Gender stereotypes

Gender stereotypes

Gender roles and clichés are a big part of our daily life. Everywhere are the differences between female and male. At work, in the school, in sport clubs and especially in the media.

News and social networks

Example for a stereotype swop: the home standing dad and the carrier wife

We have got many different stereotypes ordered after different criteria. When you see a person you don’t know you just can judging this person by how he or she look like.

For example you are sitting in the bus and see a black boy, baggy wearing trousers, hoodie, dreadlocks, bum-bag and Jamaica coloured necklace. Yesterday you saw a similar looking boy in the news ‘north Croydon – after long search drug dealer arrested’. You don’t know everything about that man in the bus but you judge about him jut about what he looks like. Maybe he is the police officer that founded the drug dealer? For you he look like a drug dealer because of the media. The media shows you a picture of a drug dealer and you save this picture in your mind. Now your stereotype drug dealer looks like the man from the news. But why the Ugg’s wearing white girl shouldn’t be a drug dealer. Maybe in the Starbucks coffee she wears isn’t a Frappuccino? Maybe she don’t give her too much makeup wearing and instagram addicted best fiend not a Starbucks cup full of coffee but rather filled with drugs.

The news and social networks produce categories of peoples.

Magazines

The media support this gender stereotypes for example with their magazines.

The media decide to make different magazines for different age groups and also for different interest groups. But they make the most different between the magazines for female consumers and male consumers.

There are many magazines about cars, computers and other technical contents. Those magazines are more directed to the male consumers. The most manpower in technical companies are male. The media use facts like this to support the gender stereotypes. 

The fewest mans would by a magazine which cover shows an ordinarily wife with slogans on it like ‘pretty in pink’ ‘shopping and styling tips for autumn 2015 – exclusive the 20 autumn must haves’. It’s reproducible that no man is interest in those topics but why does the media afford to say us what we have to buy? What beautiful is? Who decide what a must have for this autumn is?

The designers. They buy pages of magazines for print down their promotion. They present headliners they products and the media show pictures how those wearing ore using the new products.

The media think that each of us is insecure or have self-doubts. They tell us what we have to do, to eat, to wear, to drink, to buy, … to get a perfect life.

But especially the media which try to tell female consumers how to get a better or perfect live are very discriminating. On the most covers you can find slogans with the words ‘sexy’ or ‘beauty’ in. These kind of media influence reduce women onto what they look like and they sexuality. They support gender roles by printing recipes just in women magazines. That is very sexist! Why shouldn’t the man be interest in cooking?

Just because the conservative picture of a women a housewife is.

In not one male magazine you will find endless reports about ‘Family and a job? How to manage that?’. That’s also a support of the stereotype working husband.

The number of househusbands grows, that good because there shouldn’t be a different if the mother or the father earn the money for a family. A father can also clean the house, do the cooking and wash the clothes. But you won’t find any tips about how to manage the live of the homesteading parent in a man magazine.

Work

When you look at big companies the most directors are male. The sentence ´Men are not nurses, they are doctors´ is unfortunately trough. With a biologic view that makes just sense because women are more emotional and have more intuition. The prefrontal cortex which cause those properties of a male gets smaller because the testosterone stops the development. But that shouldn’t be the excuse why so less males are nurses.

When you look at sportspersons the most famous sportspersons are males. When you are watching TV you see male soccer, male rugby, male football, male basketball but why? The football player earn so much more money than the female football player.

Back to the cooking parts that a missed in the male magazines. All the star cookers are males. Why does the stereotype man shouldn’t coke?

Finally you can say the media create stereotypes.