Gender and Media

Abstract

Academic work focusing on the multiple interactions between gender and media has an extensive history. Interestingly, developments in gender and media research run parallel to feminist activism. From their earliest beginnings, mass media have inspired academic investigation. However, it was not until the early 1960s, the start of the second-wave feminist movement in the United States, that gender awareness began to be incorporated into studies on gender and media. The male bias of academic themes and theory and the underrepresentation of women in universities were major points of criticism (Van Zoonen, 1994). The principal areas of investigation concerned gender stereotypes, construction of gendered social roles, gender ideology, and pornography and its (social) consequences. These themes were and still are scrutinized in all aspects of media: production, content, and consumption. Different fields of research have developed, each marked by a specific epistemological and ontological viewpoint on understanding gender and its relation to media.Ontologically, gender is understood in a number of ways, each with its repercussions for the type of research conducted on a certain topic. Views range from an essentialist perspective that presents a dichotomous understanding of an individual's physical sex (male versus female) as a biological fact that determines their gender (masculine or feminine), to a postmodern view that presents gender and sex as fluid, non-dichotomous social constructs (Krijnen & Van Bauwel, 2015).Epistemologically, we find studies ranging from purely data driven to theory driven. The first approach produces valuable, often numeric, insight into the relationship between gender and media, while the second approach offers advancements in theory. Studies in gender and media often combine empiric and theoretical approaches, resulting in work that nuances and/or advances theoretical insight.Clearly, over half a century later, ideas on the relations between gender and media have evolved tremendously. This is partly due to almost 60 years of academic research in gender and media. Additionally, both social and technological developments have changed the context of research with its repercussions on the study of media and gender. More specifically, the rise of social media and globalization (which is a major consequence of technological developments) complicates traditional understandings of gender and media.In this entry, the dynamic relationship between gender and media is discussed in the light of digitization and globalization. First, the traditional categories in the study of media and gender-production, content, and consumption-are briefly

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