Influence of culture and media on gender roles Flashcards
culture and gender roles
cross cultural research is important to the nature/nurture debate. if a gender role can be seen across cultures we may conclude that it is a biological difference
Mead - new guinea tribes
arappesh - gentle and responsive
mundugumar - agressive and hostile
tchambuli- women were dominant men were decrative
this suggests sex and gender are not linked biologically and that gender is determined culturally
media and gender lines
media provide role models that children might want to imitate
Rigid stereotypes
the media do not provide very clear gender steryotypes - they are quite rigid
men are men are independent and women are depicted as dependent
Furnham and farringer - steryotypes
found that men were more likely to be shown in autonomous roles with a professional setting whereas women occupy family roles in domestic settings
This suggests media plays a role in reinforcing stereotypes
information giving
children who have more exposure to popular forms of media tend to display more gender typical behaviour and attitudes
evaluation - criticism of mead
mead has been criticised for observer bias and make generalisations based on a relatively short period of study
evaluation - freeman - criticism of meas
critical of mead and conducted a followup study decades after meads original study
he argued that her findings were flawed as she had been misled by some of the rps and her own preconceptions impacted the findings
evaluation - imposed etic
cross-cultural research is carried out by western researchers therefore there is an argument these researchers impose their own cultures on people
nature / nurture
Although cross cultural research does provide insight it does not solve the nature/nurture debate
it is impossible to separate the 2 when considering gender roles
correlation not causation
it is difficult to develop cause and effect relationships
it may be that the media output reflects these social norms or that the media is the cause of such norms
counter stereotypes
there have recently been examples of counter steryotypes in the media which challenge typical ideas of femininity and masculinity
PINGEE
pingee found that gender stereotyping was reduced when children were shown TV adverts of women in non-stereotypical roles
evidence to support (notel unitel multitel ) williams
1960’s canadian town to first have TV.
Research carried out to establish attitudes before TV
compared to other towns unitel and multitel
after 2 years surveyed again
begining - children in notel and unitel displayed fewer sex type stereotypes and gender typical behaviour
end - both measures had increased for notel
