A Scale for Sexism

Abstract

A majority of ads portraying women selected from Playboy, Time, Newsweek, and Ms. "puts them down" or "keeps them in their place."Research on media sexism has usually relied on nominal categories that count what images, how often, and when and where they occur (e.g., 5,6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15). A content analysis based on an ordinal set of categories that could tell us how much sexism is in any given presentation would permit more meaningful, refined research in the future. Instead of pointing toward quantitative indicators of sexism such as very small numbers of women, we need to be able to outline qualitative indicators of sexism. Increasing the representation of women in the media (a quantitative approach) will probably not reduce media sexism unless the manner in which women are presented also changes (a qualitative approach).A qualitative analysis of media sexism requires that we define what we mean by sexism and specify a dimension underlying a continuum of very sexist to nonsexist portrayals of women. Butler-Paisley and Paisley-Butler (3) have described an ordinal consciousness scale that concentrates on how women as presented in

Adaptation of Marketing Activities to Cultural and Social Context: Gender Role Portrayals and Sexism in Spanish Commercials

“…The level of sexism shown by the main character in the commercial, has been measured according to the five level scale proposed by Pingree et al (1976): a scale applied by other researchers more recently (e.g. Ferguson et al 1990).…”

Gendered Constructions of Romania’s Tourist Destination Image

“…Overall, women are still mostly portrayed through a Western male gaze (Pritchard & Morgan, 2000a), in passive and domestic roles or as sexual objects, whilst men usually appear as authority or active figures (Pritchard, 2001;Antomarchi & de la Barre, 2010;Goffman, 1979;Pingree et al, 1976).…”

“…According to Pingree et al (1976), most of the women's representations in tourism magazines are either in sexual and decorative roles, or engaged in traditional female activities (e.g. caring for children, shopping, grooming themselves, or as passive spectators of active men).…”

El sexismo en publicidad: estructuras, discursos y recomendaciones

“…Para analizar el nivel de sexismo de las piezas publicitarias se seleccionó The Consciousness Scale for Sexism, un instrumento de evaluación desarrollado por Butler-Pasley y Paisley-Butler (1974), aplicado por Pingree et al (1976) al análi-sis de las imágenes sexistas de la mujer en publicidad y utilizado por otros autores en nuestro país (Royo-Vela et al, 2007y Royo-Vela et al, 2008. La escala está compuesta de cinco categorías que representan un sexismo alto (1 y 2), moderado (3) y bajo (4 y 5).…”