Representation Of Women In The Media

Representations of Women in the Media

Throughout the decade’s representation of women in the media have portrayed women as inferior to their male counterpart and has had an impact on the career paths women choose to obtain. In today’s society traditional gender roles have been passed down for centuries and has caused men and women to view particular behaviors and career paths to be either a “masculine job” or a “feminine job.” Due to these portrayals of gendered roles there is a small percentages of women pursuing “masculine” careers. Although there are more and more women obtaining leadership positions the idea of her femininity puts a halt on her progression to the highest positions. There has been a correlation in the lack of self-confidence

The authors analyzed the changes that have occurred in the advertisements in respect to the transitioning of the feminist movement and the ever changing cultural trends. Focusing on the impact of the feminist movement throughout the 50 year span they hypothesized that as the movement and changes in the American culture occurred the representation of women would change as well. The authors reviewed tangible general interest magazines and examined three stages of feminism; the prefeminist, feminist and the postfeminist movements. Under each of those sections they were able to take a closer look at a number of subcategories. From their contextual analysis it was evident women were making progress and were breaking through barriers however they proposed the idea that subtle covert sexism is still present and prevalent in advertising. They also found that “advertising reflects and recreate the social world in a manipulated way.” This findings supported the idea that gender roles have a huge impact on how our society is

In this study the researchers examined the issue of body dissatisfaction within the media as well as whether or not the depictions were an accurate representation of the women who were exposed to such magazines. To determine if the representations were accurate they put together a contextual analysis categorizing the magazines by age range of readers, and the different body parts exposed. From their contextual analysis it was revealed that older women and larger body sizes were not well represented in the magazines, and when older women were represented they were not thin and were dressed conservatively. However they were not able to fully examine and explain why body dissatisfaction was an issue to younger and older female readers, yet there were studies that has examined the reactions of the readers and their levels of satisfaction with their own body size and age. From this study it is evident that our society has put yet another stereotype on women sending yet another subtle message that women must remain young and thin in order to be seen as