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Why is Gender Stereotype in the Media a Civil Rights Issue?
Although many people might agree that gender bias in the media isn't right, it's not really illegal, and therefore not really related to the abridgment of civil rights. That may be true, to some degree. However take the ideas constantly reinforced by the media, and you have a problem. People begin to take what the media feeds them as true, and as the norm, when these things are in reality far from the norm. If one spends all their time absorbing media images, be they from music, advertising, television, and movies, can lead to people accepting those biased images as reality.
And where does that lead exactly? That can lead to domestic violence. Men, accepting they way they are portrayed in media everywhere as a violent, unemotional money-making machine person, will find ways to bring abusive relationships with them. Women who are portrayed as weak and passive, might begin to accept that and not stand up to the way they are treated in other places and keep their docile role in society. The reinforcement of negative gender roles keeps a cycle of aggressive male and passive female roles in motion that have been in motion for a long time. Because of the way that the gender bias in the media works it is causing people to return to what we had attempted to do away with during the Feminist Movement in the '60's. Women are treated unequally by men who are confused by the sudden shift in gender roles, with some women now making more money than they do and holding executive positions in companies.
But the media influence doesn't just limit itself to troubled relationships and uneven thoughts. Women still make only 77 cents to the dollar that a man does. The media portrayal of women keeps them down beneath the glass ceiling where their cries for justice are muffled by inches of decadent stereotypes.
So for the way a body wash ad for men or a new diet ad in a magazine for women tries to show us how we should be successful and dominant, or docile and passive, although many see it as nothing, it is in fact, another string in a long line of negative reinforcement.
Why is Gender Stereotype in the Media a Civil Rights Issue?
Although many people might agree that gender bias in the media isn't right, it's not really illegal, and therefore not really related to the abridgment of civil rights. That may be true, to some degree. However take the ideas constantly reinforced by the media, and you have a problem. People begin to take what the media feeds them as true, and as the norm, when these things are in reality far from the norm. If one spends all their time absorbing media images, be they from music, advertising, television, and movies, can lead to people accepting those biased images as reality.
And where does that lead exactly? That can lead to domestic violence. Men, accepting they way they are portrayed in media everywhere as a violent, unemotional money-making machine person, will find ways to bring abusive relationships with them. Women who are portrayed as weak and passive, might begin to accept that and not stand up to the way they are treated in other places and keep their docile role in society. The reinforcement of negative gender roles keeps a cycle of aggressive male and passive female roles in motion that have been in motion for a long time. Because of the way that the gender bias in the media works it is causing people to return to what we had attempted to do away with during the Feminist Movement in the '60's. Women are treated unequally by men who are confused by the sudden shift in gender roles, with some women now making more money than they do and holding executive positions in companies.
But the media influence doesn't just limit itself to troubled relationships and uneven thoughts. Women still make only 77 cents to the dollar that a man does. The media portrayal of women keeps them down beneath the glass ceiling where their cries for justice are muffled by inches of decadent stereotypes.
So for the way a body wash ad for men or a new diet ad in a magazine for women tries to show us how we should be successful and dominant, or docile and passive, although many see it as nothing, it is in fact, another string in a long line of negative reinforcement.