‘The media do not construct reality,

they merely offer a window on the

world.’

Discuss this statement with reference to the

representation of women in film,

magazines and TV advertisements.

FOR: The media offer a window on the world

The media as (dis)empowering women

KEY POINT

Sociologists have noted the increasing number of positive female roles emerging, especially in television drama and films. It is argued that these reflect the social and cultural changes that females have experienced in the last 25 years, especially the feminisation of the economy, which has meant that women are now more likely to have aspirational attitudes, a positive attitude towards education, careers and an independent income. Westwood claims that we are now seeing more transgressive (i.e. going beyond gendered expectations) female roles on British television as a result.

Carey Mulligan, star of ‘Suffragette’: “It feels like a film about today. I always felt its resonance was about where we are now, and its achievement is to mark what these women did, and what they gave to us. Of course, we still live in a sexist society, but the film allows us to look at where we are today.”

Gill (2008) argues that the depiction of women in advertising has changed from women as passive objects of the male gaze, to active, independent and sexually powerful agents. Gauntlett (2008) argues that magazines aimed at young women emphasise that women must do their own thing and be themselves, whilst female pop stars, like Lady Gaga, sing about financial and emotional independence. This set of media messages from a range of sources suggest that women can be tough and independent whilst being ‘sexy’.

"What to do? How to act? Who to be? These are focal questions for everyone living in circumstances of late modernity - and ones which, on some level or another, all of us answer, either discursively or through day-to-day social behaviour." (Anthony Giddens, 1991). Giddensdeveloped the theory of 'structuration', whereby individuals are shown to have the power to make changes and influence society as well as large powerful organisations such as governments and the mass media. You can apply Giddens' theory to the film Made In Dagenham, where the main character, Rita, leads the women of Ford in Dagenham to win equal pay as the men for 'semi-skilled' work. See more on Giddensat http://www.theory.org.uk/giddens.htm

Against: The media construct reality

Traditional media representations of femininity

KEY POINT

Almy et al. (1984) argue that media representations of gender are important because they enter the collective social conscience and reinforce culturally dominant (hegemonic) ideas about gender which represent males as dominant and females as subordinate. Sociologists argue that media representations not only stereotype masculinity and femininity into fairly limited forms of behaviour, but also provide gender role models that males and females are encouraged to aspire to.

Research into women’s magazines suggests that they strongly encourage women to conform to ideological patriarchal ideals that confirm their subordinate position compared with men. Ferguson (1983) conducted a content analysis of women’s magazines from between 1949 and 1974, and 1979 and 1980. She notes that such magazines are organised around a cult of femininity, which promotes a traditional ideal where excellence is achieved through caring for others, the family, marriage and appearance. However, Ferguson’s ideas were challenged by Winship (1987), who argued that women’s magazines generally play a supportive and positive role in the lives of women. Winship argues that such magazines present women with a broader range of options than ever before and that they tackle problems that have been largely ignored by the male-dominated media, such as domestic violence and child abuse.

Tuchman et al. (1978) used the term symbolic annihilation to describe the way in which women’s achievements are often not reported, or are condemned or trivialised by the mass media. Often their achievements are presented as less important than their looks and sex appeal. Newbold’s research (2002) into television sport presentation shows that what little coverage of women’s sport there is tends to sexualise, trivialise and devalue women’s sporting accomplishments. Also see Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’.

Hypodermic syringe theory: that the audience are passive receivers of media messages that they interpret uncritically.

Men, on the other hand, are seldom presented nude or defined by their marital or family status.

Working women are often portrayed as unfulfilled, unattractive, possibly unstable and unable to sustain relationships. It is often implied that working mothers, rather than working fathers, are guilty of the emotional neglect of their children.

Women are generally represented in a narrow range of social roles by various types of media, whilst men are shown performing a full range of social and occupational roles. Tunstall (2000) argues that media representations emphasisewomen’s domestic, sexual, consumer and marital activities to the exclusion of all else. The media generally ignore the fact that a majority of British women go out to work. See Fairy Liquid advertisements since the 1950s as an example.

Wolf (1990) suggests that the images of women used by the media present women as sex objects to be consumed by what Mulvey calls the male gaze. According to Kilbourne (1995), this media representation presents women as mannequins: tall and thin, often US size zero, with very long legs, perfect teeth and hair, and skin without a blemish in sight. Wolf notes that the media encourage women to view their bodies as a project in constant need of improvement.

Neither for nor against:

"Identity is an ambiguous and slippery term." (David Buckingham, 2008)

Ideology is important here: ( see http://www.mediaknowall.com/as_alevel/alevel.php). Simply put, ideology is the ideas behind a media text, the secret (or sometimes not-so secret) agenda of its producers. It is important to be able to identify the different ideological discourses that may be present in even an apparently simple photograph. In sociological terms, ideology is a body of ideas or set of beliefs that underpins a process or institution and leads to social relations. These sets of beliefs are those held by groups within society, and the prevalent ones are those held by the ruling/dominant groups.

Hegemony: In any society the accepted and agreed beliefs are those of the ruling class, i.e. the class which is the ruling material (with all the money) force is at the same time its ruling intellectual (with all the ideas) force. We are not actually forced to believe, say, that football is the most important sport in the UK, but sometimes it is hard to imagine anything else!

Fourth Wave Feminism, embodied by Laura Bates, who in 2012 launched the Everyday Sexism Project: tens of thousands of women worldwide writing about the street harassment, sexual harassment, workplace discrimination and body-shaming they encounter. The project embodies that feminist phrase "the personal is political", a consciousness-raising exercise that encourages women to see how inequality affects them, proves these problems aren't individual but collective, and might therefore have political solutions.

Judith Butler: “We act as if that being of a man or that being of a woman is actually an internal reality or something that is simply true about us, a fact about us, but actually it's a phenomenon that is being produced all the time and reproduced all the time, so to say gender is performative is to say that nobody really is a gender from the start.”

"We should never confuse changes in the media with changes in real life. However I do think that popular media can take a leading role in this kind of social change. On its own, the media can't transform people's attitudes, but I think it can help to chip away at people’s prejudices." (Gauntlett, 2001)

Reese Witherspoon’s #AskHerMorecampaignencourages reporters to ask women about their creative work and not what dress they are wearing.