A Systematic Gender Perspective on Entertainment Theory

Author(s):  
Sabine Reich

The chapter provides a systematic overview of the role gender plays in entertainment research. Starting with a theoretical primer on the gender concept, the chapter continues by summarizing empirical findings on gender differences in the selection of, exposure to, and responses to entertainment, using the examples of violent, dramatic, and sexually explicit entertainment media. In the second part, the chapter systematically reviews theoretical arguments that have been made to explain these gender differences. The media user’s personality, gender identity, gender-role expectation, and social identity are discussed as individual level factors. The representation of gender in entertainment media is introduced as a second potential source for gender differences. Starting with the numeric underrepresentation of women, the chapter goes on to review misrepresentations of gender and gender roles as cause for gender differences. A critical reflection of the theoretical and methodological integration of the gender concept in entertainment theory closes the chapter.

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatjana Milivojević ◽  
Ljiljana Manić ◽  
Nataša Simeunović Bajić

The topic of this article is the phenomenon of double, namely cross or additive discrimination against senior women in the media sphere. Many studies and articles are devoted to ageism, discrimination against the elderly and gender inequality as discrimination against women. Rarely and hardly ever in Serbia, research is focused on the topic of gender differences that determine the quality of life in old age. While some believe that gender inequality and stereotypes end with age, which is in itself a basis for discrimination, and that gender differences are equalized, others believe that gender differences are particularly pronounced in old age, especially when considering marginalized elderly populations such as elderly people belonging to the Roma nationality, people with disabilities, LGBT people and HIV-positive people. This article is a comprehensive literature review article. The authors applied theoretical and interpretative methods of research, discursive and critical thematic analysis. The interpretative method is based on the meanings and representation of different aspects of the issue. The main finding of this article is the existence and prevalence of a gap and contradiction between the reality of longer and better quality of life and outdated media representation of old age, especially of elderly women.


2017 ◽  
pp. 32-46
Author(s):  
Claus D. Hansen

The aim of this paper is threefold: First, the criticism of quantitative methods raised by feminist and gender researchers is reiterated and illustrated using gender differences in job attribute preferences as an example. Second, the paper compares this ‘standard quantitative methods’ approach to Geometric Data Analysis (GDA), an approach that e.g. makes use of principal components analysis. I argue that GDA breaks with many of the problematic features of traditional statistics by being multi-dimensional (as opposed to one-dimensional), having a statistical model formulated at the individual level (as opposed to treating individuals as mere ‘residuals’) and visualising the results (as opposed to just presenting the results exclusively in numbers). Third, the empirical analyses from the first part of the paper are then used as an example and analysed again, thereby introducing the basic concepts and principles which comprise GDA. Data used in the paper stem from the study Youth on the margin where a sample of young men and women from the North Denmark Region were asked to fill out a battery of job attribute preferences among other things. This is an important topic because such preferences are widely thought to be closely related to the continuing segregation of the Danish labour market.


Covering all female sports teams poses particular challenges. Since the Title IX established in the U.S. in 1972 ensuring that men and women have equitable participation opportunities, as well as access to scholarships in sport programs, and since UNESCO recognized sports and physical activity as a human right in 1978, the world and the global sports communities have come a long way in pursuing gender equality in sports. However, gender equality in sports does not mean that gender differences shouldn’t be researched or considered while developing training plans and programs, and in the prevention and treatment of disease and injury. Indeed, there is undeniably plenty of scientific evidence that sex and gender differences play a major role when it comes to disease risks and symptoms, injury patterns and frequency, and also in regards to response to treatments. The covering medical professional needs to appreciate these facts and include them into his decision making process. Based on experience as a team doctor for female athletes on the national team, I propose three levels that must be considered when addressing gender and sex differences in team coverage, namely 1) the psychosocial level, 2) the epidemiological level, and 3) the individual level concerning the female body.


2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen A. Meserve ◽  
Daniel Pemstein ◽  
William T. Bernhard

This study assesses how political parties’ candidate selection strategies influence women’s descriptive parliamentary representation. Focusing on proportional elections, it explores what determines whether parties place women in viable list positions. Evaluating party rankings at the individual level, it directly examines a mechanism – party nomination – central to prevailing explanations of empirical patterns in women’s representation. Moreover, it jointly evaluates how incumbency and gender affect nomination. This study uses European Parliament elections to compare a plethora of parties, operating under numerous institutions, in the context of a single legislature. It finds that gender differences in candidate selection are largely explained by incumbency bias, although party ideology and female labor force participation help explain which parties prioritize the placement of novice women.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 334-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Bart Stykes

Unintended childbearing is associated with poorer parental well-being, but most scholarship in this area takes an individual-level approach to unintended childbearing. Drawing on couple data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), I treat unintended childbearing as a couple-level construct to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how individuals’ intentions, partners’ intentions, and gender are linked with psychological distress in the transition to parenthood. I make two chief contributions to prior research. First, the inclusion of fathers’ perspectives provides an important addition to research, which primarily focuses on mothers’ unintended childbearing. Second, I assess gender differences in the association between couples’ intentions and health. For mothers, one’s own intentions appeared most closely tied to distress regardless of the father’s intentions, whereas fathers reported more depressive symptoms if either parent did not intend the birth. Formal post-estimation tests of differences in the magnitude of coefficients for mothers and fathers suggest few gender differences exist in the association between couples’ intentions and psychological distress. For mothers and fathers alike, belonging to a couple where neither parent intended the birth was consistently associated with the highest levels of distress. Implications for policy and research are discussed in relation to findings.


Dialogue ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 409-441
Author(s):  
STACEY GOGUEN

In discussions of the underrepresentation of women in professional philosophy, those sceptical of discrimination as an explanation often suggest that gender differences in interests are a plausible alternative hypothesis. Some suspect that if women’s differing interests explains underrepresentation, then interventions suggested by the discrimination hypothesis might be unnecessary—or even risky. I argue that one needs to consider how stereotypes might influence interests, and that doing so can provide a more even-handed assessment of the risks involved in proposed interventions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 452-466
Author(s):  
Mikael Goossen

Previous research has shown a prevailing ‘modern gender gap’ in socio-political attitudes in advanced capitalist economies. While numerous studies have confirmed gender differences in attitudes towards the welfare state in Europe, few have addressed the reason for this rift in men’s and women’s views about the role of government in ensuring the general welfare of citizens. In this article, I examine the relationship between gender equality in unpaid labour, family policy and the gender gap in welfare state attitudes. Based on data from 21 countries participating in the European Social Survey (ESS) Round 4, and using a mix of country- and individual-level regression models and multilevel models, I find that there is a clear relationship between country-level gender equality in unpaid labour and gender differences in support of an encompassing welfare state. A more equal distribution of unpaid care and domestic work correlates with women being increasingly supportive of a large and encompassing welfare state, in comparison with men. This pattern holds when controlling for individual-level economic risk and resources, cultural factors such as trust and social values traditionally related to the support of an encompassing welfare state, and beliefs about welfare state efficiency and consequences for society in general. This pattern is evident for countries with a low level of familistic policies, while no distinguishable pattern is discernible for highly familistic countries. These findings have implications for the perception of gender as an emergent social cleavage with respect to welfare state attitudes. The results are discussed in the light of institutional theories on policy feedback, familism, social role theory and previous findings relating to modernization theory and ‘gender realignment’.


2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (31) ◽  
pp. 15435-15440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Breda ◽  
Clotilde Napp

Gender differences in math performance are now small in developed countries and they cannot explain on their own the strong underrepresentation of women in math-related fields. This latter result is however no longer true once gender differences in reading performance are also taken into account. Using individual-level data on 300,000 15-y-old students in 64 countries, we show that the difference between a student performance in reading and math is 80% of a standard deviation (SD) larger for girls than boys, a magnitude considered as very large. When this difference is controlled for, the gender gap in students’ intentions to pursue math-intensive studies and careers is reduced by around 75%, while gender gaps in self-concept in math, declared interest for math or attitudes toward math entirely disappear. These latter variables are also much less able to explain the gender gap in intentions to study math than is students’ difference in performance between math and reading. These results are in line with choice models in which educational decisions involve intraindividual comparisons of achievement and self-beliefs in different subjects as well as cultural norms regarding gender. To directly show that intraindividual comparisons of achievement impact students’ intended careers, we use differences across schools in teaching resources dedicated to math and reading as exogenous variations of students’ comparative advantage for math. Results confirm that the comparative advantage in math with respect to reading at the time of making educational choices plays a key role in the process leading to women’s underrepresentation in math-intensive fields.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 604-605
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Stokes ◽  
Deborah Carr

Abstract Marriage is a dyadic system, within which the characteristics and experiences of each partner can have implications for both. Moreover, gender of both spouses may impact these dyadic influences. The five papers comprising this symposium all take a dyadic approach to studying midlife and older couples, and how their effects on one another may vary by gender. Donnelly examines the consequences of precarious work among midlife couples, finding heightened risks for marital strain and divorce, depending on which gender spouse is exposed to precarious work. Garcia also analyzes gender differences – in this case, how the gender of a woman’s spouse may affect associations between daily marital strain and sleep quality, with only women married to men showing adverse sleep outcomes. Polenick and colleagues study the long-term repercussions of chronic condition discordance, finding that both individual-level and couple-level discordance had impacts for husbands’ and wives’ physical activity. Gallagher and Stokes focus on cognitive functioning within dyads, revealing gendered effects: Wives’ poorer cognitive functioning was associated with their own (better) marital quality, while husbands’ poorer cognitive functioning was associated with wives’ (worse) marital quality. Lastly, Stokes and Barooah examine longitudinal dyadic associations between loneliness and vascular health, finding that own and partner’s baseline loneliness were associated with increased HbA1c levels only in the context of inferior marital support. Carr will assess the strengths and limitations of these papers, and discuss the contributions these studies can make to the field and to future research on marital effects and gender in later life.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document