Chapter 7 - Gender, Language, and

Media
Learning Objectives

At the end of this chapter, you will be able to do the following:

1. Define linguistic sexism.

2. Describe examples of linguistic sexism.
3. Examine some effects of gender-stereotyping in media.

Gender Socialization
In previous chapters, we have explored the differences between sex and gender as well as the
importance of socialization in our prescribed gender roles. In this chapter, we will be exploring how
language and the media often reinforce or exacerbate the gap in the United States. For example, one
could ask, “What aregender differences?” But consider for a moment the question, “What differences
does gender make?” While the questions might seem very similar to one another, the first question is
evoking a description of the concept of gender, while the second question is evoking an exploratory
descriptive of inequality resulting from gender construction.

What the English Language is Made Of

Many people run into trouble when trying to choose “appropriate” words in their everyday discourses.
For example, imagine you are getting pulled over for speeding. The policeman walks up to the side of
your vehicle to request your license and registration. The policeman is female. Now her status has
changed from policeman to police officer. While police officer is more inclusive to both sexes, policeman
remains the standard in our culture, and we have yet to culturally adopt the term policewoman. Either
way, you are getting a ticket for speeding, but how will your interpretation of the citation change have
based on the sex of the officer? How will you describe the officer in your recounts to your friends or
family?

Now you are getting ready for a meeting, and the chairman of the board walks in. Until you see she is a
female--and now the chairperson has arrived. The English language is full of linguistic sexism, language
that intentionally (or unintentionally) excludes or privileges one sex over the other. Often, linguistic
sexism is excluding or trivializing women and what they do, while maintaining the sex status quo from
which men are currently benefitting. Creating inclusive language for underrepresented bodies--
specifically, the feminine and other “unmarked” gender categories--creates a reality more inclusive of
all sexes and genders.68 Anne Pauwels, Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of London,
identifies one of the major motivations for language change as “a desire to amend the present

68 Frank, Francine Wattman and Paula A. Treichler. 1989. Language, Gender, and Professional Writing: Theoretical

Approaches and Guidelines for Nonsexist Language Usage. New York: The Modern Language Association of America
language system to achieve a symmetrical and equitable representation of women and men.”69 Using
inclusive language can shape our social realities and dialect. While this is not an exhaustive list, here are
a few examples of using more inclusive language:
Table 1. Pronouns. Source: University of Wisconsin [Link]

Example of Explanation Alternatives

Sexist/Gendered
Usage
The generic ‘he’ Every student must have Defines student as Every student must have
a pencil, and he should exclusively male. a pencil and they should
always bringit to class. always bringit to class.

Man as a verb I have four students to Implies that persons I have four students to
man the internship table. referred to are attend the internship
exclusively male. table.
Man used to mean Is man inherently Humans is Is humankind
humankind capitalistic? interpreted then as inherentlycapitalistic?
male-centric,
linguistically placing non- Other alternatives:
males on the outside of human race, human
the species. beings.
Gendered words in Chairman Assumes male Chair or Chairperson
titles and work Freshman dominance in these First Year
positions Fireman fields. Firefighter
Policeman Police officer
Postman Postal worker
Stereotyping Using gender/sex This assumes that a Refrain from using
qualifiers for certain sex/gender isfit for only gender markers and
occupations, such as: a particular set of jobs. refer to a female doctor
lady doctor or male simply as a doctor or a
nurse. male nurse simply as a
nurse.
To avoid stereotyping
occupations, vary
pronoun usage or use
the singular they.
Referring to a married Mrs. John Smith Defines a woman in Jane Smith or with the
woman through her terms of a man. appropriate honorific
husband’s name. (such as doctor or
captain).
Honorifics Mrs. Smith vs. Miss Defines a woman in Ms. Smith
Smith terms of marital status. Or for professors of any
gender the honorific
should be professor or
doctor.
Suffixes waiter/waitress Applies gender Server
aviator/aviatrix irrelevantly. Pilot
bachelor/bachelorette Single person

69 Pauwels,Anne. 2003. The Handbook of Language and Gender. Holmes, Janet; Meyerhoff, Miriam, eds. Maiden, MA:
Blackwell Publishing.
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
There has been extensive research on what is known for linguists as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
Linguists and other social scientists, use this hypothesis to analyze the complex relations between
language and culture. In short, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis explains that language shapes or influences the
culture in which it is spoken.70 In other words, the languages we speak shape our social and cultural
realities. So, if we are speaking English, English (and all the linguistic sexism found in it) would shape our
cultural realities. Going by this hypothesis, one might argue labeling people as “female” or “male”
shapes the idea of who the default individual would be. In that sense English can indeed be perceived as
sexist, as it conveys intuitive notions that might shape the speaker’s and listener’s point of view. Take,
for instance, the examples below:

(S)HE
(WO)MAN
(FE)MALE
(HU)MAN
In addition to language creating “defaults” in our standards for normalcy (and thereby creating
deviations from those standards) we also create (or recreate) degradations of the female noun. For
example, hound keeping its canine meaning, but bitch gaining another meaning entirely. Mistress and
master used to be equal in meaning; now master evokes power, excellence, and ownership, whereas
mistress is someone with whom you can cheat on your spouse. Incidentally, you cannot use master in
the same way. Consider this old riddle that goes something like this: A father and son go out for a
camping trip. On the way home from the camping trip the father and son get into a terrible car accident
where the father is killed immediately upon impact. The son promptly gets rushed to the emergency
room where the doctor inside prepares to save the boy’s life. Until the doctor walks over to the
critically injured boy and says, ‘I can’t operate on this boy. He’s, my son.’ This is the end of the riddle.
Thequestion then becomes; who is the doctor? If you are like many people, you will be puzzled at first
thinking,“Uh, but you said the father died. How could he be in the emergency room if he is dead?” To
which, of course, he cannot be (though, I have heard variations on the ghost dad / zombie dad theme
numerous times!). That leaves only one option: the boy’s mother is the doctor. “Ahhhhhh, duh!” Yes,
duh. But why was this obvious answer not immediately apparent? The answer has to do with the theme
of this section: language has ways of seeing and understanding the world built into it that both reflect
and
reconstruct our social structures through our use of them. Since the word ‘doctor’ connotes a position
of power, it is often understood to be held by a man. Though we now know full well women can and are
doctors, the cultural and linguistic vestige from the past, the legacy of the power in Western culture,
predisposes us to thinking the doctor must be a man, blinding us from the obvious fact that most people
have two parents (and often a mother and a father)!

70 Deutscher, G. (2011). Through the language glass. Why the world looks different in other languages, Arrow Books,
London
So, who do we blame? English, right? Grab the pitchforks! Not quite. We cannot blame language;
linguistic sexism is abstract and draws on human experiences to give it shape and meaning. And yet
there is something in our heads that associates feminine with ‘pretty’ and masculine with ‘strong’. While
language is not to blame, language does reflect and reinforce the culture of its users. Us!

Is language sexist? Only as much as the user is. Is sexism linguistic? Not only linguistic, but yes,
the evidence in grammar is enough to draw conclusions pointing to sexism. How can we fight
linguistic sexism and sexist language? Language reflects us and does not exist withoutus, and
our realities are shaped by language. So, it is almost like looking in a mirror and
becoming frustrated when the image will not change without us changing it. We would have
to reconstruct sexism in thought before we could eliminate sexism in speech. Then,
eliminating itin speech would reinforce eliminating it in thought. (However, going back to the
examples provide earlier on using inclusive language can help the process of reconstruction
our thoughtson sexism and gender standards.)

Media
We often speak of ‘the media’ as some amorphous social institution that is foisted upon us. In some
ways this is true of all institutions and the mass media are no exception. But in other ways, this view
glosses over the real people and social processes that create one of the biggest shapers of our
worldview and outlook on life. Therefore, it is important to note who specifically makes the media
content we all consumer. It may not be surprising at this point, but especially behind the scenes, most of
the cultural gatekeepers; producers, directors and screenwriters are men. This creates a distortion of
reality when it comes to whose stories are being told and becoming a part of the culture. For example,
“a study, by sociologist Stacy L. Smith, analyzed 11,927 speaking roles on prime-time television
programs aired in spring 2012, children's TV shows aired in 2011 and family films (rated G, PG,or PG-13)
released between 2006 and 2011. Smith's team looked at female characters' occupations, attire, body
size and whether they spoke or not.”71 Their analysis showed, regarding women employed in key
behind the scenes roles for movies, only 18% of these positions were held by women from 1998 –2012.
The study also revealed similar results in primetime television. Although progress has been made, it has
been slow. Children’s television programming follows a similar pattern as well with males about twice as
likely as female characters. And when there are female characters, they are more likely to be shown in
sexy attire (in children’s programming!)72. Another study of G-rated films from 1990-2005 showed that
only 28 percent of the speaking characters (both live and animated) were female and more than four out
of five of the narrators were male. Finally, eighty-five percent of the characters were white73. What
kinds of stories are being told? And what message might children take away from these stories
presenting a ‘normal’ view of the world so heavily skewed?

Much of a child’s socialization is indirect, coming to them through observation, observation in their real-
world experiences and observation of the media. Television, film, video games, social media, and other
forms are involved in selecting, constructing, and representing “reality.” In doing so, the media tend to

71 [Link]
72 [Link]/issues/media/women_in_media_facts.html
73 [Link]/issues/media/women_in_media_facts.html
emphasize and reinforce the values and images of those who create the messages and own the means
of distribution. Thus, media play a large role in creating social norms, because various forms of media
are present almost everywhere in current culture. In addition, the owners of distribution also consider
commercial (selling) considerations. As a result, the viewpoints and experiences of other people are
often left out or shown in negative ways. In Gendered Media: The Influence of Media on Views of
Gender, Julia Woods explains:

“Three themes describe how media represent gender. First, women are
underrepresented, which falsely implies that men are the cultural standard and women
are unimportant or invisible. Second, men and women are portrayed in stereotypical
ways that reflect and sustain socially endorsed views of gender. Third, depictions of
relationships between men and women emphasize traditional roles and normalize
violence against women.”

The underrepresentation of women has a two-pronged effect: 1) We are tempted to believe there really
are more men than women, and 2) Men are the cultural standard. In general, media continue to present
both women and men in stereotyped ways that limit our perceptions of human capabilities. Typically,
men are portrayed as active, adventurous, powerful, sexually aggressive, and largely devoid of emotion.
Women are often portrayed as sex objects who are usually young, thin, passive, dependent, and often
incompetent or dumb. Female characters devote their primary energies to improving their appearances
and taking care of homes and people and “landing” the perfect guy. And as far as stereotyping
relationships for males and females in media, homosexuality is barely recognized, and representations of
bisexuality and asexuality are practically non-existent. Sex is a driving force behind advertising, because
after all, sex sells…everything. But not just sex, heterocentric representations of sex. Women are often
seen as dependent in sexual relationships while men are depicted as being independent and emotionally
empty. And men are still portrayed (overwhelmingly) as breadwinners while women are typically
awarded the roles of caregivers. Lastly, within the relationship sphere, women are typically represented
as objects for men’s pleasure while men are still depicted most often as sexual aggressors. According to
the feminist film critic Laura Mulvey (1975), this phenomenon is known as the male gaze. The male gaze
is the idea that, within popular culture generally, women are portrayed as objects for men’s pleasure.
Most media consumed in the United States depicts women from men’s point of view. An interesting
case study in the male gaze happened in 2015 when Caitlyn Jenner first appeared on the cover of
Vanity Fair magazine as a transgender woman she was immediately praised for her good looks.
However, when she was known still known as Bruce Jenner she was praised for her athletic
accomplishments and competition in the Olympics.

To create a medium which is universal, understandable, and acceptable for diverse recipients, senders
very often use stereotypes, which fill the social life and evoke certain associations. For example,when
you think of family, what do you see? When you think of a criminal or a victim, what do you see? When
you think of a CEO or an assistant, what do you see? Maybe race, age, religion, or class came to mind,
but almost certainly sex and gender played roles in all the images. What sex and gender roles did you
see when prompted to imagine a family? When I asked you to imagine a criminal and a victim, what
sexes and genders were they? Almost always (and of course there are exceptions) people will imagine a
nuclear heterosexual family structure with traditional gender roles. When prompted to imagine a
criminal, people almost always imagine a male, and often people will see a victim as female. And when
asked to imagine a CEO and an assistant, people will often imagine a male and female. But
where did these images come from? Or at the very least, are they still being reinforced in popular
imagery?

Another mechanism by which popular culture defines reality has come to be known as the Smurfette
principle. Coined by Katha Pollitt’s 1991 New York Times article,

"Contemporary shows are either essentially all-male, like "Garfield," or are organized on
what I call the Smurfette principle: a group of male buddies will be accented by a lone
female, stereotypically defined... The message is clear. Boys are the norm, girls the
variation; boys are central, girls peripheral; boys are individuals, girl types. Boys define
the group, its story, and its code of values. Girls exist only in relation to boys."

We see this phenomenon in classics like Miss Piggy in the Muppets, Penny in the first three seasons of
The Big Bang Theory, Princess Leia in Star Wars, April in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Elaine Benes in
Seinfeld, Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy, and Black Widow in The Avengers. The messages portrayed
by this trope contribute to the symbolic disempowerment by defining girls’ and women’s stories as
unworthy of being told. The Hunger Games’ producer Nina Jacobson has spoken about the difficulty in
convincing Hollywood studio executives that a female fronted film would be financially viable by
appealing to more than just girls at the box office.74

However, mass media not only provides people information and entertainment, but it also affects
people’s lives by shaping their opinions, attitudes, values, beliefs, norms, and realities. So, how might
media affect our interpretations of gender roles. In various forms of media, women and girls are more
likely to be shown in the home, performing domestic chores such as laundry or cooking; as sex objects
who exist primarily to service men; as victims who cannot protect themselves; and as the “natural”
recipients of beatings, harassment, sexual assault, or murder.

Men and boys are not exempt from being stereotyped in the media. From Don Draper to Jason Born to
the Terminator, masculinity is often associated with economic success, competition, independence,
emotional detachment, aggression, and violence. Even though men have considerably more economic
and political power in society than women, these trends are very damaging to boys. Think fora moment
how most disagreements between men are dealt with in popular culture: a fight, a car race, something
to demonstrate whom the “better man” is through physical assertion.

Research tells us that the more television children watch, the more likely they are to hold sexist notions
about traditional male and female roles. The problem arises when the traditional gender roles
represented on in the media are so tightly constricting of the human potential, turning women into
objects of men’s pleasure or caretakers, and turning men into aggressors.

Advertisements are arguably the most pervasive form of media in our construction of reality. It is
estimated we are exposed to as many as 5,000 advertisements per day (and this is compared to about

74 [Link]
2,000 ads per day just thirty years ago).75 This includes commercials, print ads, Brand labels, Facebook
Ads, Google Ads, ads on your phone, or anything a business can produce to get your attention and
compel you to buy. Some researchers estimate we are exposed to up to 20,000 ads per day, but those
higher numbers not only include ads, but also include every time you pass by a label in a grocery store,
all the ads in your mailbox whether you see them or not, the label on everything you wear, the
condiments in your fringe, the cars on the highway, etc. However, just because we are near an ad, does
not mean we saw it.

Figure 1. Bar Graph of “Average Adult’s Daily Media & Ad Exposure” 76

Consider the work of highly influential sociologist Erving Goffman. Specifically, his work on advertising
and gender presentation and what he calls commercial realism. For Goffman, this is the way advertising
portrays a world, which without critical reflection appears normal to us but is anything but (and should
not appear normal or natural to us). This is one of the ways in which mass media influences how we see
ourselves and learn to present ourselves in highly gendered manners. Advertisements in which women
are portrayed as subordinate, weak, docile, delicate, and fanciful contribute to what he calls ‘the
ritualization of subordination’. This process helps to create (and recreate) a world in which to be
feminine is to be less than and subordinate to a man. One that relies on the ‘benign-ness of the
surround’ where women are perpetually at a disadvantage vis-a-vie man, blithely unaware of the world
around them and men are showed in an opposite manner; poised, aware, and ready to react. Consider
this example Goffman outlines body clowning. He says, “The use of entire body as a playful
gesticulate device, a sort of “body clowning” is commonly used in advertisements to indicate lack of
seriousness struck by a childlike pose (p. 50). It helps to present women in a manner that is not meant to
be taken seriously (see: the blog “Women Laughing Alone with Salad”77). One way to notice the silliness
of these sorts of images is to ‘flip the script’ by imagining the reverse image: men laughing alone with

75 Papazian,Ed. TV Now and Then: How We Use It; How It Uses Us. January, 2016. Media Dynamics, Inc.
[Link]
us/Bbb51dec37661d7/#[Link]
76 Media Dynamics, Inc. retrieved from TV Now and Then: How We Use It; How It Uses Us.
77 [Link]
salad, for instance! If we monitor our reaction and are startled, we know a gender norm reinforced
through advertising and commercial realism has been breached.

Perpetual discontent is a two-pronged advertising scheme, which emphasizes 1. how broken and flawed
we are, and 2. how we can buy hope in the form of a product being sold. Women in the U.S. are
bombarded daily with advertising images that point out their flaws. They are constantly having it
brought to their attention how they are too: thin, fat, short, tall, round, wrinkled, blond, brunette, red,
dark, light, pale, freckled, flat, busty, etc. This trend is exceptionally cruel for teen and young adult
women, but men are not exempt from the abuse of perpetual discontent. However, the media has
created an unrealistic feminine ideal resulting in the desire to fulfill this impossible standard. This has
resulted in women comparing their real selves to phony, made-up, photo-shopped images of women,
and it also allows for men to judge real women against those constructed photos. This is not implying all
men are sexually interested in women, or all women are concerned with how men are viewing them,
but these are still two major themes sprouting from the media’s creation of gender and physical ideals.
This media-created ideal has also commonly been blamed for the skyrocketing numbers of eating
disorders as well as the rising numbers of cosmetic surgical procedures in the U.S. (especially among
young women). At least 30 million Americans suffer from an eating disorder in their lifetime, and eating
disorders are the 3rd most common chronic illness among adolescent females.78

78 Hudson, J. I., Hiripi, E., Pope, H. G., & Kessler, R. C. (2007). The prevalence
and correlates of eating disorders in the
national comorbidity survey replication. Biological Psychiatry, 61(3), 348–358.
Figure 2. Numbers in Millions of Plastic Surgery Procedures between 1997-2015.

Not only has the media created an unrealistic feminine ideal that no one (and I mean no one!) can
achieve, but media most often portray as being endlessly preoccupied by their appearance and
fascinated primarily by improving their appearance for the purpose of becoming sexually desirable to
men. When children, specifically, are exposed to these messages, they internalize them and make them
part of their own reality.

Furthermore, children are increasingly being exposed to messages about gender that are really intended
for adult eyes only. Girls as young as six years old wanted to be more like dolls who were dressed in a
sexy way and showing more skin than dolls who were dressed stylishly but covered up. 79 These young
girls associated being sexy with being the way they wanted to look, being popular in school, and with
whom they wanted to play. According to the American Psychological Association, girls who are exposed

79 Jennifer Abbasi. 2012. Why

6-Year-Old Girls Want to Be Sexy. [Link] old-
girls-sexy_n_1679088.html. Retrieved 30 November 2016.
to sexual messages in popular culture are more likely to have low self-esteem and depression and suffer
from eating disorders.80

The media is perhaps one of the most underestimated elements of society. At the personal level people
think of it in terms of convenience and entertainment rather than political influence, power, and
control. However, advertising has a slow cumulative effect on our perceptions of reality.

According to Debra Pryor and Nancy Nelson Knupfer, “If we become aware of the stereotypes and teach
critical viewing skills to our children, perhaps we will become informed viewers instead of manipulated
consumers.”81 Moreover, the commercials evolve along with the development of a society and are the
answer to many social and political changes, such as emancipation of women, growing role of
individualism, the dismantling of current gender roles reinforcing inequality. More and more advertising
specialists produce non-stereotypical commercials, depicting people in non-traditional gender roles.
However, the attempts to break down the stereotypes threaten to reject the message; they challenge
well-established “common sense”. Hence, a society must achieve an adequate level of social readiness,
so that messages breaking gender stereotypes could be effective.

Suggested Activities (adapted from Video and workbook, Minding the Set--Making Television Work for You)

Images - Using TV or video clips and magazine or newspaper pictures, chart similarities and differences
in appearance and body size for the good and bad characters. Look again at the clips and make note of
the type of camera shots used for the good and bad guys or gals. Compare the characters with self and
peers and family members.

Working women - List the jobs that TV mothers have such as teacher, doctor. Do we ever see them
working at their jobs? Does your mother have a job? If she works outside the home, do you ever visit her
there? Why or why not?

I would rather be me - Form two groups - one of males, the other of females. From various media
have the boys list female traits and interests that are most featured, while the girls do the same for
male characteristics and concerns. Form new mixed groupings and discuss how males and females feel
about the stereotypes by which their sex category and gender have come to be represented. Is there
anything artificial about these stereotypes?

Jobs - Examine the media to determine how certain occupations are portrayed, and then interview
people in those occupations to ascertain how realistic portrayals are. Count the number of women or
men portrayed in jobs. List the types of jobs for women and men portrayed. How do these findings
compare to the jobs held by the parents of students?

80 American Psychological Association, Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls. (2007). Report of the APA Task Force on
the Sexualization of Girls. Retrieved from[Link]
81 Pryor,Debra; Knupfer, Nancy Nelson, 1997 Gender Stereotypes and Selling Techniques in Television Advertising:
Effects on
Society.[Link] 4/[Link],
retrieved 10 November 2016.
Posed photos - Select pictures from magazines ads that show the difference between posed
photographs of females and males (this can include children, as well). Describe what is emphasized
foreach.

Twisted tales - Rewrite a fairy tale from the point of view of the opposite sex.

Video games - Design a video game for girls and boys that is not stereotypical or violent.