Gender Representation In The Media

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Recommended: Impact of negative portrayal of women in the media

How Gender representation in media affects young people transitioning into adulthood.
Written from the perspective of me as an informative essay for the general population.

Gender representation in the media has been a hot-button topic in academia for a while, and for good reason. Despite being deeply ingrained in our cultural identity, representation of gender in media is not always accurate, and is capable of fundamentally changing how people, especially young people, see the world. The evidence today overwhelmingly supports that children, from a very young age and of all genders, are massively influenced by the portrayal of gender in media, and that these influences carry negative effects well into adulthood.

To start off, let’s look …show more content…

As it turns out, the effect can be quite large. One of the clearest examples of this would be from the classic 1966 study in which David Chambers asked nearly 5,000 elementary aged children to draw pictures of a scientist. Out of this large sample size, only 28 of those drawings portrayed a woman - only 0.6%. This experiment is a classic example of how the media affects young minds. Children, who have probably never met a scientist in real life, and thus only know of them through the media. Given that the media of the time was overwhelmingly biased towards putting men in significant, intellectual, or working roles, it is unsurprising that the majority of children perceived the blanket term of ‘scientist’, as …show more content…

While this essay mainly has focused on the negative, or lack of portrayal of women, men also have likely equally numerous gender stereotypes and roles pushed upon them. As women grow up, they internalize the idea that they should be submissive, unassertive, pretty, and maternal. As men grow up, they internalize the ideas that they should be aggressive, assertive, masculine, and unemotional. These roles are widespread throughout our globalized society, and their effects are often quite negative. Women are dissuaded from pursuing positions of power in all walks of life, and are thereby underrepresented and find their needs and wants ignored by the leading male majority. Men, who feel like they cannot safely express their emotions, turn to drugs, alcohol, and, in extremes, suicide, all of which are significantly more prevalent in

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