influence of culture and media on gender roles

• Nurture: Cultural Differences ( Margaret Mead: 1935)


  • Gender roles may be culturally dictated and not biologically influenced
  • Mead concludes that the extent of expression of innate behaviours of gender are mainly culturally-based; however, agreed that the universal nature of gender-related behaviour may have biological influences
• Margaret Mead: 1935


  Arapesh:

  • Similar gender roles between men and women
  • gentle, peaceful , sensitive
  • embodied 'femininine' traits

  Mundugumor:

  • Similar gender roles between women and men
  • Aggressive, hostile, uncooperative, insensitive, warlike
  • stereotypically 'masculine'

  Tchambuli

  • Women were dominant and organised village life
  • Men were passive + considered ‘decorative’ (e.g beautified themselves)
  • Reverse of the female-male dynamic in industrial societies
• Research Support for Cultural Similarities

  David Buss (1995)

  • Consistent patterns in mate preference (this is apparently an example of gender role behaviour) in 37 countries across continents
  • Women tended to look for providers/protects, wealth and resources
  • Men tended to look for youth and physical attractiveness

  Munroe and Munroe (1975)

  • Labour is divided in most societies along gender roles
  • E.g men as ‘breadwinners’
  • E.g women as ‘nurturers
• Her use of cross-cultural research is limited

  Freeman (1983)

  • Found her research was flawed because she was misled by some participants + she held some of her preconceptions as an already-established anthropologist
  • Language barriers - an american researcher speaking with a pre-industrialised new guinea societies
  • Observer bias + ethnocentrism; perhaps her views are too subjective thus her conclusions lack external validity
• Research support

  • Hofstede (2001)

  In industrialised countries, the role of women is steering away from the domestic field and more into the workforce

  This explains why gender roles surrounding women are changing as times develop
• Stereotypes are derived and shared by the media – content analyses

  • Hodges et al (1981)

  Men more likely to be shown exercising control over events

  Women more likely to be shown more at the mercy of others
• Stereotypes are derived and shared by the media – content analyses

  Furnham and Farragher (2000)

  Tv adverts: men more likely to be in autonomous roles in professional contexts

  • Women often seen occupying familial roles within domestic settings
  • suggesting that the media plays an important role in reinforcing widespread stereotypes relating to female and male behaviour.
• Self-efficacy 

  • Media confirms gender-typical behaviour, but also shows the reward of adopting these behaviours
  • Self-efficacy: bandura says this is when children’s belief in their own ability to express gender-typical behaviour in the future increases as they see other people perform those behaviours
• Cultivation basis

  • Theoretical basis
  • Cultivation theory: the more people spend in the ‘world of media’, the more likely they are to believe this reflects real-lica
• Cultivation basis: Bond and Drogas (2014)

  Positive correlation between time spent watching Jersey Shore and permissive attitudes towards casual sex

  Effect was still there even when extraneous variables such as existing sexual, parental, religious beliefs were controlled - causal connection between media and attitudes we gain

  Media cultivates perceptions of reality, which gender is also affected by.
• Correlation does not equal causation

  • Durkin (1985)

  Claimed that people are not passive to the point that media can easily cultivate their perceptions of reality, even children

  Norms within a child’s family are more likely to be what determines a child’s gender development

  Media representations can only confirm gender norms that the family of the child hold, and thus simply reinforce them. Otherwise, the child will reject it.