Media is also said to effect gender role awareness. This is because media presents models of men and women in a stereotypical manner. Men are dominant, violent and ambitious and women are passive, romantic and dependent on men as portrayed by the media. Child can observe and thus learn this behaviour. Also, media portrays situations were gender inappropriate actions are met with negative consequences, for instance if a man wore a dress, the audience may laugh. Children learn this consequence and lose confidence in acting in said way, as they fear the consequence of doing it.
A study that supports these influences on gender role awareness was a study that observed the reactions of parents and peers to children playing with gender appropriate and inappropriate toys. They found fathers were openly disapproving of their children, particularly boys, playing with inappropriate toys. Peers also reacted in this way through disapproval and also violence. This supports the idea that peers and parents encourage gender appropriate behaviour by reacting negatively to children that display inappropriate behaviour, making them less likely to repeat inappropriate gender behaviour.
However, this study is era dependent. It was conducted in the 1900’s, and the views on gender and raising children may have changed since then. Therefore children may not be raised or punished this way in society today. This makes this research not generalizable to the present day.
Another study that supports these influences on gender role awareness is a study that looked at a town with and without TV, codenamed Multitel and Unitel Respectively. It was found, via questionnaire and other methods, that children’s stereo typed views within Multitel were strong, whereas in Notel they were weak. After TV was introduced to Notel, it was found that Notel adopted similar attitudes to Multitel in terms of gender stereotyped views. This supports medias influence on social roles, as attitudes towards gender roles were changed when Notel was introduced to TV, they became similar to that of Multitels, which makes the results more credible.
Although this research shows a clear change once Notel was introduced to TV, it is limited by the fact it was a natural experiment. This meant there was no control of the EV, which means that EV’s could have impacted the results, making them unreliable. This damages the cause and effect relationship between the IV and DV so it cannot be confidently concluded that the introduction of TV was the factor that caused the change in gender attitudes.
A third study that supports these influences is a study that was conducted on 8-9 year olds. They were shown clips of children selecting either an apple of a pear. Later they were asked to choose between an apple and a pear. They found children picked the fruit that children of the same gender picked within the clip. This supports peers influence on gender roles, as a gender neutral item became gender appropriate due to the gender of the peers that picked a certain fruit. It demonstrates that the children learned which fruit was suitable for them, impacting gender role awareness.
This study was conducted within a laboratory. This means that it has low ecological validity. The conditions of the experiment are not realistic to real life situations, thus the results are hard to generalize to real life situations as the children may have just did what they thought they were meant to do, given the artificial situation.
An issue with this explanation is that it is deterministic. It proposes that parents, peers and the media will determine an individual’s gender awareness. Therefore it does not consider the free will of the individual to choose to not accept these influences on their gender beliefs.
Another issue is that it’s a purely nurture explanation. It ignores any biological influences on gendered thinking; it could be that some gendered beliefs/behaviours are innate to a certain gender. This means that it cannot be seen as a complete explanation of gender awareness.
A final issue is that it’s reductionist. It simplifies in explaining human behaviour down to a fundamental factor such as socialisation, it doesn’t consider other factors that make up human complexity. This means the explanation lacks consideration of all factors and may not be entirely accurate.
by
dominicwild (student)
