Media And Its Impact On Society

Throughout today’s society, media contributes to almost everyone’s daily life. From informative news channels to comical television shows, media proves to be effective in advertisement, releasing messages and informing the audience. Although media proves to be wildly effective in advertising, releasing messages and informing the audience, periodically destructive and misleading messages are provided to the audience and directly influencing women. Cultural critics widely agree that media tends to negatively influence women and all the critics point to research which supports the belief that women are portrayed as subordinate to men, having no

such as CEOs yet are still not represented in the media. Also, the way women are portrayed in

According to Newman, sexism refers to “a system of beliefs that asserts the inferiority of one sex and that justifies discrimination based on gender.” This sexism has a large impact on the daily life of a women through things like social interactions, power differentials, and violence against women. Institutional sexism refers to the “subordination of “women that is part of the everyday workings of economics, law, politics, and other social institutions.” The media is one institution that communicates gender norms both directly and indirectly. Understanding gender role expectations and how they are reinforced through social institutions like the media is necessary in order to explain things such as the wage gap, segregation in the workplace, and how women are devalued on a global scale.

Media enforces the social-cultural standards, which women are required to follow in order to look and behave in a manner that society considers acceptable. Newspapers, commercials, posters, magazines, fliers, reality shows, and cartoons only name a few of our everyday interaction with the media (Scholar, C.2011). However, these standards presented by media send a false perception of women, thus portraying women in a negative and disrespectful manner. Society views woman as mentally, morally, and physically inferior to men, and media is only highlighting this idea (Scholar, C.2011). In fact, media represents women in a stereotypical form of beauty, they display women as sexual objects, and create the illusion that women are ignorant.

Another social institution that reinforces gender inequality is the media. The media is a significant factor in

Newsom clearly explains how the media portrays gender bias and stereotypes in TV, films, and advertisements through the use of interviews from influential people. Since many influential people are interviewed

Although in 2012, only 18 women served as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Furthermore, in a recent report, women only held 16.6% of board seats in 2012 in the fortune 500 companies (Aguilar). Women are somehow being held back from achieving their higher potential, and is is not due to lack of education. The department of education found that “140 women will graduate with a college degree at some level this year for every 100 men”(Aguilar). Most people believe the reason is because of the phenomenon of the “glass ceiling”. Many large companies do not hire women for the upper level positions, because they have always hired men, and many companies may believe that they do not see women in that position. This is also influenced by the media as well, as “women hold only 3% of clout positions in telecommunications, entertainment, publishing and advertising.”(Newsom 2011). With so few women leaders in the media industry, women are rarely portrayed in highly respected executives roles. This in turn communicates to young girls and the public in general that women are not supposed to hold these

She accomplishes this through the use of facts, and emotional connotations of various credible interviewers to relay the message that women can do something to achieve leadership in America, as well as change today’s statistics when it comes to positions of power. Since the year 1979, women have not made gains in Congress (Newsom). In today’s world, the media is the message as well as the messenger and it’s not too late for women to do something about it. Even though boys are growing up with the phenomenon that it is a necessity to be misogynist stereotypes, Newsom, effectively convinces her audience that these kids are conforming to hyper-masculinity, and leading women to be controlled and looked down upon by men. She presents such a powerful message by successfully demonstrating how media perceive women without supremacy through the use of pathos, ethos, and

“People learn more from media than any other single source of information” (Missrepresentation). This quote exemplifies how society learns and creates their standards about people, places, and things. All sources and mediums of media impact billions of lives every day. The media holds this power over society and it’s time to change that; especially when it comes to the media’s view of women. Women are constantly being misrepresented. This misrepresentation of women in the media is negatively impacting America by corrupting both the youth and adults. This is occurring because of the hyper-sexualization of women, wrongly portraying women in leadership positions, and creating stereotypes of women in movies and television.

Our world is surrounded by media. Media plays an enormous role in affecting the way we perceive gender and gender roles. Media as well as communications are known to be the key elements of how people live their life in the modern age. The media can be a very inviting place, since it has so many things inside of it that appeals to people worldwide. At the same time, the media can be a cruel, judging and corrupt area that can be scary to involve yourself with. That being said, the mass media has had its history with harsh stereotyping, particularly when dealing with women. Many people within the media view women as a gender that is only allowed to be at home, whether it is cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, or being a slave to their male counterpart. Even with women who work inside of the media are usually overlooked, bashed by their appearance and do not get an equal opportunity as men do in order to succeed in life. This has been the case for hundreds of years, but there are still a myriad of problems that women face today, whether in the media or life in general.

The hierarchy of gender is an issue that the entire world has faced for many years. In the United States, there is a large problem with women being represented in politics. This can be traced back to how children are placed into different hierarchies of males being masculine and females being feminine through their clothes, toys, and more. However, the issue is also caused by the media’s portray of female politicians in comparison to male politicians. The media’s reporting of the 2016 presidential candidates have impacted the way the candidates speak on each other, and the general publics opinion on different candidates.

I often wonder about our humanity given the current state of affairs in our nation and abroad. America has been a powerful and abundant nation through a lifetime of wars and financial crisis but today is a different time for many of us. What is the media producer’s role in our very own implosion? What is our, the “media user” role in it?

Studies regarding gender roles in media show that the feminine essence tends to be depicted as inferior, with women often being marginalized, disempowered and humiliated through a status that is based on their youth and looks; whilst men tend to be portrayed as superior with higher and longer lasting careers

Media plays a significant role in everybody’s life in modern day society, it consumes vast amounts of our time, entertains us, and even shapes our identity. Being such a powerful tool it could do a vast amount of good to help our world, but on the other hand it could cause extreme damage if mismanaged. What makes media so influential is that it captivates so much of our time making it possible to alter our views without us even knowing. Americans average an astounding 700 minutes per day viewing different forms of media from watching television to scrolling on social media. Women have been unfairly portrayed from the media by being focused on their body rather than their intelligence and character as a human being. From movies to news reports women seem to be given roles or discussed, because of their body image seemingly only to provide entertainment for young men, which just happens to be the primary audience most networks try to reach. By only giving roles to “beautiful women” that all look very similar we take away opportunities from others and create an unobtainable body standard that can be psychologically damaging to women and men. In the future if we promote media literacy and start creating more realistic media outlets that create equality for women it could make our world a much better place.

How women are perceived by others, and how women perceive themselves, impacts their leadership roles in the work place. Stereotypes and gender biases are themes women have been dealing with for centuries. How women are perceived by social medial and television have been influencing how they are treated by men, and how they view themselves when it comes to taking a leadership role in their organization. According to Omega Institute (2012), “The rapidly shifting landscape of new media and technology, including reality television and celebrity culture, continue to reinforce gender stereotypes” (p. 1). This leads to men still growing up viewing women as home makers versus bread winner. With more women entering leadership roles in the work place they lack the respect from men due to how these men have grown up to know the typical role of a man and woman. Men tend to feel belittled due to the gender stereotypes seen on television, and this leads to women struggling to succeed as a leader with the lack of support from their male counterparts. Lack of confidence with women in the workplace is also influenced and effected by how women are perceived in social media and television. According to Steele (2005), “Exposure to stereotypic commercials persuade women to avoid leadership roles” (p. 276). As young women grow up seeing the typical gender stereotypes they lack ambitions to break the mold and