For this assignment I will be looking at how the media reinforces genderstereotypes.

In the title of the article the writer which is a female uses the term 'girl' to describe 18 year old Elizabeth Jagger. To be more appropriate the writer should've used the term daughter. Many newspapers use the term 'girl' for women and 'man' for men.

The picture selected to go with this article shows the model Elizabeth Jagger on the catwalk. It creates an image of her as sexy and beautiful. People who read the newspapers would almost 100% of the time see women which are attractive and pretty. This influences the reader to think that all women should be pretty. Therefore in reality women put on more make-up on to make themselves look more attractive for men. To back this statement up, I have recently carried out my own survey:

In this survey I asked 23 people if they thought 'women make more of an effort to look attractive for men, this is shown by advertisements.' Nineteen people replied yes and four people replied no. This backs up my statement before where I said that the readers would expect to look and behave like the models in the article.

This is another advertisement that I selected from Metro newspaper on 20th January 2003. I think this gender stereotypes in a number of ways. It shows a picture of an attractive women who is standing in a 'sexy' position who the advertisers say has lost a lot of weight. Many health related articles like this one is about losing weight which is aimed at women. The advertisers never put a picture of a male trying to lose weight. Is it because society expects women to be thin and men not to care much about their appearance? To help me answer this question, I carried out a survey to see what peoples views are:

I asked 25 average people if they thought 'women make more of an effort to look more attractive for men.' Fifteen people replied yes, seven replied no and three people weren't sure. This graph tells me that society expects women to pose attractive for men. Advertisements reinforce this by taking pictures of women who are slim and good looking to sell products. So in a way women are used as objects to help businesses' finance. The media uses tension and power in advertising more then anything else. This study relates to my hypothesis in the statement where 'the media is a vital part of constantly creating and reinforcing stereotypes. This article is stereotypical in the way that women are expected to be thin and beautiful.

Another issue that I thought would be worth investigating is horoscopes which are in newspapers, magazines...etc. My opinion along with many others is that horoscopes are initially made and aimed for women. Reasons for this are because you find them saying a lot of the times that you will find the right type of guy or boyfriend. I carried out another survey to reassure this:

I asked a 27 average people if they thought that horoscopes were initially for women. 22 people replied yes, 4 replied no and 1 said they weren't sure. This proves my theory on saying that horoscopes were made for woman because there is a large percentage of people of both sexes who think this.

Recently I found two articles from separate newspapers which I thought were very gender discriminating.

Both these articles say that women earn less then men. It can't be because men have a better education because in A levels and GCSE's woman have most of the time beaten the men in their results. So men earn approximately 19% more then women. This means that they have more professional jobs such as management or lawyers. So in interviews women must be rejected because of their sex. This relates to my statement in my hypothesis in which I said that there are fewer females involved in working in the media, such as journalists. For reliability I would say that these articles a very reliable. Because by comparing these two articles, I found that they show the same facts and figures.

I looked at two newspapers recently and analysed them. Here are some graphs to show what I found:

The following graphs were all sources found from the 'METRO' newspaper on January 20th 2002.

This shows clear gender discrimination in newspapers. There are only 11% of articles about females in the metro newspaper.

I found the results to this terribly shocking! There was only 5% of articles on sports about women! I think this may relate back to my hypothesis, where women are seen physically weaker then men, so a stereotype would be that they are not tough enough to play sport.

Again these results were shocking! There were no known female journalists who were appointed to write about sports stories.

I think this shows gender discrimination to women's careers. There was twice as many male journalists appointed to work for the metro newspaper on the 20th January 2003.

There were no health and beauty articles which showed clear gender discrimination on that day. This is one point which is positive, as the rest were negative.

The following graphs are from the source of 'DAILY EXPRESS' on 20th January 2003.

This graph again shows gender discrimination from a separate newspaper. This shows that It is not only one newspaper that writes more articles about men, but possibly all of them.

This shows that there is less media coverage of women and sports which Is very discriminating to the community.

This is very discriminating to men in the society. It shows that women need to be healthy and men don't need to care! Which is obviously not true!

This graphs shows that again there are no women working for the sports section in the newspaper which is very insulting.

Again there are twice as many men working as journalists then women. This shows that it is in many newspaper companies, not just one.

Many of these graphs relate to my hypothesis, such as there are fewer women working in the media like journalists. This gives proof of my statement. Could the whole employment industry be discriminating against women or is it just the journalist employers? My articles about gender payment proved that the whole industry is sexist and discriminatory to women. If I were to have more time I would've investigated the television industry and if there are fewer jobs for women there I would've done this by looking at the list of all the names at the end of a programme/film to see if there are less women in higher classed jobs such as director or editor.

Analysis

The results that I found were very similar to what I had predicted previously. I found that the media does create and reinforce gender stereotypes which reflect on everyone's life. For example if a young someone constantly saw articles and pictures of women who are thin, then when she grows up she'd think that its normal to be thin and maybe even go on a diet to loose weight. This is a very negative thing because it can cause the girl when she grows up to become bulimic or anorexic. Another result that I expected and was accurate was that there were actually less women working as journalists. This is due to one simple factor-gender discrimination against women.

The patterns that I found kept on occurring these were:

* Women were held back from less wages, fewer chances of jobs and sports.

* Women are continuously discriminated against and are used a products to sell in advertisements.

There was one anomaly which I found in the metro newspaper on 20th January 2003. This was that there were no articles about health and fitness which were aimed at women. This was very unexpected and surprising to find. This is unexplainable and I'm sure that I have read articles previously from that certain newspaper which is about health and fitness and is aimed at women.

Conclusion:

I would say the media reinforces gender stereotyping very strongly. And since everyone has experienced the media at sometime, we are all affected by how the media portrays genders. I think that gender discrimination will never go away, but it is not as severe as it once was; sexism is reducing at a slow rate. I think the hypothesis has been partly proved. The hypothesis slightly hasn't been proved by saying there are fewer females involved in the media, as I was only investing newspapers.

To summarise the evidence collected I would say the media constantly creates gender stereotypes, such as women are supposed to be thin and beautiful. It is presented by photographs of women dressing up in a sexy manner. This may affect women on life by viewers of the media to think that all women should look like they do in the photographs, so they try to lose weight. The society then behaves how the media behaves. Women have less chance then men to achieve what they want in life...because of discrimination leading to jobs which equals money which equals privileges. So in the long term women are suffering more.

My research could've been improved by also investigating radio and television discrimination. I could've also looked at male gender stereotypes such as 'men know nothing when it comes to fashion.' If I also looked at male stereotypes and discrimination then I would've got a more balanced investigation.

Limitations

The information I collected was quite reliable as I collected information from newspapers and counted articles about men and women myself. The information chosen by me could've been bias by me only choosing articles in the newspaper which I thought were gender stereotyping, but in another persons view was not gander stereotyping. But if I didn't have something to argue upon, I wouldn't have successfully completed this assignment.

Bibliography

Newspapers:

METRO - 20TH January 2003

DAILY EXPRESS - 20TH January 2003

Websites:

http://swopec.hhs.se/scripts/search

www.theoryhead.com/gender/