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Gender and Print Media

Module 3_Topic 6_Gender and Print Media

Gender and Print Media

At the completion of this topic, you will be able to:

Cory L. Armstrong, The Influence of Reporter Gender on Source Selection in Newspaper Stories, Journalism and Mass Media Quarterly, 81, 1 (2004): 139-154 Maria E. Len-Rios, Shelley Rodgers, Esther Thorson, and Doyle Yoon, Representation of Women in News and Photos: Comparing Content to Perceptions, Journal of Communication, (March 2005): 152-168

Gender and Print Media

In this lecture we will look at representations of gender in print journalism i.e in newspapers and magazines. We will look specifically at news stories, editorials, and feature articles and their accompanying photographic images. Print Media: Representing Men and Women Print media is a very lucrative business which subscribes, on the whole, to a capitalist ideology which emphasises profit making and supply and demand. Think, for example, of the worlds most powerful media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, who started his media empire by acquiring newspapers and continues to profit from print media, as well as his other business ventures, today. Feminist theorists have drawn links between patriarchy and capitalism. When women were confined to the domestic sphere, their housework and care of the family supported mens work in the public sphere. After the Industrial Revolution in Europe, many men worked for the owners of the means of production or were the owners of the means of production themselves, to use Karl Marx s terminology. Men either profited from the labour of other men, usually in their factories, or became part of the dispensible workforce that enabled fortunes to be made. In industrialised countries, the sexual division of labour was reinforced through images and news stories in magazines and newspapers, particularly from the nineteenth century onwards. The influence of print journalism on womens lives became particularly apparent in the early to mid-twentieth century as magazines, such as Ladies Home Journal, taught women how to be housewives. Not only did the editorial and magazines articles provide tips on how women could better look after their husbands and children, the advertising in the magazines promoted the latest cleaning products, decorator items and beauty products. Beauty Standards Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth (1990), argues that from the 1960s onwards the focus of print journalism shifted from setting standards for good homemaking to setting standards for womens physical appearance. Wolf maintains that the shift in the representation of women in the media parallels the second wave feminist movement of the 1960s which saw more women than ever before entering the paid workforce, thus shedding their primary role as wives and mothers. Wolf argues that the medias emphasis on beauty and beautification rituals and products replaced confinement to the private sphere as capitalist patriarchys way of keeping women oppressed. Now women have to conform to an unrealistic standard of beauty in terms of body shape, facial features and so forth which is not only damaging to womens health but again locks women into an idealised feminine role. It reduces women to their level of attractiveness and sex appeal. In recent times, men have also become part of the beauty myth with the increasing promotion of mens cosmetics, mens clothing lines, and the importance of cultivating a muscular, toned body through hours spent at the gym. Men, too, are under

Gender and Print Media

pressure to conform to societys expectations of them as virile and sexually assertive, enhanced by their attention to body image.

Click on Naomi Wolfs The Beauty Myth, which is now over 20 years old. Do you think her arguments are still relevant today? Not only are the images of men and women as outlined above prominent in print journalism, they are also widespread in other mediums, particularly on-line media. As a result, the way men and women are represented in news stories tends to reflect stereotyped notions of masculinity and femininity. Moreover, women are not given as much exposure in new stories as men. In an analysis of Spanish newspapers, for example, it was found that women were the subjects in just 10% of news stories, women were also used less frequently than men as sources of information, being utilized only 20.4% of the time (Matud, Rodriguez & Espinoza 255). As Richard Keeble asks in his book Ethics for Journalists (2001), can... gender representations by journalists be considered without reference to the powerful stereotypes of male and female sexuality found in advertising, Hollywood films, computer games, millions of websites and TV soaps? (4).

How is gender represented in the different mediums listed by Keeble? Do any of them represent gender in a non-stereotypical way? In addition to gender stereotyping in news stories, it is well-known that photographs are re-touched before they are placed in newspapers and magazines. However, the extent of the re-touching and the effect it has on images of men and women, particularly women, is a matter of concern, especially to feminists. Despite the Society for Professional Journalists Code of Ethics which states that the content of news photos or videos should never be distorted or misleading captions used to frame images, the print media continues to re-touch the images it uses, particularly in mens and womens magazines. For example, imperfections are erased from womens bodies and their natural body shapes are made to look (even) thinner. As Tom Wheeler points out, re-touched images diminish the self-esteem of impressionable readers (including some who realise that many such photos are retouched), reinforce harmful stereotypes and objectify women (181).

Gender and Print Media

Gender Stereotypes in News Stories: Female and Male Politicians An example of gender stereotyping in news stories is the way in which journalists report on male and female politicians. Journalists often use gender stereotypes to evaluate the capacity of certain candidates to handle certain issues: men are usually associated with economics, crime, and defence issues, while women usually are paired with healthcare or education (Fox 18); in other words, male politicians are associated with hard issues, female politicians with soft issues. Moreover, female politicians are often criticised for the clothes they are wearing rather than their policies and emphasis is placed on whether they are fulfilling their roles as wives and mothers in addition to their roles as members of parliament (Jenkins 55). Caroline Fox, in her article Bound: Print Journalisms Framing of Female Candidates in the 2008 Presidential Race According to the Double Bind Theory (2010), suggests that recent research on the representation of male and female political candidates by US journalists shows that female candidates are being treated more like male candidates. She writes: They have achieved some progress when it comes to coverage of female candidates, but still stereotype by the type of story they write or the issues covered (18). For example, Fox analysed print newspaper articles about US Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton when Clinton was running as a presidential candidate in the 2008 US election. According to Foxs research, Clinton was criticised for being too hard, a non-traditional female (25) Further, newspaper articles continuously compared her to Bill Clinton rather than letting her run her own presidential race (25). Conclusion This lecture has addressed the issue of gender representation in print journalism. It has demonstrated that gender stereotypes continue to influence the representation of men and women in news stories. As the example of press coverage of male and female politicians makes clear, women are still expected to fit the stereotypical feminine role despite holding public office. Not only are women still used as the sources for soft stories, this has also been true in journalistic practice itself. In interviews conducted by students at the University of Iowa with female journalists, one of the interviewees said: "In many parts of the world and not Africa only, gender biases are typical. In old form print journalism, some male journalists used to laugh at women feature writers...they said women wrote the soft stories and they, the men, reported hard news." Philo Ikonya, Freelance Journalist in Kenya. (qtd by Ordonez)

Gender and Print Media

Cory L. Armstrong and Michelle R. Nelson, How Newspaper Sources trigger Gender Stereotypes, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 82, 4 (Winter 2005): 820-837 Julia Baird, Media Tarts: how the Australian press frames female politicians, Melbourne: Scribe, 2004 Ros Coward, Chapter 10: The Monarchy in Bob Franklin (ed) Pulling Newspapers Apart: Analysing Print Journalism, London and New York: Routledge, 2008 Caroline Fox, Bound: Print Journalisms Framing of Female Candidates in the 2008 Presidential Race According to the Double Bind Theory, The Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications, 1, 2 (Fall 2010): 17-43 Cathy Jenkins, Women in Australian Politics: Mothers only need apply, Pacific Journalism Review, 12, 1 (2006): 54-63 Richard Keeble, Ethics for Journalists, 2nd Edition, Abingdon: Routledge, 2001 M. Pilar Matud, Carmen Rodriguez and Immaculada Espinoza, Gender in Spanish Daily Newspapers, Sex Roles, 64 (2011): 253-264 Sandra Ordonez, Global Voices detail a history of gender bias in journalism , OJR: The On-line Journalism Review, June 29 2010 http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/ordonez/201006/1863/ Eamonn McCabe, Chapter 16: Photography in Newspapers in Bob Franklin (ed) Pulling Newspapers Apart: Analysing Print Journalism, London and New York: Routledge, 2008 Tom Wheeler, Phototruth or Photofiction?: Ethics and Media Imagery in the Digital Age, Mahwah, NJ: LEA, 2002. Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: how images of beauty are used against women, London: Vintage, 1991.