Women in the media

Women have been allocated a range of roles in recent years from being simply housewives and sexual objects to now being headstrong business women. Despite the alteration in roles women are far less visible in the media than men with only eighteen women actual being in the Media Guardian 100. Women have been presented as ideals that appeal to men. Usually men are seen as aggressors whereas women are depicted as victims.

Men play a range of social and occupational roles whereas women are usually housewives, content mothers, eager consumers etc. Tuchman et al (1978) adds that they also play sexual and romantic roles. However, there have been recently stronger female roles within the media i.e. Buffy the vampire slayer, sex and the city and soap operas’. All these women have attributes associated with male characteristics.

In the 1990’s 89% of television voiceovers for television advertisements were males- probably because males represented ‘authority’. However, it clearly shows that patriarchy is covertly still existent as women are simply ignores.

Shockingly, during the 1990’s only 14% of women were main stars of mid- evening programmes on TV. Women may have been considered unsuitable for leading roles as women should not be shown as strong or as the main target audience were women so they might have wanted to watch strong hunky men rather than a beautiful woman.

Haralambos and Holborn (2004) point out, earlier forms of gender representations do not go away. Old programmes are always going to be recycled on cable and satellite TV.

Tuchman implied that women are being marginalised. Newspapers have ‘women’s pages’- they concentrate on beauty and slimming. He uses the term ‘symbolic annihilation’ to refer to women in the media being absent, condemned or trivialised.