Popular Culture Reinforces Gender Stereotyping?
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Do you think that men are from Mars and women from Venus?
Or is the Mars and Venus silliness just mass culture reinforcing itself. Are self-help books, television and movies encouraging a false view of how men and women behave? Especially the moment the expectations of gender conformity are removed?
Does marketing and advertising use these stereotypes to sell products giving mass media producers an incentive to perpetuate nonsensical stereotypes?
Janet Shibley Hyde author of The Gender Similarities Hypothesis says:
Gender differences accounted for either zero or a very small effect for most of the psychological variables examined, according to Hyde. Only motor behaviors (throwing distance), some aspects of sexuality and heightened physical aggression showed marked gender differences.
Furthermore, gender differences seem to depend on the context they were measured in, said Hyde. In studies where gender norms are removed, researchers demonstrated how important gender roles and social context were in determining a person’s actions. In one study where participants in the experimental group were told that they were not identified as male or female nor wore any identification, neither sex conformed to a stereotyped image when given the opportunity to act aggressively. They did the opposite to what was expected.
Over-inflated claims of gender difference seen in the mass media affect men and women in work, parenting and relationships, said Hyde. Studies of gender and evaluation of leaders in the workplace show that women who go against the caring, nurturing stereotype may pay for it dearly when being hired or evaluated. This also happens with the portrayals of relationships in the media. Best-selling books and popular magazine articles assert that women and men can’t get along because they communicate too differently, said Dr. Hyde. Maybe the problem is that they give up prematurely because they believe they can’t change what they mistakenly believe is an innate trait, she added.
Men and Women Found More Similar than Portrayed in Popular Media