Gender representation

Gender representation in the media is different for males and females. Male representation in the media is all about being hard, tough and respected. This could be compared to the animal kingdom is some aspects that some wild animals such as lions in the wild act in a similar fashion. For example lions are seen as dominant and as the leader. The ideology of a dominant person or leader is that that person/leader is hard, tough and respected. A lion would show this by doing things like pointing out his chest and holding his head up high so that other lions respect him. Black people who sing pop and rap have recently became respected in the music industry because of showing aspects of being a dominant person through body language and create music videos which everyone sees.

   On the other hand women are represented different to this, for example a ‘real woman’ has to look good, have the ideal body and basically be a good sex symbol with little power over anything. This is seen in industry and not just the media because of things with men always running the organisations and having the most power. This could be because men run the majority of the media and most organisations so they decide how situations are portrayed and how gender is shown to the public.

How men and women are represented in the media

Masculinity is represented very differently to femininity in the media. For example, men are represented as being ‘tough’, this is the idea that all men must be revealed to the public in a very masculine fashion constituting of aspects linked with masculinity e.g. being professional, strong, rational, competitive, muscular, independent and lastly respected. This is shown in all types of media like films for example, in an action/gangster film men are always the character with the gun and also always the character that is physically fighting with other men or abusing women. It is very rare to see women beating up men and pointing a gun at a man like men are seen to do to women in these types of films, it wouldn’t be seen as normal by the viewer as the ideology of a woman is being domestic, weak, emotional, sensitive and finally supportive. Women are also often shown as a ‘sex symbol’ in all types of media such as newspapers, adverts on TV and films. This is the dominant view of women and is the same in the majority of the world therefore making it seem normal without alternatives.

    Female Characters are sometimes constructed out of qualities that tend to be associated with masculinity. In addition to this, these characters will more often than not be portrayed in a negative way and will be punished through in one way or another for her actions as this is seen as wrong and not the way women should be which makes every woman watching it think that they will be punished if they do not act like this. Statistically men are represented as being extremely violent and aggressive. For example, 99.8% of the people in prison convicted of rape are a man, which means only 0.02% of the people in prison for this crime is a woman which is miniscule. In newspapers crimes such as people being assaulted are never shown as ‘man assaulted woman’ etc, they are nowadays shown as ‘a woman has been assaulted’. This could mean that the media just assume that everyone knows it’s a man because of reasons like statistics show that the majority of the time it is a man assaulting another man or a woman. On the other hand it could be that since the media is ran by men that they don’t want to portray men as being aggressive and violent as it would give men a negative view in society.