Ryan Muldoon 13D

25th September 2013

Analyse the ways in which the media represent the group youve studied - Women in the workplace

The group of people I have been researching are Women in the Workplace and I have been looking at various articles from different online news sources in order to get an idea of how this group of people are represented in the media. Different newspapers and websites promote articles about the same group of people however; they have very different views depending on the organisation. One of the articles I looked at was involving the editor of Vogue and her approach to women working after having children. Alexandra Shulman was quite opinionated and wanted to get her views across. She believes that by having time out to have children, it does affect the way you work and that it is difficult to get around. In this case, the woman challenges our general stereotype of women not generally being in charge of big companies however what she is speaking about is the general stereotype people have of women after having children and going back to work. She also says within the article that women dont fight their corner enough which you could argue conforms to the stereotype people have of women that they feel like they are overpowered by men and cannot put their opinion across as a whole. This links to the Sheldon Stryker theory that speaks about identity negotiation where consistent behaviour leads to the identity of a person or group being reinforced. What she is saying here is that women dont fight their corner enough and when you have several people doing this from the same group, it passes on the same message to outsiders and this is where the general stereotypes are developed from. There is also a link to the Francesca Poletta theory where certain members of the group accept these identities and then enforce it on others. Alexandra Shulman accepts this even though she belongs to that same group of women but is still constructing this identity which only enforces the stereotype for outsiders of the group. Another article that I have been looking at which focuses on the same group of people, talks about how the economy could grow if more women were at work. A quote taken from the article posted on the BBC states that increasing the number of women in the work force would dramatically boost the UKs economic growth, according to a government backed report. This in general conforms to the stereotype that men have on women that they dont work as much as men and this will only enforce the stereotype people have of this group of people. The statistical proof is that if women were represented in the same number as men in the workforce, GDP growth would be up to 10% higher by 2030 which gives statistical evidence and a reason for people to hold this stereotype that women tend to stay at home with men generally being the breadwinners of the household. However, contrary to this, there is another extract within this article that says 2.4m more women want to work, while 1.3m want to boost their hours. This contradicts our opinions of women in the workplace previous to

Ryan Muldoon 13D

25th September 2013

reading this because it is saying that there are women out there who want to get out into the workplace but may not be able to because of circumstances at home, like children for instance. An identity theory that could be linked to this article is the David Snow theory which relates to the fact that there is no single definition of collective identity. In this article, it talks about one single group in the fac t that it is women being discussed however, there is statistical evidence that challenges this stereotype and this is what links it back to the David Snow theory in the sense that these women who do want to work still belong to a whole collective and are still represented as a whole in that same light. Another article, taken from The Telegraph talks about women feel like they need to act like men in order to get ahead in work. A quote inside this article states that women are conforming to outdated stereotypes and acting like an alpha male which sums up the article and shows what people generally tend to feel about women at the workplace. The picture shown in this article is of Margaret Thatcher, an inspirational figure and a woman who other women may look up to as she was the first woman in her field to take on the job that she did which may be behind the reason why women feel the need to act more masculine in order to succeed in their job role which enforces the stereotypes some people hold on women. A quote within the article states that one in four women dress in a more masculine way which is a quite broad statistic however it is these sorts of things that are shown in the media that only enforce the stereotypes that people associate with certain groups of people but in reality, it is only a small group that actually conform this stereotype. The theory that relates to this most directly is the Tafjal & Turner social identity theory which basically suggests that relies on the individuals concept on how they should behave around certain gr oups so in relation to the article, you could say that women act differently as they would in normal circumstances and feel they need to do so in order to be successful. The Francesca Poletta theory could also be linked here because according to the article, it is women making a judgement on how they should behave based on the stereotypes they hold on men and the women could be classed as the outsiders who enforce the stereotype. In conclusion, the articles I have been looking at from these different online news sources show how they approach these sorts of topics. The BBC, who are a government run organisation like to speak about real facts and like to provide their audience with a two sided point which shows that they feel stereotypes should not be the key factor in their stories and contrary to this, The Telegraph use quite generic stats that may not have any actual evidence behind it and shows that they may enforce certain stereotypes and influence the way we think so I believe that the media plays a key part in enforcing certain beliefs that people have about groups.