MEDIATING GENDER
Do mainstream mass media affect or reflect society? Or a bit of both? It could be argued that a medium is a medium is a medium and can be used to transport a diversity of content to a wide variety of audiences who may react in very different ways.
Most popular discussions of the effects of that most ubiquitous of mass media, television have focused on programme ‘content’, have tended to accentuate the negative, and to assume that audiences are totally passive & will imitate obediently what they see on the screen. As concerns gender issues television is popularly blamed for commodifying women through using them in advertizing, and for making sexual promiscuity and violence banal. The Economist reports an interesting and slightly more positive development from studies carried out by the Inter-American Development Bank in Brazil of the effects of telenovelas (soap operas) on reproductive behaviour and divorce. Researchers found that the arrival of TV Globo, the leading network, in any previously untouched area was associated with a rise in ‘aspirational behaviour’ indicated by women wanting fewer children and feeling empowered enough to go and have more fun in the big city without their husbands.
Students of media are familiar with the arguments about the ways in which the advent of a new technology can re- arrange social relations and flatten social hierarchies. The invention of the printing press in the middle of the 15th century, and the spread of literacy, took the monopoly of information and learning away from the clergy and academics. Men and boys were the first to benefit from the democracy of information, but eventually, even girls became literate.
And as we saw from Afghanistan and elsewhere, literacy and education for women can be the first casualties of oppressive régimes who do not want to see women in public spaces.
Sometimes social hierarchies are literally flattened by new media. Barely a week passes without a full mainstream media coverage of a scandal in high political and business places by indiscreet use of e-mail, either intentional or naïve, which causes heads to roll. April 2009 has been the e-mail nightmare of British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, whose ‘close advisor’ e-mailed a proposal for a smear campaign against the Leader of the Opposition and other colleagues(bbc.co.uk & elsewhere). A suggestion which would once have passed by word –of- mouth over a quiet lunch or drink has now been flashed around the world, enshrined in print, and endlessly hashed and re-hashed in television ‘chat’ shows.
Media gurus such as Neil Postman and Joshua Meyrowitz have focused on the intrinsic characteristics of the medium and have blamed or credited television with breaking down essential barriers between children & adults as all information is now available to everyone. Unlike books and printed materials television requires no painfully acquired skills, such as literacy, to gain access. Not even physical mobility is required beyond a nimble hand on the remote control. Television in sharing everything with everybody is said to have created an audience of ‘adultified children & childified adults’. Are the Harry Potter books responding to and feeding this trend in another medium, I wonder? As concerns gender equality Joshua Meyrowitz has made a case for the egalitarian influence of television in that now women are exposed to ‘male topics’ in a way that is accessible (unlike print!) and does not require ‘special prior training or knowledge’. In homage to Betty Friedan , author of the Feminine Mystique, he also proposes that television has enhanced feminist consciousness and women’s solidarity by enabling all women previously isolated in their homes with their vacuum cleaners, to learn about male topics, and to see how they themselves were depicted. And perhaps this is borne out by the research from Brazil cited earlier.
Meyrowitz sees such shows as ‘Sex & the City’ as having a major role in re-structuring gender relations as for the first time men are shown the way women talk about them when they are not there. Men are allowed to see ‘behind the scenes’ in a way which he considers innovative and transformational.
Though one could probably construct an equally convincing argument that Sex & the City is about product placement for designers such as Manolo Blahnik , and that ultimately it is still about ‘getting your man’? However there have been breakthroughs in terms of what is now being depicted as a range of possible gender performances.
On film and television we have seen more independent, empowered women and more men caring for babies; all of them, to be sure, exceptionally sexually attractive as well, to ensure that defiance of stereotypes does not get out of hand. We see more lesbian and gay characters for example in soaps and films though very often their sexuality is the central point of their characters. The gay character is often still defined in terms of their ‘problem’ and the way in which the heterosexual characters respond and accept or otherwise. The box-office success (& short story) Brokeback Mountain is a case in point. We are still short on heroes (cowboy, detective, policeman, millionaire, CEO) who are, just by the way and very incidentally, gay.
One of the few television programmes consciously designed to ‘push the envelope’ in terms of defying stereotypes was Richard Curtis’s long running BBC television drama ‘The Vicar of Dibley’ which first appeared in 1994, which was precisely intended to support the acceptance of female clergy by the Church of England and most of the rest of the country. And is indeed reported to have been influential in that regard.
In the performing arts ‘gender benders’ tend to be comedians such as Julian Clary, or Edna Everage whose humour takes the sting out of the unconventionality. A recurring issue is the prevailing gender-based occupational segregation in the mainstream media on horizontal as well as vertical lines. There are still relatively few women in positions of influence and decision-making when it comes to programming; and still a preponderance of women presenting news and weather though we do see them making some breakthroughs in business and sports commentating.
A frequently asked question is why it is still unacceptable for seriously competent and even popular and famous women to grow old gracefully on television and perhaps to a lesser extent on film. Rarely a week passes without a woman newscaster being pushed out by a younger (female) model, or a female actor approaching 40 complaining that the roles are drying up. This seems to be the effect of the Professional Beauty Qualification (PBQ) noted by Naomi Woolf in her book The Beauty Myth and still seems to apply less frequently to men.
Political discussions are often dominated by male panelists, and studies have shown that in news coverage women are overwhelmingly portrayed as victims rather than opinion- givers.
There are however an increasing number of internetworks and newsletters dedicated to redressing the various gender imbalances in the media. The IPS Genderwire aims to address the problem that only 22% of voices in the news are women’s voices. The Women’s Media Center (communication@womensmediacenter) is a non- profit organization dedicated to making women visible and powerful in the media by ensuring that they are represented accurately as ‘powerful newsmakers, informed experts, and sought-after media professionals’. And the Association for Women in Development is an ‘international multi-generational, feminist, creative, future oriented, membership organization dedicated to achieving gender equality’.
Additionally there are many networks dedicated to specific issues such as women in politics (I Know Politics) or gender-based violence or (primarily) women in business just to name a few.
The answer to our first question… do media affect or reflect society is ….a bit of both. Increasingly the audience not only listens but talks back. With the blogging and i-phoning increasing daily the numbers of citizen journalists and photographers world-wide, the mainstream media have – perforce - entered into a more fruitful dialogue with their clients who can now actively contribute to the content and presentation style of programmes. The growth of interactivity between media and audience can only be a good thing & audiences now have responsibility to be literate about media representations of gender issues…as well as everything else!
Further Reading:
The Disappearance of Childhood
by Neil Postman
Vintage Books (1994)
No Sense of Place: the Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior
by Joshua Meyrowitz
Oxford University Press (1985)
Men, Masculinity and the Media
(ed) Steve Craig SAGE publications (1992)
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
by Ted Allen,Thom Felicia,Carson Kressley,Jai Rodriguez, Kyan Douglas
Clarkson Potter/publishers (2004)
The Beauty Myth
by Naomi Wolf
Chatto Windus Ltd (1990)