The role of women on television
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The role of women on television has changed over the history of the medium, reflecting changes in the society over the same period. Social roles for women have changed since World War II. Media portrayals of women have been criticized for some time, and television in particular is seen as distorting many facets of American life in pursuit of commercial interests. Movies are accused of ignoring women more and more in our mass culture, and advertising in magazines and newspapers is seen as presenting a distorted view of women in particular, using them as sex objects to sell products. Television is perhaps our most immediate mass medium, entering our homes 24 hours a day, and the image of women on television has a particular power. By the 1970s, women's roles were changing form the more traditional to a somewhat different emphasis on self-empowerment and personal freedom, though certainly not to the degree that we have seen since that time. The beginning of this change was reflected in dramas, comedies, and news programs from that decade. Television does not sell gender roles the way it sells viewers to advertisers or soap to viewers. Gender is inherent in the way men and women are portrayed on television, and these roles have changed over the course of television history. In a broad sense, they have changed to reflect shifts in gender roles in society at large, but at the same time, it is believed that television's portrayals have helped to shape those roles and cont
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study that the number of women in starring roles remained relatively constant over the 25-year period studied. The number of women shown as housewives or housekeepers had declined over this period, but the makeup of the television labor force consistently demonstrated no relationship to the real-life employment patterns of women. This was in agreement with the findings of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, which also concluded that females were under represented on network dramatic shows and that when they were seen it was frequently in token or stereotyped roles (Dominick 405).
This has clearly had an effect on how women are viewed in society at large. One study found a number of sources of gender stereotypes for children on television. Content analysis shows that there are far fewer females than males in the world of television, with males filling between 66 and 75 percent of all roles to this day. In terms of formal occupational roles, males are generally employed and enjoy highly prestigious positions such as doctors, lawyers, and law enforcement officials, while women are assigned marital, romantic, and family roles, and while this is changing in programming today, it was certainly still the case in 1970. T
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Approximate Word count = 2677
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)
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