due Sunday (Eastern time)
Gender Issues in Media & The Environment
Objectives
Understand media as a source of gender stereotypes
News
TV
Advertising
Blogs for Gamers
News Media
News give us a picture where men outnumber women in nearly all occupational categories
Except two: students and homemakers
https://www.ted.com/talks/megan_kamerick_women_should_represent_women_in_media 10 minutes
Wired- almost never puts a woman on the cover
Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired, defended his choice and said there aren't enough women, prominent women in technology to sell a cover, to sell an issue.
2003 Diamonds 2011 - Rosie
2020 Media report
One in five experts interviewed by media are women.
Women are frequently portrayed in stereotypical and hyper-sexualised roles in advertising and the film industry, which has long-term social consequences.
And 73% of the management jobs are occupied by men compared to 27% occupied by women.
The crucial role of media in achieving gender equality 21 Feb. 2020
Women only make up 24% of the persons heard, read about or seen in newspaper, television and radio news.
46% of news stories reinforce gender stereotypes
4% of stories clearly challenge gender stereotypes.
The majority of female media workers experience gender specific harassment both inside their organizations, outside of them, and more increasingly online.
2021 Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media
Statistically, there has been little forward movement for girls in media in six decades.
For nearly 60 years, gender inequality on screen has remained largely unchanged and unchecked. Without an educational voice and force for change, this level of imbalance is likely to stay the same or worsen.
Only through education, research, and advocacy both from within the studio system and entertainment industry, and with parents and kids, can we effect real change in this heavily gender-biased media landscape.
Even among the top-grossing G-rated family films, girl characters are out numbered by boys three-to-one.
Female characters continue to show dramatically more skin than their male counterparts, and feature extremely tiny waists and other exaggerated body characteristics.
This hypersexualization and objectification of female characters leads to unrealistic body ideals in very young children, cementing and often reinforcing negative body images and perceptions during the formative years.
Research shows that lookism still pervades cinematic content in very meaningful ways.
Females behind the camera fall far behind their male contemporaries and are at a distinct disadvantage in the entertainment industry.
Only 7% of directors, 13% of writers, and 20% of producers are female. With such a dearth of female representation in front of and behind the camera, it’s a struggle to champion female stories and voices.
The Institute’s research proves that female involvement in the creative process is imperative for creating greater gender balance before production even begins. There is a causal relationship between positive female portrayals and female content creators involved in production. In fact, when even one woman writer works on a film, there is a 10.4% difference in screen time for female characters.
Men outnumber women in key production roles by nearly 5 to 1.
The media
Selling the idea that girls’ and women’s value lies in their
youth,
beauty,
sexuality
not in their capacity as leaders
http://therepresentationproject.org/film/miss-representation/the-issue/#sthash.G9glc0NM.dpuf
Boys learn that their success is tied to
dominance,
power, and
aggression
We must value people as whole human beings, not gendered stereotypes
Public pedagogy. That is, it is how societies are taught ideologies. It's how you learned what it meant to be a man or a woman, what it meant to behave yourself in public, what it meant to be a patriot and have good manners.
It's all the constituent social relations that make us up as a people. It's, in short, how we learn what we know about other people and about the world. But we live in a 100-percent media-saturated society.
What that means is that every single aspect of your human existence outside of your basic bodily functions is in some way touched by media.
Bechdel Test
The Bechdel Test, sometimes called the Mo Movie Measure or Bechdel Rule is a simple test which names the following three criteria:
3 minute video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLF6sAAMb4s
Gender & Race Roles in TV Advertising
Powerful White Men- 2x as likely to give orders or exercise authority
White Women as Sex objects – 25% of women depicted as sex objects, flirting, or low calorie cereal, cleaning products
Aggressive Black Men 3x more likely than white men to be shown playing rough
Inconsequential Black Women less authority than white males, less engaged in family roles and less sexual
Also true for Latino, Asian American, American Indians
Gender stereotypes banned in UK 2019
https://www.xprize.org/articles/the-evolution-of-gender-bias-in-advertising
Gaming Industry
Female Roles- Damsels in distress or ultimate warrior-
2017- Hypersexualized 80 percent of female characters in video game magazines are portrayed as sexualized, scantily clad or a vision of beauty
2014- James Therien, technical director at European gamemaker Ubisoft, told trade publication VideoGamer that the latest instalment of Ubisoft hit Assassin's Creed would not feature any playable female characters because it would have "doubled the work“
Average gamer is 31 years old
71% of gamers are 18 or older
48% of gamers are female
Males often will not play female rolls
Females often play male rolls- have male screen names
Percentage of female characters in video games has remained steady at around 15%
9% of the titles "exclusively playable female protagonists,"
32%, had "exclusively playable male protagonists.“
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA2kHVMak0E
2018 was a great year for gaming, and many defining new titles were released.
Among the various critically-acclaimed games of 2018, there were games that featured some tough female characters. In many games released this year, such as Assassins Creed Odyssey and Far Cry 5, players even had the option to play as either a male or a female character.
https://gamerant.com/best-video-game-character-2018-female/
Gaming Is Now Equally Distributed Between Males and Females, But the Supply Side Still Needs To Catch Up 2020
Sports games such as Madden and NBA2K have a particular opportunity for growth within the female segment:
52% of American football viewers in the US are female, as found by MIDiA’s Q4 2019 survey. Yet, only 30% of Madden NFL (the flagship American football game) fans are female.
44% of US basketball viewers are female. But only 36% of NBA2K players are female.
With games such as GTA (45% female) Call of Duty (45% female), Fortnite (45% female), and Halo (49% female), there is absolutely no reason why sports games should be skewing male in terms of gender distribution.
"Ecofeminism is an activist and academic movement that sees critical connections between the domination of nature and the exploitation of women.... Ecofeminist activism grew during the 1980s and 1990s among women from the anti-nuclear, environmental, and lesbian-feminist movements
Mother Earth
Women as protectors of the planet- free from pesticides
Rachel Carson
https://az.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/envh10.sci.life.eco.silentspring/rachel-carsons-silent-spring/#.WnjMA6inFPY