When turning on the TV, a car commercial appears with men justifying driving an expensive and powerful sports car by complaining about what females in their lives require. Though women slowly gain economic power, the media never represents them as leaders thus reflecting American culture’s view of women. Sexism prevails in American culture and workforce, teaching sexism while denying its presence. Americans must shift their culture to impede sexism because it oppresses women.
Media, one of the most influential reflections of culture, under represents women and displays them in stereotypical positions. Paula Lobo and Rosa Cabecinhas, Professors of Communication at University of Minho, highlight sex-discrimination within the media in their article “The Negotiation of Meanings in the Evening News”. Women hold only 21 percent of subject in the news, which depicts them as passive, sentimental, victims, and caregivers. They hold reign over soft news, such as fashion programs, being roles moles for passivity and frivolousness (Lobo 5). From the research, it is evident media portrays women as objects to add drama. Effectively changing culture requires media to cease bolstering sexism and its objectification of women.
Denying people fairness refuses their basic rights. Fairness is unbiased, equal, moreover, just treatment of others. Placing a stereotype or classification upon a person views him or her as an object not a person. Martin Buber, renowned philosopher and theologian, states in his book I and Thou, that encountering a “Thou” changes one’s entire perspective. A person “is no longer He or She, limited by other Hes and Shes, a dot in the world grid space and time…” People distinguish persons as both objects and subject (Buber ...
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Lobo, Paula, and Rosa Cabecinhas. "THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANINGS IN THE EVENING NEWS: Towards an Understanding of Gender Disadvantages in the Access to the Public Debate." International Communication Gazette 72.4/5 (2010): 339-358. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 26 Apr. 2011.
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Instead, women are being discriminated and treated as inferior due to the stereotypes that are portrayed in the media. The media creates and reproduces ways of seeing that at a minimum reflect and shape our culture. We can look at the media to understand more about a culture’s values and norms, if we realize the limitations of looking at the media. For example, one may ask, does the news based in the United Sates represent what the American culture is like, or only what stands out from everyday American culture? The answer to that is no. Instead, the media represents what it thinks it will be able to sell and is supported by advertisements. This includes violent acts, the sensationally and inappropriate. Jhally reminds us that “it is this male, heterosexual, pornographic imagination based on the degradation and control of women that has colonized commercial culture in general, although it is more clearly articulated in music videos” (Jhally 2007). Therefore, “media content is a symbolic rather than a literal representation of society and that to be represented in the media is in itself a form of power—social groups that are powerless can be relatively easily ignored, allowing the media to focus on the social groups that ‘really matter’” (Gerbner,
...ncine D., and Lawrence M. Kahn. "The Gender Pay Gap: Have Women Gone as Far as
In contrast, men have been seen as more dominate than women because of their masculine abilities and other traits and most importantly their profound responsibility of being the provider and head of the household. Americans constantly uses theses two distinct stereotypes that in many cases present many biases regarding gender codes in America. Things have changed over time the women are no longer just house wives taking care of the house and children waiting for their husband to come home from his nine to five occupations. Andrea L. Miller explains in her article “The Separate Spheres Model of Gendered Inequality” that, “A common theme in the study of gender is the idea that men and women belong in distinct spheres of society, with men being particularly fit for the workplace and women being particularly fit for the domestic domain” (Miller 2). Miller gives two very specific examples on how gender is viewed in American
On a daily basis people are exposed to some sort of misrepresentation of gender; in the things individuals watch, and often the things that are purchased. Women are often the main target of this misrepresentation. “Women still experience actual prejudice and discrimination in terms of unequal treatment, unequal pay, and unequal value in real life, then so too do these themes continue to occur in media portraits.”(Byerly, Carolyn, Ross 35) The media has become so perverted, in especially the way it represents women, that a females can be handled and controlled by men, the individual man may not personally feel this way, but that is how men are characterized in American media. Some may say it doesn’t matter because media isn’t real life, but people are influenced by everything around them, surroundings that are part of daily routine start to change an individual’s perspective.
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The media influences many aspects of American society. Media affects sexuality, gender roles, and family structure. The images of gender projected through the media correlates with gender norms held in society. The media demonstrates a misogynistic view towards women. Women, statistically, interact with media more than men and are exposed to the images the media promotes. Media distorts how women should look, their role in society, and sexuality. Despite the negative images presented in the media, these beliefs can change.
Gender stereotyping is when beliefs concerning the characteristics of both women and men that contain both good and bad traits. Gender stereotyping affects both men and women but usually targets the woman more harshly (Cooks & Cusack, 2011, p.1). Gender is something that is very unique and a very interesting topic. “It has obvious links to the real world, first in the connection between many grammatical gender systems and biological size, which underpin particular gender systems and also have external correlates”(Corbett, 2013). For an example gender-based violence against women is widely recognized as a critical concern for women in all part of the world (Cooks & Cusack, 2011, p.28). Now day’s women are underrepresented in the business world today, 16 percent of corporate officers in the U.S are women and 1 percent of all of the CEO positions in the Fortune 500 companies (Baron & Branscombe, 2012). In the workplace there are glass ceilings that are barriers based off of attitudinal and organizational bias that prevent qualified women from making it to the supervisory positions. As time elapsed that generation of women like that no longer existed. Women starting taking job positions and having supervisory positions in the workplace. It was no longer the thing that women would not work when they got older. Males also have a stereotype of being strong and being the head of the household in a family. “Masculine gender markers
Miller, Claire Cain. "Pay Gap Is Because of Gender, Not Jobs." The New York Times. The New York Times, 23 Apr. 2014. Web. 18 May 2014. .
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Parcheta, N., Kaifi, B., & Khanfar, N. (2013). Gender Inequality in the Workforce: A Human Resource Management Quandary. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 4(3), 240-248.
For example, In 2011, the Commission of the image of women in the media(Commission sur l’image des femmes dans les medias) in France, published an annual report. The commission was organized in 2009, in the social context that the women are not well represented in the media. The report tried to figure out the percentage of female ‘experts’ in the media including radio and TV. According to the report, 80% of the experts who appeared in the media were male. Considering the fact that the casting process is totally dependent on the decision of the production and their idea of ‘who is more likely to appear as serious and trustful person’, the result is quite shocking. It shows that the image of female in the media is rather a testifier or a victim, than an expert. The social position of women has been significantly improved in last hundred years, but how media treat them has not been pulled out from the traditional-patriarchal view point. This could be very dangerous because mass-media is accessible for people of all social classes and age groups, and for the most of t...
Gender bias has a long history and continues to occur in the workplace today. Research indicates that women remain significantly disadvantaged and mistreated compared to men in the workforce. How do the disparities of hiring, promotion, and salaries affect women in the workplace?
"That’s Equality?: Women Now Earn MORE Than Men Across US." Debbie Schlussel. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 May 2011. .