The Portrayal of Young Women on Television

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The Portrayal of Young Women on Television

Television is widely known to represent and reinforce the mainstream

ideology of contemporary western culture. While television's

representations of women has changed greatly in the last twenty years,

in order to accommodate the changing role of women in society. one is

left to ask how much the ideology has changed behind the more modern

representations of women. "Television is regarded by many viewers to

be the most 'real' form of media". If this is the case, then it is

important for us to question how real the representations of women are

on television and how this affects the attitudes of those who watch.

As mentioned above, there is a higher number of women in the

population than men, so if television is more realistic, this should

be reflected. Yet women are typically seen less often than men on

television and much less frequently in central dramatic roles. For

example, figures show that in television drama women are outnumbered

by men 3:1. In cartoons women are outnumbered 10:1 and in soaps women

are outnumbered by as much as 7:3 which is quite surprising when one

considers that this genre of television viewing has a very high

proportion of female audience. Even children's television is dominated

by males: 70% . Men also dominate the production side of television,

so it is hardly surprising then, that the masculine or patriarchal

ideology is presented as the norm, when women are so outnumbered by

men on screen, and behind the scenes in television.

Gunter argues that televisions sex stereotyping occurs in relation to

various roles in which men and women are portrayed and which have a...

... middle of paper ...

...or people to gaze through, and believe what

they see. Television allows people to see more things and so choose

what they want to be.

But unfortunately that choice for girls is often one full of

impossible contradictions in what they are shown, meaning that

television perhaps confuses further an issue which it could help to

resolve with more equal and less stereotypical portrayals of women.

Bibliography

· DINES, G. & HUMEZ, J.M. (Eds.) (1995): Gender, Race and Class in

Media: A Text Reader. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

· DURKIN, K. (1985): Television, Sex Roles and Children. Milton

Keynes: Open University Press.

· FISKE, J. (1987): Television Culture. London: Methuen

· WOOD,R(1998): Sexual Politics and Narrative Film

· GUNTER, B. (1986): Television and Sex Role Stereotyping. London:

Libbey.

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