Ray King 2/8/2013 Gender Inequality

Ray King

2/8/2013

4:05PM

For this week, I have come across an article that looks at how the mass media portrays gender roles and stereotypes, especially in children's movies. The article points out how there is a disjunct between how media portrays gender and how young boys and girls act and interact with the opposite sex. The research was conducted by Colin Stokes who is a director at a nonprofit organization and a father of two children. He was interested in looking at how gender was portrayed by the protagonists in these movies.

"The movies are very, very focused on defeating the villain and getting your reward and there's not a lot of room for other relationships and other journeys," Stokes said of kids' movies.

It was observed that the messages that were supposed to be sent to boys weren't important messages about what being a 'man' is all about. Young girls, however, were given many important lessons on gender roles and how to present themselves confidently and resist patriarchy. Boys were not left with any real role models that gave them in-depth views at how they should behave and interact in today's society.

Given that traditional gender roles are in flux toady, young boys and girls need to be able to see positive portrayals of how they should act out 'gender'. The goal from the article is for boys to see fewer needs to have 'quests' alone and work together with girls to take on the real 'bad guys'. The study includes a Gender and Media Toolkit that is geared toward grade school teachers to help them guide young boys and girls in developing gender identity. In addition, one of the key focuses of this study was also that young males gained more self esteem and worth by increasing the amount of media they consumed portraying male characters. Though interestingly, the article did not go into detail about how the amount of media watched by girls affected their esteem levels.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865572475/Boys-to-men-tools-and-messages-to-look-for-gender-equality-in-media.html