Media Coverage of Women and Women's Issues
Women professionals and athletes continue to be under-represented in news coverage, and are often stereotypically portrayed when they are included.
Women professionals and athletes continue to be under-represented in news coverage, and are often stereotypically portrayed when they are included.
"We are experiencing a sea change with women and movies, a shift in numbers but also in consciousness. Female-driven movies, from women filmmakers and not, open weekly and are greeted as a matter of course rather than as aberrations; some dominate the box office, and a handful are enlivening the awards season. Despite continuing biases and barriers, women are now directing movies with a variety of budgets, topics and casts."
There’s significant evidence that media education can counter unrealistic media representations of men’s and women’s bodies. For example, a 2015 study found that girls as young as Grade 5 who had received media literacy education in school had higher self-esteem and body satisfaction.
Music is one of the most popular and powerful forms of media that kids and teens consume: more than half of Canadian teens say they would die without it, and nearly all consider it very important to their lives. [1]
The video game sector is the fastest growing entertainment industry and second only to music in profitability. Global sales of video game software hit almost $17 billion U.S. in 2011. [1]
Pushing the boundaries for artistic expression has always been a part of popular music. However, the drive for profits may also be pushing the envelope of what is acceptable. In this section we examine some of the issues in today's music.
In 2017, a research group discovered that what boys are seeing in the media and what they actually believe are vastly different.
The pressure put on teens through ads, television, film and new media to be sexually attractive—and sexually active—is profound. Not only that, but media representations of relationships often teach unhealthy lessons.
They have ads of how you should dress and what you should look like and this and that, and then they say, 'but respect people for what they choose to be like.' Okay, so which do we do first?"
Kelsey, 16, quoted in Girl Talk
Since the 1960s, feminists have argued that "it matters who makes it." When it comes to the mass media, "who makes it" continues to be men.