This study will examine the current literature on television, gender and children’s understanding. It aims to contribute to the literature already available. It shall explore gender, what gender is, what it means to be gendered. It shall also explore television, the past debates surrounding its potential influence on a child. It will also explore gender on television and then how having gendered characters on television may have an effect on a child’s understanding of gender.
What is gender?
The nature/nurture debate is an ongoing debate among academics and is of interest to the general public. The age old question of nature or nurture is; are we born with our gendered traits or are we taught our sex roles through the process of socialization.
The main arguments of the debate are that we are born with natural qualities and traits, determined by our inherited genes; it is an individual’s nature that determines their characteristics. On the other hand nurture is the main reason for our characteristics; it is through our environment that we learn our traits.
So therefore I am going to look into the nature and nurture arguments.
Nature
Is it in our nature to have a division of the sexes?
The argument for nature is that we are born with innate characteristics that develop as we grow but in accordance with or genetic make-up. It is our genes that are the deciding factor for our gendered qualities.
The argument for natural innate gendered qualities is derived from the sciences. Neuroscience, genetics and biology inform us that men and women are different. We all know that men and women have different genetic make-up’s because of the obvious physical differences. Men are strong, they have more testosterone than women, they have more bodily hair, different reproductive systems, different chromosomes (X and Y) and many more.
These differences cause men to have different abilities than women, this is proven by scientific research.
Although research into men and womens nature is ongoing, there is still a need for more research into the differences between men and women, but as of yet the technology isn’t in place to further the nature argument. So to fill in the gaps that science has left a different way of exploring the differences in men and women was needed, thus the nurture argument was formed.
Working with psychology, which is the science of the mind, Piaget developed a cognitive developmental theory, which states,
Nurture
Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way… you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.
Aristotle
Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC – 322 BC)
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/1548.html
1994-2007 QuotationsPage.com and Michael Moncur. All rights reserved
Aristotle is a highly regarded Greek philosopher. Aristotle attempts to explain how men acquire particular qualities. He believes it is through performing the action that you become all the connotations that action has.
An example of his explanation in practice today could be the girl who gives her brother a sweet, and does so, on numerous occasions, she then becomes known as a generous person. It is in constantly acting that you become.
This quote is in favour of the nurture debate, with an emphasis on performing, and that you acquire particular qualities through performing actions. This side of the argument would accept that it is in a persons nurture that their sex roles are developed and this is achieved by performing actions related to their specific gender.
Performance theory
The idea of performing actions and these actions then becoming apart of you, is fascinating. Performance theory shall be examined to understand what it means in terms of us performing our gender.
Performance theory regards life as a theatre; there are performances, audiences and settings. For there to be a performance there must be an audience, thus performing is only enabled in social interaction.
When the individual presents himself before others, his performance will tend to incorporate and exemplify the officially accredited values of the society, more so, in fact, than does his behaviour as a whole. E, Goffman (1969: 31)
Here Goffman is suggesting that when a person performs, they are performing values held by society. This is interesting for this research because it is arguing for the nurture debate, that we learn from the social what is expected of us and we then perform these expectations within the social. These repeat performances and social acceptance of them must have an impact on the person acting as they will become so used to the actions as Aristotle said that they will then become the actions.
Goffman takes his theory further than this by explaining how a person may include or exclude a trait is because of the expected response from their audience. In general the performer wants to please the audience and not be seen to deviate from their expectations.
‘American college girls did, and no doubt do, play down their intelligence, skills, and determinativeness when in the presence of datable boys… these performers are reported to allow their boyfriends to explain things to them… E, Goffman. (1969: 34.)
This indicates how a person can act up to their stereotyped role. This example shows how college girls manipulate their behaviour to fall into the subordinate, weaker sex role, so that the natural superiority of men is up held.
Social Learning Theory
Performance Theory isn’t the only theory used to explain our nurtured qualities, there are many different theories which try to explain how we develop our gendered identities.
What is social learning theory?
‘Most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action.’ Bandura (1977: 22)
Social learning theory can be used to explain sex typed behaviour, W, Mischel tells us
‘sex typing is the process by which the individual acquires sex typed behaviour patterns: first he learns to discriminate between sex typed behaviour patterns,
then to generalize from these specific learning experiences to new situations,
and finally to perform sex typed behaviour.’ W, Mischel. (1966: 57).
This is an explanation for how sex typed behaviour is acquired and displayed in society. This theory works along side performance theory, as it states that individuals will eventually perform the sex typed behaviour and performance theory illustrates that sex roles are performed and reinforced throughout a person’s life.
An example of social learning theory in practice.
The nurture debate would suggest that socialising children is how they learn about their place and roles in society. Teachers play a crucial role in teaching children about the social roles expected of them.
Early childhood Teachers play a role in a child’s learning progression, therefore it is assumed that they will whether purposefully or accidentally provide children with examples of sex roles and ‘play a role in the early socialization of young children.’, E, Adams. and B, Charhill. (1997: 517).
E, Adams and B, Charhill’s study is concerned with teacher’s attitudes towards. The research found that teachers have a non-traditional or pro feminist approach to gender roles.
Even though this shows that teachers are thinking in non-traditional terms, it doesn’t mean they are acting in this way, but it may suggest that their non-traditional beliefs will be passed on to the children in their care. However
‘The present study found that while early childhood teachers express some openness to children exploring gender roles, they feel more comfortable with girls, rather than boys, exploring male and female gender roles.’ B, Charhill and E, Adams (1997: 526).
These findings suggest that teachers are more accepting of little girls wanting to climb a tree, than little boys crying. This would suggest that if children in particular boys, do learn through observation of their teacher, then they will have a stereotypical view of sex roles.
Also another example of social learning theory is television in that a programme is observed by a child and then in some instances the child will learn from the observations made.
‘communications media are potential agencies of socialization because they too, like family, school and peers, direct information towards the child and present him/her with examples of behaviour.’ R, Brown. ed (1976: 20)
The concept of this idea is fascinating because it informs us that television is a place where information about behaviour is directed at children. So what sort of behaviour information is directed towards children on television and does this behaviour, as the quote suggests, aid a child with their understanding of behaviours. For this study I am concerned with the gender/sex role related behaviours on television and if this influences a child’s understanding of gender.
Therefore it is necessary to research in more depth the use of television in the lifes of children.
Television in the Lives of Children
Television is a part of many British families life. Young children ‘spend some 20 or so hours a week in front of the television set.’ B, Gunter. (1991: 179)
Television has been a crucial medium through which messages are communicated to a mass audience. Television in our lives today and in the lives of our children has many differing roles.
Television is used as a babysitter, entertainment, informative, leisure activity and probably more. It is watched in different contexts, at home, at school, college, university, work place, in pubs, bars, clubs, and nursery and even on the move (via phone).
Another aspect to consider is who you are with when watching television, whether this is with friends, family, work colleague’s, teachers and many more, as the context will effect the understanding processes.
Television is a primarily social activity, where viewing and talking about television is done so in social interaction. Television ‘provides entertainment and a source of distraction or temporary rest bite from the problems of everyday life.’ B, Gunter et al (1991:3)
Television provides a basis for members watching a programme to discuss what is been shown. Television is used as a talking point in many conversations, because nearly everyone has it in common, it inhibits conversations about it, joining those who may have been otherwise socially incompatible.
‘television exists in an environment … which is full of social examples and constraints provided by family and community.’ M, M, Davies (1989:29).
This statement tells us that television is part of the social environment, which families and communities are apart of. Meaning television cannot be soley blamed for influencing children’s behaviour. It is apart of their life, just as families, friends etc. are.
To begin to examine what role television plays in the lives of children, it is important to establish children as one age group that is part of televisions whole audience.
Television and its possible influence on children is an area of study that has concerned parents, academics and the media for the past few centuries. This is probably due to the role television has in everyday modern life in Britain.
‘television is readily available in nearly every family household, and many families have two or three or even more sets scattered throughout the home, both upstairs and downstairs.’ B, Gunter. Et al. (1991: 2).
Assuming B, Gunter et al. are correct, then the position that television has in todays society, indicates that television is apart of most peoples life, everyday.
This assumption is also sustained by more recent research.
‘Almost all 6-17 year olds (99%) watch television in their leisure time, and on
average spend two and half hours almost every day in front of the screen.’
S, Livingstone & M, Bovill (2000:2)
Knowing that children watch television is important, but now to progress the research it is important to try and examine what researchers believe children use television for.
B, Gunter et al. believe children use television as a ‘convenient source of pleasure and amusement, a time-filler, and something from which they can learn.’ B, Gunter. Et al. (1991: 2).
Although Gunter expresses that children use television to learn from, S, Livingstone & M, Bovill indicate that children don’t use television to learn from, they would use a different media such as the computer or books.
Considering the opposing statements of why children use television, it is clear that Gunter has given significance to children using television for learning, when in fact Livingstone & Bovill have discovered that learning isn’t the predominant reason for watching television.
With regards to this research it is relevant to understand why children would use television to learn, because this study hopes to uncover whether children learn or are influenced by the sex roles they see on television and if television contributes to their understanding of sex roles.
Adding to the reasons as to why children watch television is S, Livingstone & M, Bovill (2000) they give three main reasons. There isn’t enough activities for the children to do in the area, parental fears of the child playing on the street and their homes are media rich.
Although S, Livingstone & M, Bovill research is concerned with childrens use of all media, this is still a reliable study as television is included as media that children use.
In D, Buckinghams book Children Talking Television, he discusses a complicated television literacy theory. Television literacy in simple terms is the reading and understanding of what you watch on the television.
D, Buckingham believes ‘television does not deliver meaning: on the contrary, viewers construct it.’ (1993: 39). Buckingham’s idea that the viewer constructs the meaning of what they watch, is insinuating that children are active viewers.
Children watch television and rather than being told what the meaning of the programme is, they will construct the meaning themselves.
If a child constructs the meaning, then it is important to remember that children don’t have extensive knowledge of the world they live in, so the meanings they construct will be different to adults. Also children as individuals will construct different meanings, depending on their culture, social class, race, religion, gender etc.
Although we each as individuals have our own reading of the programme, we are social beings. The meanings we generate are part of our social knowledge.
‘talk about television is a vital element of our everyday social lives.’ D, Buckingham (1993: 39)
This is true for most British children and adults, we watch programmes and talk about them with our friends, colleagues, parents, teachers etc. Buckingham believes that through talking about television it is possible to gain an insight into a persons particular social class, lifestyle preferences and interests.
This is possible because programmes are so varied and they have specific elements which are apart of each genre specific programme, also each programme has a certain style that will attract some viewers, whilst repelling others.
An example of learning about someones lifestyle is from knowing what they watch. For example a child watches Star Trek, it tells another child that it watches it, the other child can make assumptions based on this one piece of information. The assumptions could be the child is interested in space, fantasy world, escapism, they like watching adult programmes that tell a complicated story, the child is educated.
Although this is an example, it does show that it is possible to place different social qualities onto a person just from knowing what they like to watch.
what this means for this study is children are constantly watching, talking and making meaning of television. The stages are from watching the programme and constructing their own meaning of the programme, then discussing their interpretation of the programme with others. The child will then evaluate and change their meaning of the programme.
This means the meaning of programmes are renegotiated time and time again, to hopefully gain a fuller understanding of the concepts within the programmes.
C, Bantz, looks at the uses of television and peoples favourite programme type. This research is important as it helps us understand the use of television in our lives today.
The study is concerned with people’s uses of television, with an academic grounding in mass media research, in particular the uses and gratifications perspective. Uses and gratifications research tries to explain or at least uncover the reasons why people watch television and what they gratify by using the medium.
There are many different ways of researching the uses and gratifications of television. This study gave essays and questionnaires to its participants and analysed the responses to assess the relationship between medium and content.
Basically the research uses set factorial terms for the uses of the medium and is seeing if there is a link between the use of television and the use of watching your favourite programme. The overall findings found that television and a person’s favourite programme type (such as reality shows) did not change the reported reason for using the media.
The research isn’t very helpful or easily understood, but after reading it, the conclusion can be formed that reasons why people use a certain media are maybe not of significance, because the reason to watch is always changing and it is not necessary to simplify this area of research.
On the other hand the uses and gratifications research is important in understanding a bit more about the reasons why a person watches television and what they get from it. However this is very limiting and unless, more ethnographic methods are used to watch and participate in a persons use of a media, then how can research be reliable or fulfilling in explaining the uses and gratifications of a certain media.
Gender on Television
Content analysis’
In order to understand what is on television academics do content analysis research.
It is used to quantify the content of communication on television.
This is done by choosing a specific area to examine, then choosing samples within the medium and then tallying the frequency of the area chosen. An example would be a content analysis of childrens cartoons looking for sexist comments.
The problem is what one researcher may deem an example of sexism, another might overlook it. There are ways of trying to overcome this hurdle by explicitly defining what shall be recorded. This doesn’t encapsulate the social meaning though.
It is important to remember and consider the fact children will not just watch childrens programmes, they will also inevitably watch adult programmes. This is because of a number of reasons such as, another family member is watching the programme, or the child prefers watching adult programmes because they want to be seen as grown up.
Sex roles on television
Academics have accomplished finding out what sex roles are shown on television by content analysis. Television content analysis is a social scientific way of analysing content on television.
To conduct a content analysis K, Durkin (1985:23) explains that firstly a chosen area of content (sex roles) is chosen within the medium (television), then defining a specific characteristic to look for (men v’s women appearance) and then scoring the examples of characteristics within the medium.
For example you would count the amount of times men and then women appear in a particular programme. There are limitations to this research of course because the scoring process requires subjectivity and opinion of the content, by the scorer, which will differ from person to person. However content analysis is still interesting to gain knowledge of what sex roles children are exposed to on television.
How often women and their roles on television has been a concern of many feminist and media academics. Feminists are concerned because they believe the world of television under represents women and gives them inferior roles than that of their male counterparts.
Content analysis into sex roles has been conducted over the past five decades, with the very first few in the 1950’s. They all explored different aspects of sex roles on television, such as male and female job roles, whether females were placed in more typical female roles (secretary, nurse), are there more men than women on television and the characteristics of the women and men, to name but a few.
Butler and Paisley (1980) serve as a good starting point, they reviewed 13 studies, that were involved with the relative frequency of men and women on television programmes. They found that overall about 2/3 of the characters were men compared to just under a 1/3 being female.
This representation is not socially correct, as there are an equal number, sometimes more women in society than there is men. The conclusion to be made from the representation of women and men on television is that television is sex biased, unlike the world we live in, where men and women occur in more equal numbers.
The occupation of each sex shown on television has been an area of research for some academics, the concern is that television provides its audience with an un fair representation of job and social roles of each gender. Seggar and Wheeler (1973) conducted a study to see if the female characters on television had a typically female job role, which was the case.
These are just two content analysis’ of gender on television and there ae many more. These ones have been picked as examples and evidence of the on going process of catergorising job roles and social aspects of each gender on television.
A more recent content analysis was conducted by N, Signorielli and A, Bacue.
(1999), This study examined if women are on television more frequently and if they have respectful roles, and it compares the content analysis’ over 30 years. This research is interesting as it claims,
‘As expected, the results of these analyses show that women still receive … less recognition than men on television. Beginning in the 1980’s and particularly during the 1990’s, however, there has been some change in the amount and degree of respect given to them.’ N, Signorielli and A, Bacue. (1999: 527)
They also claim that traditional female job roles are slowly being diminished, and that more women are working in less stereotyped and traditional female job roles such as nurse or secretary. ‘during the 1980’s and 1990’s a smaller portion of the women were cast in these jobs.’ N, Signorielli and A, Bacue. (1999: 527).
J, Glascock’s study provides information on the ways gender roles in situation comedies and dramas on prime-time television have changed since the 1970’s. If media is somewhat reflective of society then with all the changes in women’s roles, surely television is also changing and depicting women in greater major roles.
The results of the study found that there is still a difference in male and female major roles, men 60% and women 40% (an increase on Bultler and Paisley’s figures) and there was a connection made between on screen and off screen demographics, when women are the writers of programmes more women will have major roles on screen. These findings suggest that if women’s role within society continues to develop and more women enter the work force then more women will have jobs within the television industry, which could mean more characters being female on television.
In comedies women have made about 42% of the demographic, this is a consistent number from the 1970’s with McNeil (1975) who found 40% of characters were female. The results show that comedies have always had a better representation of women and that they changed as society did.
In drama’s 38% are female main characters, compared to 26% McNeil (1975). This shows that drama’s have recognised the need to display female characters in main roles and it could also be said that feminist research has highlighted the under representation of women on television and that by highlighting it changes have occurred.
Also of importance is the roles the characters have, because if children are to learn about gendered job roles then it is crucial that they are exposed to each sex in the same position of power, to reflect society a bit better and not offer children a biased and stereotypical view of sex roles. Although situation comedies allow women to have an upper hand over male counter parts. ‘In comedies, females were depicted as more apt to make negative comments, more hostile, more affectionate and more concerned than males.’ J, Glascock. (2001: 665). This representation of women is more liberating and provides viewers with a different perspective on the female role.
Overall though women are depicted in lower paid jobs and less prestigious occupations, this is reflected in men being twice as likely to be the main boss. this representation of women may be damaging to children, because they will only know what is shown to them, however as television isn’t their only source of examples of job roles, it can be assumed that they will know and have seen women in more prominent job roles, be that their mother is a manager etc.
Know one will ever know if showing women as the boss would change a child’s perception of their expected job role, but it would be interesting to have more female bosses on television to show the possible occupations that children can fulfil.
Advertisements are apart of the commercial television schedule, so they too have been analysed in terms of their depictions of gender roles.
S, Abramsky’s research tells us that there have been many studies on gender role portrayals on television and how men are more prominent on television, but within adverts on British television women have equal or slightly more screen presence. The study was concerned with analysing two sets of weekend children’s adverts on television both in New York and London, recording in 1993.
The results showed that in Britain 60% of the advert human characters were male, 40% female and 73% were male cartoon characters compared to 27% cartoons females, the case was similar for the USA 51% male and 49% female. These finding show that
‘More similarities than differences between samples of British and American advertisements that had been broadcast on children’s weekend television in terms of gender role portrayals.’ S, Abramsky et al. (1997: 96).
Because both America and Britain use gender stereotyped roles in their adverts towards children, then maybe this means that gender roles are a universal phenomenon. It could also mean that America and Britain have similar traditional gender roles and these roles are observed through mediated messages.
Following on from the connection between America and Britain’s stereotypical gender roles is D, R, Rolandelli’s research, who’s research was based in Japan.
D, R, Rolandelli’s research was concerned with the gender roles found on Japanese children’s programmes on television and the effects the portrayals had on the children’s gender role attitudes and behaviours.
The programmes content was analysed using typical coding procedures. The results of the content analysis’ found that ‘males are overrepresented have higher occupational status than females, and are more commonly portrayed at the oldest age level (adult) than are females.’ D, R, Rolandelli. (1991: 1291). This indicates that men and women are still being treated differently on television, whether in America, Britain or Japan, women are still being portrayed as young, cute, beautiful, submissive, not as powerful as men, in domesticated contexts and with many more gendered qualities.
What a child does with these clear traditional and gendered roles on television is always a concern. The message of Japanese children’s programmes is that being feminine is not rewarding as you will lose your social power if you are feminine.
‘The message is probably not lost on female viewers who see the female dimension associated with lack of social power, yet are expected by society to accept the feminine role.’ D, R, Rolandelli. (1991: 1292).
This could be damaging for any young female viewers who see femininity being prosecuted on television yet they are supposed to be feminine, whereas men ‘are encouraged to be masculine… the male dimension portrayed positively to the extent that it is associated with power, prominence, and likeability.’ D, R, Rolandelli. (1991: 1292).
The association between power and gender is important, because the television show place men and masculinity in a more dominant and powerful position than females and femininity, these representations just act to reinforce traditional gender roles within societies, in particular Japan.
M, M, Lauzen and D, M, Dozier summarise research into the involvement of women behind and on screen in television and film. The research into prime-time television is of relevance. The researchers examined prime-time television programmes from 1995-1998.
The research found a connection between women working behind the screen and women on screen. it found that more women working on the programmes behind the scenes meant there were more women on screen. This finding suggests that the producers, directors, editors and writers of prime-time television programmes have an influence on the portrayal of women on our screens and that with this influence becomes the responsibility of the programme makers to represent women in a realistic and demographic way.
N, Signorielli studied job roles on television and the job roles that children know about, as well as analysing the occupational roles on prime-time television.
Television provides its viewers with many representations of different occupations. These representations provide its viewers with information about the nature of different jobs. ‘this study also found that viewing affected children’s attitudes, aspirations, and gender schemata in relation to occupations.’ N, Signorielli. (1993: 318).
If children are affected by what they see on television as Signorielli suggests then the types of gendered occupations seen on television are crucial to a child’s development of occupational and gender roles.
The sort of job roles portrayed on television range from professions to customer services. the roles most shown are doctors, judges, entertainers, police and private investigators. The roles least represented are teachers, secretaries, sales people and
labourers. There is some correlation between the amount of men and women in roles such as judge, teacher and police, to the amount of men and women in these roles in real life (although this is an American study it is hoped that British programming has similar findings).
Although television does show job roles and most of the stories are based on characters’ jobs, there is a lack of realism. Television doesn’t show the true nature of jobs, like the hard work and long hours that are needed to become successful at work, instead it chooses to show the glamorous and fun side of jobs. A reason for not showing the hard work is probably because the programme makers think viewers will not be entertained or interested in the realities of jobs.
The findings of this study are that television does affect a child’s views about job roles. Children watching television wanted jobs like they saw on the box, they wanted status, prestige and respect, they also expected the job to be as it is shown on television (easy).
These findings are in favour of gender and gender role attitudes of children to be affected by television.
It is clear from the content analysis studies of television programmes, that there are more men than women on our screens. That when women are shown on television they are in subordinate roles, and if they are not then this is at the expense of their personal lives. In general men are still shown as the bread winners and women the carers.
If this is the gendered roles that children see on television then how does this influence or not influence their understanding of gender roles. To find out or at least explore possible answers to this question, a closer look at what children learn about sex roles from television is needed.
Effects research
Hyperdermic model- where the media inject into the audience persuasive communication and the audience takes all the messages in the media text into their mind and are in turn effected by the message.
Conditioning model
Stimulus – response
The simulus would be television and the response would be thoughts, feelings and behaviours of the audience.
The limitations of this theory is that the audience simply accepts and utilises the concepts being shown to them.
Eg. If a child regularly watches television where a woman plays the typical housewive role and rarely deviates from this, then the child will become more traditionalist in their views of sex roles.
It is hard to prove this theory as a child doesn’t just watch television it has other interactions in the social realm, where it learns about sex roles. Also who is the audience and how can you separate television from the social, you can’t.
Effects model aren’t concerned with the mechanisms and processes that relate to the viewers understanding or in the case of children the developmental changes.
A, Fung and E, Ma study shows the informal and formal uses of television in Hong Kong, and the relationship between gender stereotyping and media use in Hong Kong. This study is useful as it may show the influences media has had on people’s views of stereotyped roles.
The results showed that people in Hong Kong who watch television have stereotypical views of gender roles, but they also were unaware of the possible negative consequences of having stereotyped gender roles on television.
‘In general, the functional use of the media for entertainment rather than for information, as well as the exposure to entertaining programs on television, have reinforced people’s gender stereotype.’ A, Fung. And E, Ma. (2000: 77).
The research has shown that in the western world feminism is active and it is through feminism that change or an awareness of gender stereotyping is apparent. Women are becoming more active in the work place in Hong Kong also, with equality gaps closing between men and women. Yet for Hong Kong ‘the social effort to push the feminist agenda forward is very much required to achieve gains in gender equality.’ A, Fung. And E, Ma. (2000: 78).
This notion is important because it shows that in societies where gender roles aren’t questioned or disputed there is a lack of feminism movement and traditional sex roles are the norm and expected.
A, Fung and E, Ma. discuss the possibility that stereotypic roles on television are diffused or absorbed subconsciously into the minds of the daily viewing audience. If this notion is correct or has any published groundings, then it is a crucial idea that suggests that viewers will view, process and understand the gender roles they see on television but without their knowledge, in that sex roles are a given, a natural occurrence and unquestionable.
Another study by D, Lemish is concerned with the difference between male and female youth audiences of WWF wrestling in Israel. The differences found in the study were that as expected boys loved the programme and imitated the wrestling moves in the play ground. The interviews with the children produced many findings, but mainly that girls and boys adhere to their gendered roles when it comes to discussing WWF.
The girls were more critical of the programme and didn’t want to be seen to imitate it. Whereas the boys liked watching, talking and imitating the programme. The study found that girls were able to shun the programme and criticise it and through this they reinforced their gender identity. It also found that girls did watch the programme within the context of their family home with other male family members, whereas the boys would watch on their own.
This study found that girls and boys both used WWF as reconfirming their gender identity. Female identity is fragmented because most of the girls watching WWF was ok but imitating the behaviour was wrong and deemed ‘boyish’. On the other hand some girls enjoyed watching and imitating the programme and found it a good source for them to explore and act out masculine qualities.
‘The new models of gender identities may help or confuse girls growing up today to develop their own notions of identity as females.’ D, Lemish. (1998: 846). This statement indicates a few things- the first is that television is an influential medium where gendered roles are presented to child viewers and that these roles are imitated and discussed by boys and girls. Also girls develop their gendered identities and television provides a source for examples of behaviour, where children can see characters from their sex performing.
B, Olson and W, Douglas’ study explored whether gender roles within families, in television situation comedies have changed over the past 40 years. The method was to show extracts from popular situation comedies on television to college students, who then were asked to make judgements about the families they had seen, in a stimuli/response technique.
The results show that particular programmes ‘Roseanne’ and ‘Home Improvement’, exhibit different family roles for the parents. In ‘Roseanne’ the mother is strong and deals with the discipline and nurture of the family and the husband s seen to run away from the family problems. Whereas in ‘Home Improvement’ the father is the one who tries to instruct his sons with a concept of masculinity. Both characters are teaching their children the rules and expectancies of society.
Anyone watching these representations of family roles, will identify with the characters, and if the representations differ from their own family relations then this could cause conflict or serve as a model. The results also found that although dysfunctional families have been shown on television, traditional families came back on the screen in the 80’s, with the father being the central family character. ‘The Crosby Show’ uses traditional family roles and in doing so it suggests that for a family to be stable and satisfied the mother should play the traditional role of carer and the father to be the breadwinner. ‘This perception could lead to frustration and dissatisfaction when family economic circumstances preclude this arrangement.’ B, Olson and W, Douglas. 1997: 424).
This statement indicates that a person may become dissatisfied with the family sex roles they view on television, and it may also flag up the differences between their own family and what they see on television. This is important when thinking about children watching television and their understanding of gender roles, because if a child identifies with the roles of the children in the programmes then they may learn other aspect of behaviour that they may not have come across before, and in identifying with the character then go on to use the new found behaviour.
We were all children once, as a children we do copy and imitate what we see on television, read in books, watch in theatres, learn at school, etc. an example of this is the young boy who places his coat around his neck and on his back, he runs around singing ‘na na na na na na na na batman’. This is a clear imitation of a cartoon hero that the child will have watched on television.
So yes television has had an effect on the child viewer in this instance, by watching what batman does and admiration and a want to be batman is indicated in their imitation. This of course can be argued against, but it is evident that children do copy some aspects of what they see on television.
Using the imitation theory it could be said that sex roles on television will be imitated by the audience. This is a very general comment, but the fact is imitation cannot be ignored. In this instance if sex roles were imitated by the audience then all girls would be housewives or just career focused and all men would be high earners, doctors, lawyers etc. but this isn’t the case in the real world.
Knowing about the uses and gratifications of childrens use of television has been an important research area for mass media academics. Uses and gratifications of the media is a theory that was primarily developed as part of televisions effects research.
Effects research is concerned with the possible/plauasable effect that the media has on its audience. The thing with effect is that an effect is saying that television does something to the audience. Yet there still is no definitive proof that television has an effect on its audience.
This isn’t to say television doesn’t have an effect on children at all. But maybe the press and public debate surrounding the issue have somewhat tainted the reason for researching if television and media has a negative effect on the viewer.
At the beginning of the research into the effects of television, academics and researchers failed to understand that the audience are active. The audience is active in their use and understanding of television programmes, by this it is meant the audience choose what they watch, when they want and understand the messages in the programmes both individually and as part of a wider social group.
‘it is the children who are most active in this relationship. It is they who use television, rather than television that uses them.’ W, Schramm. Et al. (1961: 1)
If the statement is true that children are active, then it is interesting to see in what ways they are active, how do children actually use television. Many researchers and academics have been concerned with this question, and the way they went about finding out a possible answer is through quanitative and qualitative interviews, questionnaires and observational methods.
A deeper understanding of childrens sex roles.
K, Durkin’s study was to find out how children perceive sex role stereotypes on television. He interviewed seventeen children aged 4 ½ to 9 ½. The study is concerned with the place of sex role stereotypes on television within the social context of a child.
K, Durkin was working under the theory of social cognitive development, which is exploring ‘the ways in which children construct their understanding of people, social relationships, and social constraints.’ K, Durkin. (1984: 344-345). His research indicates that children bring their own existing knowledge to help them interpret the material they watch. Also that children know about conventional sex roles and the behaviour that is expected of a either a man or woman.
Children’s acquisition of sex role stereotypes is suggested to be a developmental process and that when they watch televised sex role examples children will interact with them, rather than being passive viewers.
K, Durkin expresses that in the social realm children seem to be ‘developing scripts (Schank and Abelson, 1977) to account for regularities in social experiences and observations. K, Durkin. (1984: 357).
Scripts are formed when social phenomenon occurs, it is basically a set of rules or expectations of a social aspect, they are appropriate for what children would normally expect from real life situations.
‘The children know the male-female script quite well, and are able, for example, to account for the whereabouts of hypothetical men and women that they have not actually viewed by reference to sex-role expectations.’ K, Durkin. (1984: 357).
The results of this study found that children did have their own existing knowledge about gender role expectations and thus they used these scripts to interpret what they saw on the screen.
one study by B, Francis explored children’s construction of gender in conversation and occupational role plays. It suggests that sex role stereotypes are maintained through category maintenance. Whereby sex role behaviours are categorized and then girls and boys are given their own separate categories.
Children’s gender roles in play are important because they show that children conform to sex role stereotypes.
‘I suggest that the choice of gender-traditional roles in the plays is due to gender
Category maintenance on the part of children, who take up gender as integral to
Their social identity and who rely on symbolic demonstration to prove their gender.’ B, Francis. (1998: 42).
Through actions a child’s gender and social identity can be expressed. Children do tend to conform to the stereotypical job roles that are appropriate for their sex. This shows that not only do children know about job roles appropriate for each sex, but they also reinforce the roles by acting out the roles themselves.
A different study by K, Durkin and B, Nugent examined 4- 5 year olds predictions of the sex of the person carrying out common activities and occupations on television. The study found out if children had stereotyped beliefs and expectations of gender roles they saw on television. 48 Australian preschool children were used and they had to say whether a certain activity was male or female.
Responses to the gender prediction task revealed strong traditional stereotyping with respect to both masculine and feminine genders, and among both sexes.’ K, Durkin. And B, Nugent. (1998: 395). This is a straightforward and predicted outcome; this proves that ‘children are active and structured processors of social information provided by television.’ (1998: 398).
Children use their former knowledge of sex role stereotypes to predict the behaviours of men and women on television and in real life.
‘the main point here is that, while television provides …massive amounts of information about many phenomena, children must have strategies for processing, ordering and extracting … and for assimilating their understanding of what they see on screen with knowledge acquired from other sources.’ K, Durkin. And B, Nugent. (1998: 400).
Children use their knowledge of gender stereotypical roles when watching television and apply what they already know to what they are watching.
Another study examines gender and minority roles within newspaper comics in America. 50 unique comic strips and panels were examined and coded for demographics, then activities and finally behaviours.
The results of the study were out of 1077 characters, 61% male and 28% female and 11% were animals, Although 6 to 1 of the animals were male. There is still a disproportionate amount of female characters to male and when women are shown it is still likely to be in a stereotypical role, within the domestic context rather than the workplace.
The results were compared with other similar studies and there has been some sort of progression from Chavez’s study in 1985, because women are 40% likely to be a major character, whereas in 1985 the percent was 15%. This sort of increase does suggest that comic strip writers are trying to change their representation of men and women.
However the study does look further at the job roles that women play and it found that women are still being depicted in stereotypical job roles, such as secretary or sales clerk.
There may be more women in the comic strips but if they are shown in domestic and stereotypical job roles, then how can this be a fair representation of women, it isn’t. the study uncovered that women’s role as caregiver and domestic homemaker are more prevailing in comic strips than any other media, this suggests that although more women are represented, the representation is stuck in the past.
A reason for this representation in comic strips is the producers of the strips do not represent society as a whole. ‘It seems clear that characters and gender representations are notably different depending on who is behind the comic.’ J, Glascock and C, Preston-Schreck. (2004: 430).
What this means for children and gender is that children who may read newspaper comic strips will not be presented with a realistic representation of women, in the work they do and their characteristics. Newspapers are another form of media where female representation remains stereotypical, and this means children are still exposed to unrealistic presentations of women.
This study involved pupils from a school in America and it is concerned with questioning them about their use of television and the impact it has on them. Overall the study found that ‘those who watch more television are more likely to endorse a traditional division of labour between the sexes.’ M, Morgan and N, Rothschild. (1983: 44). The reliability of this relationship between television and sex roles is questionable, because firstly it is a small study and sample. Also it is in America and was 30 years ago.
Another study is interested in the parent’s role in children’s television viewing. The research was conducted in India, but it still has implications for parents and children in Britain today. The study involved 754 children and parents and they were interviewed to find out their attitudes towards television.
The study was in India and at the time of the study ‘15% of the families did not have TV at home, 76% possessed black-and-white sets and only 9% had colour.’ U, Abrol. Et al. (1993: 214). This shows that television is relatively new in India and so its effects may not be as predominant. However it is interesting to understand how parents all over the world talk to and interact with television and their children.
The findings of the interviews are that in comparison to adults in developed countries adults in India don’t have a high education. In this sample 17% of fathers and 42% of mothers were illiterate. The study found that the children of parents who had some education were higher viewers than those with low or no education.
This finding is in contrast to British families who researchers found that families with a lower education were more likely to watch television, than those parents with a higher education.
Even so children still watch television and it was found that a third of parents would actively discuss programmes with their children and that by doing so a greater understanding was reached by children.
It was found that television will expose Indian children to a variety of different societies and cultures and that these presentations may hamper the traditional values held in Indian families. It suggests that parents should actively encourage discussions about programmes seen on television with their children.
This research provides a comparison of developed and undeveloped countries and the impact of television has on its viewers. From this research it can be said that television has the ability to facilitate social change, a change in attitudes, behaviours and values of its viewers and parents are concerned with the effects that television could have on their children, which is a universal concern.
Hannah's Independent Study blog 