media

• The media provide role models with whom children identify and want to imitate
• Children are likely to imitate a same sex role model and engage in gender-appropriate behaviour
• Seeing others perform gender typical behaviour increases a child’s belief that they are able to carry out this type of behaviour in the future (self-efficacy)
• It is thought that children who consume the most media develop stronger and more extreme perceptions of gender roles (McGhee and Frueh 1980)
• Bussey and Bandura (1999) found evidence to suggest that the media provides clear gender stereotypes:

  • males are portrayed as independent, ambitious advice givers
  • women are seen as dependent, unambitious advice seekers
• Furnham and Farragher (2000) conducted a study looking at ads and found that men were more likely to be in professional roles whereas women were more likely to be found in a more domestic role, thus further reinforcing gender stereotype roles
• Both Bussey and Bandura's, and Furnham and Farragher's study suffer from temporal validity. Changes in society lead to changes in media representations
• A limitation is that it is difficult to establish cause and effect within these studies because the media may reflect current social norms of males and females or it may be that the media is the cause of such social norms
• As the media is wide ranging, it is difficult to find control groups of children who have not been influenced in some way by the media
• Being able to compare groups of children who have and have not been influenced by the media would help to establish cause and effect more clearly but this is very difficult to achieve
• Most research in this area has been focused on the media’s role to maintain the status quo in terms of gender roles. However, the Disney film “Brave” is an example of counter stereotypes where the media challenges notions of femininity and masculinity
• Pingree found that gender stereotyping was reduced when children were shown TV ads featuring women in non-stereotypical roles
• other research found that pre-adolescent boys stereotypes became stronger following exposure to non-traditional models. A possible suggestion for this was the boys desire to adopt a view which was counter to the adult view
• There is evidence to support the idea that children who have more exposure to popular media tend to display more gender-stereotypical views in their behaviour and attitudes
• The media provides us with role models, and often males and females in the media are portrayed in gender-stereotypical ways; for example, females looking after children and males as breadwinners
• Social learning theory suggests we learn gender roles by observation of role models and we copy or imitate the models we see, especially if we see those models being rewarded or reinforced for such behaviours