The role of culture and media on gender roles

• Outline the role of culture on gender roles.

  Cultures have their own expectations about the roles that each gender should carry out (e.g. some cultures believe that women should take on nurturing and domestic roles while men take on the role of a breadwinner). 

  These expected gender roles within a culture are passed from one generation to another either explicitly or implicitly.
• Outline the role of culture on gender roles.

  In terms of explicitly, boys and girls are told what is gender appropriate behaviour and what is not. In terms of implicitly, children observe and imitate the gender roles they see in same-sex role models.
• Outline the role of culture on gender roles.

  Parents can therefore have an influence in that they reinforce gender roles (e.g. by buying girls dolls and praising them for this so that they are more likely to take on nurturing roles) and punishing children for showing gender behaviour that is not expected within their culture (e.g. punishing a girl for engaging in rough play as girls should not be aggressive).
• Outline the role of culture on gender roles.

  Schools can also influence children into showing gender roles expected of their culture by reinforcing different activities for different genders e.g. contact sports such as rugby are offered to boys to encourage the gender role of them being more aggressive while non-contact sports such as netball are offered to girls to encourage the gender role of them being less aggressive.
• Outline the role of culture on gender roles.

  Finally, peers can have an influence in that they may model gender roles that others then observe and imitate or reinforce gender appropriate behaviour by providing feedback to their friends (e.g. boys might tease another boy for playing with dolls, thus stopping him from displaying the nurturing gender role typically expected of girls).
• Evaluate the role of the media on gender roles: supporting evidence. 


  Research has found that children who have more exposure to popular forms of media tend to display more stereotypical gender roles. This is a strength because it suggests the gender stereotypes portrayed on TV can influence children’s gender-related behaviours.
• Evaluate the role of the media on gender roles: supporting evidence is typically correlational. 


  This is because it often involves investigating the relationship between the amount of time consuming media (e.g. watching television) and how stereotypical an individual’s gender-related behaviours are. This is a limitation because it means cause and effect cannot be established. For example, it could be that children with already quite gender stereotypical behaviours seek media that reinforce this.
• Evaluate the role of the media on gender roles: causal evidence.


  Researcher looked at Canadian towns that had never been exposed to television and compared them to towns with television. They found that those with no television exposure had weaker gender stereotypical attitudes and behaviours. Two years after all the towns had television, this was re-assessed and they found that the towns that were introduced to television had significantly more gender stereotypical attitudes and behaviours. This is a strength because it suggests that the introduction of television impacted gender roles.
• Evaluate the role of the media on gender roles: not all types of media reinforce stereotypical gender roles.


  Video games are highly gender stereotypical (e.g. women are stereotyped as ‘damsels in distress’ and men are stereotyped as the saviours), books tend to present less gender stereotypical characters. This is a limitation because it means that the impact of media on gender roles depends on the type of media being assessed.