Many studies focused on different ways that men and women are portrayed in television shows including their characters, roles, personality and status within the show. For example, Wilson and Douglas (1997) focused specifically on how men and women were represented in comedies and found more recent comedies contained fewer positive depictions of the family and gender roles and showed that families that were more distressed, less desirable, and less like their own. Other studies analyzed Disney princesses as well as Disney channel’s show Hannah Montana. Blue (2013) was able to show how each character in Hannah Montana performs femininity in different ways and the “ramifications for constructions of girlhood in contemporary media foregrounding girls and attracting young female audiences,” (660). England (2011) brought up an interesting point in her study of Disney princesses over time. Although strict stereotypical roles have been loosened over the years and there is more diversity in Disney Princesses, she also found that the role of men has changed very little, stating, “the male characters still exhibit more androgyny and less change over the years,” (England 2011: 555). Melinda and Hahn (2020) took a little bit of a different approach and looked strictly at gender representation on posters of children’s animated movies. Findings in this study revealed that main characters were more likely to be male and they were more often than not depicted as more powerful (Melinda and Hahn 2020). Walter and Zhao (2013) looked at gender representation in television shows but analyzed specifically how interruptive and assertive male versus female characters were. The content analysis revealed that male characters were more likely to interrupt conversations and be disruptive whereas female characters were more likely to be cooperative. Such gender discrepancies only became clearer and more polarized as the characters had higher status. Bain (2003) and Jack (2001) both conducted research regarding gender representation by analyzing demographics and behavior in television and Hollywood over a longitudinal period of time. Jack (2001) was able to conclude that gender representation on prime-time television is unequal, however, females were found to be less underrepresented now than in the past. Whereas Bain (2003) focused more on more on the argument that Hollywood represents an oversimplified image of teen girls participating only peripherally in everyday life. Both studies looked less at characteristics and more on equal or unequal representation and screen time.
Explore Themes:
The Perpetuation of a Heteronormative, Male-Dominated Society
Influential Factors on Children and Pre-teens
