, were also describedwhere such information exists. The project andthe panel were coordinated by the Secretariatfor the Council for Nordic Co-operation onDisability at the Nordic Centre for Welfare.5Introduction
Pappor i Norden tar ut mer föräldraledighet än genomsnittet i världen. Samtidigt finns stora skillnader mellan de nordiska länderna och trots jämställdhetsframgångar är det fortfarande mammorna som lägger mest tid på att skötabarn. Detta faktablad från NIKK visar hur föräldraförsäkringssystemen ser ut i de nordiska länderna, och hur de påverkar pappors uttag.
Pay differences between the sexes constitute one of the biggest obstacles to achieving gender equality in the Nordic countries. Nordic Information onGender (NIKK) has produced this report to highlight and compare the Nordic countries’ strategies, policies and law in the area of equal pay.
This report is based on interviews and documentation provided by researchers, experts and officials working in government agencies and ministries. In the Nordic countries, the average gender pay gap is 14.3 per cent according to Eurostat statistics from 2017. A large part of this pay gap is due to a gendersegregated labour market in which men and women work in different industries and occupations and in different positions. But even in the standard weighted statistics on wages and salaries, where corrections have been made for factorsthat affect pay such as occupation, industry, education and age, gender-based pay differences persist.
This survey was developed on the initiative of the Swedish presidency of the Nordic Council of Ministers in 2018. It highlights initiatives and action taken by the Nordic and Baltic countries to deal with and prevent sexual harassment in the wake of the Me Too movement, which started in the autumn of 2017. It includes a range of measures: from tougher legislation, to responsible authorities being given a bigger mandate, to broad-scale information campaigns. The survey was developed by NIKK (Nordic Information on Gender) and is based on material from the countries and supplementary interviews with key people.
In order to achieve gender equality, men need to get involved in the efforts and masculinity norms need to be challenged. The policy area of men and gender equality is given high priority in the Nordic countries, and a number of measures are implemented accordingly, focusing on everything from men’s violence to parenthood and a revision of the male gender role.
This fact sheet demonstrates masculinity research, points to political initiatives made, and includes examples of Nordic collaborations within the field. The fact sheet is made by Nordic Information on Gender (NIKK) at the request of the Nordic Council of Ministers, as part of Sweden’s presidency programme 2018.
In all Nordic countries, employers are required to prevent and respond appropriately to sexual harassment in the workplace. Nevertheless, the problem remains widespread, as has become increasingly clear in connection with the #MeToo campaign. In this review, we identify the laws that apply in the Nordic countries. The #MeToo campaign swept across a large number of countries in the autumn of 2017, enabling women to share their experiences of sexual harassment and joining forces to draw attention to the problem.
Sexual harassment refers to a behaviourof sexual nature that violates the dignity of another person. Examples include comments about somebody’s breasts, a person sending sexually explicit pictures to a colleague without consent, somebody intentionally touching somebody else inappropriately and a supervisor asking a subordinate for sexual favours.The large number of testimonies that have surfaced since the launch of the #MeToo campaign show that these types of violations – which target mainly women – are commonplace in Nordic workplaces. The many reports of mistreatment also indicate that perpetrators are rarely held accountable for their behaviour, despite the fact that sexual harassment is illegal in all Nordic countries. Against this background, Nordic Information on Gender (NIKK) has taken a close look at what thelaws and legal protection in relation to sexual harassment in the workplace look like in the Nordic nations.
The chapter "Media gender-equality regimes: Exploring media organizations’ policy adoption across nations", by Claudia Padovani and Rossella Bozzon, explores possible correlations between the socio-economic and cultural environments within which the media operate across the world, and the policies that have been adopted by media organisations to promote gender equality, in the attempt to explain the wide variation in the (limited) adoption of such policies in different countries and regions. The chapter investigates if, within such variation, it is possible to identify patterns of policy adoption that may indicate the existence of different media gender equality regimes in the media sector worldwide. The authors suggest that, on the basis of available data, countries can be grouped in five clusters showing similar pattern in policy adoption, from gender-blind to gender-transformative.
This article explores the ways in which children’s television producers are making conscious efforts to include non-traditional gender representations in their shows. The aim of the research was to analyze and explain the complex creative processes that can increase the cultural visibility of diverse female characters in action animation made for school-age children. Thunderbirds Are Go, the 2015 re-boot of the 1960s cult classic Thunderbirds is used here as a case study; the producers of the new series were determined to challenge Thunderbirds’ gender stereotypes, while retaining the lead characters of the original. Using approaches grounded in production culture, media studies and political economy, this research draws on extended interviews with Thunderbirds Are Go executive producer Estelle Hughes. It reveals that despite successful efforts to achieve a more balanced representation of female characters in children’s action animation, commercial forces still exert enormous influence over how these shows are produced, distributed and experienced by their audiences.
This report details the findings of the EQUIL project: Equality in Isolated Areas. The project focuses on people living and working in geographically relatively isolated areas of the Nordic region, and asks how they are able to make a living and maintain ties to locality, and how questions of gender equality impact on work and family life decisions. The places in focus are Narsaq in Greenland, Suðuroy in the Faroe Islands and Læsø in Denmark. While different in several important respects, these places face a common challenge in maintaining demographic sustainability, as they are characterised by declining population figures, and especially young women have tended to leave. The report points to six lessons learned from its analyses, including how perceptions about ‘the good life’ often take presidency over perceived career possibilities when people choose where to settle.
This study explores the love stories written by 77 Israeli girls, aged 11-12 years old, in order to examine the possible influence of the media on their romantic narratives and the gender roles embedded within them. The girls were asked to write their own perfect love story and then participated in focus groups during which they explained the stories they wrote. The stories have been analyzed with the method of discourse analysis. Although many girls chose to express their imaginary romantic world by using popular media characters, plot lines and idioms, others offered a new and even revolutionary perspective on what a perfect love story can be, and especially the gender roles it can depict. Stories about female protagonists who make the first romantic move, perform sisterhood as an act of resistance, or prefer to be an assertive non-stereotypical princess, are analyzed in light of the girls’ socioeconomic backgrounds and role models.
The chapter "The mediaworld versus the real world of women and political representation: Questioning differences and struggling for answers", by Karen Ross, Marloes Jansen and Tobias Bürger, addresses the long-standing question of women’s voice in political news. The authors test the relationship of women, politics, and news with the incidence of women politicians as elected representatives, in two ways: first, by considering the extent to which women politicians are visible across the broad news landscape and second, by considering their visibility in news stories which are explicitly political in orientation. What the authors find is a global and systematic pattern of underrepresentation of women politicians in the news compared with their actual numbers in legislatures across the world. Their analysis suggests that the “real” world of politics seems to be more gender-equal than the media world of mainstream news. The chapter goes on to consider possible reasons to explain this difference, including the role played by socio-cultural factors such as a nation’s broad equality commitment and the extent to which the gender balance in newsrooms, including in senior editorial positions, has an impact on the visibility of women politicians in news content.
From sadistic torturess Ilsa in Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS to synthespians and consumerist teen witches. From Hollywood mainstream to avant-garde and exploitation. From feminist critical theory to postfeminist provocative aesthetics. This anthology brings together twelve essays on the representation of strong women in film, television and computer games. During the nineties strong women moved to the fore in media fictions. In cinema, television series and computer games we find heroines in leading roles that used to be occupied by men. Female doctors run their own medical drama series, women star in action and suspense computer games, they kick ass, fight vampires and become elite soldiers in Hollywood movies. The success of strong women is beyond discussion; we find them everywhere from Xena: Warrior Princess to Baise-Moi and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. However, the representation of strong women raises complex questions related to gender and genre, identity and identification, pleasure and violence. Do these heroines appeal to women at all? If so, what pleasures do they offer? Are they consumerist products in a patriarchal culture? Are they action heroines submitting to the traditional aesthetics of the pin-up and the narrative subplots of rape, prostitution and domestication through romance? Or is it possible to kidnap a male fantasy and turn it into a feminist icon for a new postfeminist generation? The articles in this anthology do not provide simple answers. Instead, they find new meanings arising out of the gaps between consumer culture and gender politics, between silicone breasts and subversive audience reactions.
This article presents an analytical discussion on how media images cultivate gendered beliefs and attitudes. The aim is to examine the possible patterns of media reception effects among young girls and boys which further influence their socialisation process. We do this by making complementing connections between the two theoretical approaches: George Gerbner’s cultivation theory and Laura Mulvey’s psychoanalytical approach. We observed that both the approaches are long-term effect theories and work simultaneously with reference to the social construction of realities experienced by children in their daily interaction with screen oriented media. Also, using textual analysis of video content available in the Indian context, we further argue that with a conscious projection of images that reflect gender justice and gender sensitisation, the cultivation of beliefs and attitudes about gender can be altered. In the conclusion, we highlight the challenges and risks involved in moving beyond gender stereotypes.
Media play an important role in perpetuating racial and gender stereotypes that harm the self-esteem and self-concept of marginalized youth, especially for Latino/a youth in the US context. However, this article illustrates that through a participatory media and media literacy approach, media can also become part of the solution. The main aim of this article is to document Latinitas, the first digital magazine in the United States created by and for young Latinas that challenges stereotypes through participatory digital storytelling. Explored through an interview with one of Latinitas’ co-founders and press coverage about the organization, this case study sheds light on the importance of alternative community-based initiatives for minority youth to redefine their identities in their own terms. The findings shed light on how to design alternative youth media programs, negotiate funding, build relationships with the surrounding community, and adapt to the changing media landscape. Such initiatives point to the importance of media literacy programs and participatory storytelling initiatives aimed at redefining youth identity and empowering youth voices.
Departing from a non-media centric and non-gender-centric perspective this chapter explores the role of media in the cultivation of gender identities among contemporary youth in Botswana. Drawing on data from a recent multi-methodological fieldwork I concentrate on essays written by village teenagers on the topic “My life 20 years from now”. The aim is to discuss the extent to which the representational resources used by the teenagers – within this genre of identity construction and in light of the wider fieldwork – can be traced to media or other sources. I find that Batswana teenagers make use of a diverse mix of gender-fluid, counter-stereotype and gender traditional representations and engage with identity constructions far beyond gender stereotypes. Many of these constructions can be directly linked to gender representations available in schools, families, and the local communities, yet less to media. This is partly due to low media access, and partly that media representations impact indirectly through other significant actors in their environments using media-inspired representations.
This article is a research report introducing the main findings of the study conducted as a part of the researcher’s Master’s Thesis on Japanese Family Friendly Policies (FFPs) and the effect they are having on advancing a gender balanced society in Japan, focusing on the influence fathers may have in this equation. The research included a three month field work on the experiences of parents who had utilised Family Friendly Policies since their implementation in the 1990s. The research found that the Japanese FFPs have failed to achieve their aims to increase the fertility rate and women’s employability for the following three reasons. Firstly these aims are based on the foundations of gender neutrality in a society that is in reality highly divided along gender lines. Secondly the aims are narrow in scope and target group, and thirdly do not address the real causes of low fertility and employment problems. I argue that promoting the role of fathers as carers would disrupt established gender norms and the benefits of FFPs would cross gender lines and produce practical outcomes that the current FFPs are unable to produce.
The aim of the Nu Räcker Det was to map out the models used in the Nordic countries to help the perpetrators of IPV to end violence. The project questionnaire was filled in by the service providers. The number of invited programmes was 68, and the response rate was around 80%. Results indicate that still some services are not free of charge and are not equally distributed geographically. In terms of safety, although most programmes contact the (ex-) partner at the beginning of the treatment, still half of the programmes do not contact the (ex-) partner during the treatment or at the end of it, moreover nearly half of the programmes do not use any risk assessment instrument. Outcome is measured by most of the programmes however partner and official reports should also be included. Finally, those results are compared and discussed in light of the European context.
Media effect theories and social cognitive theories of gender development posit that young people use the media to learn how to behave according to their gender. This study aimed to investigate reciprocal relationships between adolescents’ television diets and their endorsement of hypergender orientations (i.e., hypermasculinity and hyperfemininity). Based on data from a short-term longitudinal survey among 1,007 Dutch adolescents (13-17 years old), this study showed that different television genres were related to hypergender orientations in different ways. The most notable finding was the relevance of reality TV docu-soaps for both adolescent girls’ and boys’ hypergender orientations. In addition, more frequent exposure to romantic comedy movies predicted an increased endorsement of hyperfeminine gender roles among girls, whereas more frequent exposure to situational comedies was associated with lower levels of girls’ hyperfemininity. These findings could be used in media literacy interventions targeting the influence of specific types of television exposure on adolescents’ stereotypical gender role notions.
This article focuses on the development and marketing of animated female lead characters on television for an audience of girls aged 6-12 in Britain. Using strategic marketing theory it asks the questions: “What do girls want (to see on screen)?” “How do they get it?” and “How do we (the animation industry) sell it?” The paper reviews 87 starring female lead characters worldwide and finds that most are: 2D in design, feature characters with American accents, have a cast of either group or independent characters and are of either a ‘dramatic’ or ‘dramatic/comedic’ genre. The article concludes that the types of television shows girls are watching could be improved to better meet their needs. It encourages content creators to be brave and test new ideas and offers practical tips to executives, producers and commissioners on development and positioning of new animated television series that will engage their audiences.