Elizabeth Clark

Professor Condry
PSYC.232.01
November 22nd, 2016
Media Project – Sex Stereotyping

Gender and sex stereotyping in the media is an important topic to look at because of how

it affects our children, the way they develop and how they view themselves. As an overview this

research looks at how we as a society portray men and women. More specifically, I look at how

they portray men/boys and women/girls in shows aimed towards young children as well as shows

aimed for an audience of teens and young adults. My hypothesis for this research is that we will

find more gender stereotyping in shows aimed towards children and a more even distribution of

stereotyping versus cross-gender-typed behavior in teen shows.

In the article Interactions, Activities and Gender in Children’s Television Commercials:

A Content Analysis by Mary Strom Larson, she notes that “a wide variety of studies also support

this theory, and a number of them are concerned with the effects of gender-stereotyped role

portrayals on television.” She continues by referencing research done by Freuh & McGhee as

well as Signorielli & Lears, which found a pattern that “heavy viewers of television hold more

traditional gender-stereotyped notions of proper role behavior than light viewers of television.”

This would suggest that the programs on the television tend to be gender-typed and thus the

heavy viewers would adopt this world view based on constant exposure. Gender-typed is a term

used to describe behaviors associated with a given person’s gender. Likewise, when I use the

term cross-gender-typed this means behaviors associated with the gender other than that of a

given person. The phrase ‘proper role behavior’ simply means the stereotyped behaviors of each

gender, women are coy and dainty and men are powerful and athletic. Keeping this in mind I
want to make an exclaimer that this is a very cis-gendered view and research method but there

are almost no examples of non-binary characters in television. Clearly this needs to change and

be more inclusive but for the purpose of this research it will have to include only cis research

subjects and examples.

My research method was fairly straight-forward, likely one of the most simple methods

you will hear about in these papers. To begin I sat down and decided to scroll through Netflix, I

chose two categories: Kid’s TV as well as Teen TV – these went with the hypothesis I was

testing. From there I scrolled through until I found shows that were familiar, either I had watched

it before or was frequently accosted by a commercial for it while watching TV in my spare time.

Once I chose my two shows, I proceeded to watch 3 episodes of each one hour show to get 3

hours of data for both. While watching, I had a notebook that I split into four categories: the teen

show versus the children’s show and then from there, stereotypical behavior versus non-

stereotypical. Within those preliminary categories I also divided it between boys and girls

because I felt that showing the differences there was important. For both show I marked down

each time during an episode I was met with a very gender-typed behavior as well as when I

noticed quite cross-gender-typed actions. This gave me a very simple visual of how often the

children’s show portrayed extremely stereotypical behaviors and non-stereotypical behavior

compared to the show aimed at teens. For example, a gender-typed portrayal that I would have

marked down is a female character dressed from head to toe in pink. A cross-gender-typed

portrayal that I would mark down would be a male character that loves to dance and is more

submissive than dominant.

My results tie in well with my hypothesis that kid’s shows will portray more stereotyping

than teen shows. In general, there were more instances of stereotyped behavior than non-
stereotypical, along with this the girls tended to show more of each of these categories than the

boys I recorded. And along with that, my hypothesis was correct that the children’s show used

more gender-typed moments than the teen show. There was one moment that I found particularly

funny while also disheartening, in the children’s show one of the girls mentioned that she was

good with tools and could fix the problem. I loved that they included a character that was so

opposite what we normally expect of girls, I was saddened when the rest of the characters all

exclaimed in disbelief that a girl could possibly build things.

Show Type Kid’s Show – LEGO: Friends Teen Show - Total Drama

Gender Boys Girls Boys Girls

Gender-typed 4 12 5 9

Cross-gender-typed 1 3 3 5

The data in this table only includes the first episodes I watched of each show, LEGO:

Friends and Total Drama. While watching the other episodes there was very little difference in

the numbers that I found while recording the data – there was a slight shift in the numbers but

nothing significant. As you can clearly see, in both the children and teen shows, the girls

outranked the boys in the number of times that they were shown in a stereotypical way. Despite

this, they also outranked the boys in the non-stereotypical category, while the numbers are much

smaller they still beat the boys. Again, my hypothesis was correct, according to the data table I

have shown, the teen show portrays much fewer gender-typed behaviors and visuals than the

kid’s show. This is not to say that there is none in the teen show, there is, there is just much less

that in shows aimed at children. Unsurprisingly, Total Drama showed almost twice as much

cross-gender-typed behaviors and visuals than LEGO: Friends. So along with showing less
traditional gender roles they also show more non-traditional roles that are at odds with the usual

gender and sex stereotypes.

What I found interesting about my findings was that the boys were less often portrayed in

a gender-typed manner than the girls. Traditionally we feel as though girls are accepted when

they are more masculine and boys are less accepted when they are more feminine. However, the

girls were for the most part hyper-feminine and the boys were not hyper-masculine. This

contradicts what I expected, I figured I would note more male characters being show in an

extremely stereotypical masculine fashion but it was actually the girls that were more often

stereotyped.

What I observed in my research can influence children’s development. Our textbook,

How Children Develop, mentions that by age six children are aware that they are either a boy or

girl and are now processing what it ‘takes’ to be one or the other. Lawrence Kohlberg gives the

example of, “since I’m a girl, I should like to do girl things, so I need to find out what those are.”

Further on we explore the concept of gender schemas. This is the mental representations about

gender, this includes gender stereotypes that we hold. Unlike Kohlberg’s theory, this is not

related to age, Martin and Halverson believe this begins from birth. However, it similar in that

young boys and girls are looking for how they are supposed to act and what is normal or

expected for them as males and females. This is where the portrayal of characters in TV can

affect our children. They are like sponges, soaking up information and the information they are

being presented with it that of sexist stereotypes that they will be expected to like up to.

Signorielli and Lears noted that individuals who watched more television hold stronger

traditional gender stereotypes – this suggests that it may be caused by the exposure to these

gender-typed visuals in shows. Following this concept that would mean that our children that are
watching these overly stereotyped shows will begin to hold these views as well. This can lead to

lower self-esteem and exclusion if boys and girls do not hold up to the ideal men and women

they see on TV.

The purpose of this research was to possibly draw attention to the state of the media we

introduce to our children. As a society children and teens are often suffering from low self-

esteem because they are not the perfect boy or girl – they aren’t aggressive enough or they aren’t

sweet enough. Every day we watch television with characters that are portrayed in strictly

gender-typed ways, this can harm children’s development when they are exposed to these

stereotypes. This area of research is so important because of the effects in can have in the fight

against harmful gender schemas, stereotype

 Works Cited

Siegler, Robert S., Judy S. DeLoache, and Nancy Eisenberg. "Gender Development." How Children
Develop. New York: Worth, 2006. N. pag. Print.

Strom Larson, Mary. "Interactions, Activities and Gender in Children’s Television Commercials: A
Content Analysis." (n.d.): n. pag. Web. 22 Nov. 2016.
s and expectations that we place on children.