UNIVERSITY OF TUZLA

Faculty of Philosophy
English Language and Literature

ESSAY
Reading Television and the Constructions of Family and Gender Roles

Student:
Tuzla, December 2013

The purpose of this essay will be to present the relationship between television and the
constructions of family, and not only how family and gender roles are presented on television,
but also how television influences family and gender roles in the society. In order to
comprehend the relationship and the influence of television on the family and gender roles we
shall start discussion with certain theory. Morleys and Hobsons studies shall be introduced
thus presenting the clear picture of how television presents social roles, gender and difference
between men and women in the family.
Firstly, we shall start with theory on gender roles, so that we could grasp further
studies and discussions.
According to psychologists such as Sandra Bem, one cognitive process that seems
nearly inevitable in humans is to divide people into groups. We can partition these
groups on the basis of race, age, religion, and so forth. However, most of the times we
split humanity on the basis of gender. The first thing we instantly determine, when
meeting someone new, is their gender.1
Secondly, we shall discuss Morleys theory on television watching and unlike Hobsons
theory it is more of a family consumption.
Morleys central thesis is that the changing patterns of television viewing could only
be understood in the overall context of family leisure activity. After Hobson,
television viewing was seen as more of a social, even a collective, activity, fully
absorbed into everyday routines. Morley shifts his interest from the text to the
domestic viewing context itself as the framework within which readings of
programs are (ordinarily) made'. As a result the unit of consumption is no longer the
individual viewer; it is the family or household. Morleys study reveals how television
is adapted to families economic and cultural (or psychological) needs.2
Through watching television we can see the status of women in the family and also the
difference between women and men when it comes to watching television. Furthermore
television doesnt just present the position of woman in the household, but also emits the
status of women in the society.
Male dominance is clear in most of the families and takes the most bullying of forms:
some men not only chose the programmes for the whole family and denigrated the
choices of others, but also took possession of the remote control device when they left
the room in order to stop anyone switching around the channels in their absence.
Women rarely knew how to work the video recorder. Men liked to watch in total
1 Crespi, Isabella, Socialization and Gender Roles within the family: A Study on Adolescents and their Parents
in Great Britain

2 Turner, Graeme, British Cultural Studies - An Introduction (accessed on 20.12.2013.)

2

silence, while women and children found this oppressive; to resist this regime women
tended to watch the black-and-white set in the kitchen, while the children retreated
upstairs.3
According to Hobson's theory women were also in disadvantage compared to men. Such was
the construction of family that even when woman finds time to watch television she would
feel guilty of doing it.
Women had fewer moments of licensed leisure, when they were free to give the
television their undivided attention; as Hobson found, many women are cooking meals
or bathing children at the times when their favourite soaps are on and can watch their
favourite shows only in brief bursts. Many women talked of the pleasure of being able
to watch afternoon soaps free of this regime, although they also spoke guiltily of this,
as if it were an indulgence of which they should be ashamed.4
However the gender roles are different if woman works and man does not. It changes the
status of woman within the family. A woman who was the main breadwinner while her
husband stayed home caring for the house and children exercised a degree of domestic power
and demonstrated viewing preferences more like those of the males in the survey than those of
other women.5 Thus the power in the family and its construction depends on the domestic
status of one partner regardless of the gender. Families and gender roles presented on
television are different, because television offers varieties of different programmes and every
each of them may present families and gender roles in a different way. Television may have
great influence on families and gender roles due to family representation within a TV show or
television may just be an object which presents to us how families are constructed.
Those who watch more television than average, particularly children, tend to hold
more traditional notions of gender roles. Television cultivates beliefs in children such
as "women are happiest at home raising children" and "men are born with more
ambition than women" (Signorielli 1990). Images of family life itself may also be
influenced. Heavy viewers tend to perceive being single as negative, express profamily
sentiments, and believe that families in real life show support and concern for each
other. On the other hand, heavy soap opera viewers tend to overestimate the number of
illegitimate children, happy marriages, divorces, and extramarital affairs (Signorielli
1990). In all, these studies suggest that media portrayals reflect and reinforce views
about the nature of the family in society.6

3 Turner, Graeme, British Cultural Studies - An Introduction (accessed on 20.12.2013.)

4 Turner, Graeme, British Cultural Studies - An Introduction (accessed on 20.12.2013.)
5 Turner, Graeme, British Cultural Studies - An Introduction (accessed on 20.12.2013.)
3

Another set of facts which depicts the status of men and women in the family on the television
may present to us a clear advantage for men.
The key findings from this study included: fewer than one out of three (28%) of the
speaking characters (both real and animated) are female. Fewer than one in five in this
sample (17%) of characters in crowd scenes are female, though this finding should be
interpreted with caution.2 In this sample, more than four out of five (83%) of the
films narrators are male.7
In addition television may present great idols for family members, and this way television
influences positively on family constructions. Analysis showed that Grated protagonists can
have a distinct set of desires. Some long for romantic love. Others wish for family, adventure,
or even an attempt to discover who they are or what they want out of life. We can categorize
their character cravings in one of three ways: as daydreamers; as those that get derailed from
their initial ambition; or as daredevils that risk it all to achieve a particular goal. 8 Now we
shall observe Morleys work and how he presented the relationship between television
watching and family.
Morley's Family Television looks at viewing habits of 18 white nuclear families with
two or more children, from working/lower middle class backgrounds, living in a stable
inner city area in 1980s South London. He describes that family dynamics reflect in
how television is watched in the household where some members clearly have more
control than others. He like Hobson sees the family as a place of female
subordination.9
Although both Hobson and Marley are concerned with the power and position in the family
throughout watching television they still had different approaches and theories about gender
roles and family constructions.
Both accounts look at power within patriarchal Britain in the 80s through 'watching
television' as a private activity in the domestic sphere, the household representing a
6 Alison, Alexnder, Television and Family - The Social Uses and Influence of Television on Families
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3406900427.html (accessed on 20.12.2013.)

7 L.Smith, Stacy, Gender Stereotypes: An Analysis of Popular Films and TV Shows (accessed on
20.12.2013.)
8 L.Smith, Stacy, Gender Stereotypes: An Analysis of Popular Films and TV Shows (accessed on
20.12.2013.)
9 Hummel, Anita, Are TV Viewing Styles Related to Gender?
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/aih9801.html (accessed on 20.12.2013.)
4

microcosm for the dynamics of a specific section of society. The 'gendering of genre'
Hobson finds reinforces a sexual division of 'spheres of interest': the
women reject programs relating to the masculine world of the public sphere (news,
current affairs, action), while they actively choose programs representing their own
world (entertainment and fiction, especially soap operas), which they find more
'interesting', yet less 'important' than masculine tastes. They could relate to "a feminine
realm of fictional programmes that connected with the personal and emotional
concerns of family life or else offered a fantasy alternative to their own daily
experiences."(Moores 1993:37). News-stories were described as male-orientated and
'boring' and believed to have a depressing effect. Nonetheless they seemed to
automatically accept their husbands' right to watch them. For Morley, the man's
preference for the national news, the 'male soap opera' (Fiske 1987a), relates to his role
as 'breadwinner', who connects the family to the political public sphere- a world alien
to Hobson's interviewees- while the woman's distaste for zany comedy is related to a
dislike for domestic disorder. Gender identities and social roles may thus extend into
viewing patters (see Lull 1990:163), (and through 'gossip', TV viewing extends into
social life). 10
Both men and women have different vision of television watching and TV shows. Man would
consider TV shows that woman watches very unintelligent, and woman would consider TV
shows which man watches very uninviting.
The male degradation of soap operas may reflect a lack of abilities to access this
sphere of intimate talk and feeling the predominantly female "Melodramatic
Imagination" (Ang 1985). Men thus reject those programmes as 'stupid' and
'unrealistic' -while their own world of heroism in sports, war on the news and their
associated discourse of stardom and nationalism may seem important and 'real' to them
and, moreover, acts as social currency that can gain them respectability in their
spheres. (Apart from illustrating polarised power relations, Morley's interviews also
tell another story- about the different social worlds and realities inhabited by men,
women and their children, a story of how TV viewing provides a 'social currency': TVgossip has exchange-value for social contacts- and the lack of it may ostracise the
teenager at school, the mother with small children, or the part-time employee from her
colleagues.)11
The following quote shall present Hobsons studies of womans leisure, her vision of
watching television, and not only how does that effect on her status in the family but also how
it creates her own meaning.

10 Hummel, Anita, Are TV Viewing Styles Related to Gender?

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/aih9801.html (accessed on 20.12.2013.)
11 Hummel, Anita, Are TV Viewing Styles Related to Gender?
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/aih9801.html (accessed on 20.12.2013.)
5

Women may find it hard to argue for their own tastes in presence of their husbands,
as they perceive their own preferences as "more interesting and relevant to them, but
secondary in rank to 'real' or 'masculine' world" (Hobson 1980 in Baehr/Gray
1996:114), but part of the pleasure of watching soaps "lies in their defiance of
masculine or parental control" (Fiske 1987a:76). Through watching a "nice weepy" on
their own or with other female friends, women "create a gendered, oppositional space"
(...) "to produce their own meanings and pleasures". Watching in secret may be a
"strategy to avoid confrontation and conflict" (Seiter et al. 1989:244). When
housewives indulge in their 'guilty pleasures' and "in the kind of attentive viewing
which their husbands engage in routinely", they abandon their role as "domestic
manager"(Morley 1986:160) and use the home as leisure space, momentarily reversing
its gendered use. As 'ritual of resistance' (like 'Carnival'- see Victor Turner 1977) this
"alternative viewing" can justify and validate the overarching system of patriarchy,
thus confirms the women's commitment to the status quo, which suggest that women
may have their reasons for accepting this "dominant ideology" (see Nightingale
1996:92n).12
All in all, we may conclude that television in home certainly depicts, according to Morley and
Hobson, the difference between woman and man. It also presents the gender roles within the
television and it influences the gender roles and the family. Despite the influence, it has also
shown a strong relationship among watching television and family constructions and gender
roles, showing that they are all interrelated. Thus by observing the family watching television
we can discover the domestic role, the status of woman and the whole family construction.

12 Hummel, Anita, Are TV Viewing Styles Related to Gender?

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/aih9801.html (accessed on 20.12.2013.)
6

Bibliography:

Crespi, Isabella, Socialization and Gender Roles within the family: A Study on

Adolescents and their Parents in Great Britain

Turner, Graeme, British Cultural Studies - An Introduction
Alison, Alexnder, Television and Family - The Social Uses and Influence of Television

on Families http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3406900427.html
L.Smith, Stacy, Gender Stereotypes: An Analysis of Popular Films and TV Shows
Hummel,
Anita,
Are
TV
Viewing
Styles
Related
to
Gender?
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/aih9801.html