Blog #19: Media & Gender Inequalities

The media has a very big impact on everyday policies and practice in the workforce and with our countries youth. I think that a lot of the problems we encounter comes from the fact that the media gets to children at a very young age and leaves a lasting impression on them. The Democracy NOW video with Geena Davis stated that “3 out of 4 characters in G movies are male” and these statistics have not changed over the years. The images that are portrayed of women show women as being only concerned with shopping, fashion, and being thin; which adds to another problem with young girls: body image. Young kids see these images and they think that it is okay and that it is right. They grow up with these perceptions and throughout their life they reinforce the gender inequalities, it is a tragic cycle that needs to be broken.
When we take these inequalities that boys and girls grew up learning and we look at how it affects their jobs now, as men and women, the inequalities still exist. A person can pretty much take the statistics that the “See Jane” Foundation researched and apply it to the state and federal prison systems. The Democracy NOW video stated that 17% of characters in group settings children movies are female. That sounds pretty close to the amount of women that are working in men’s prisons. Geena Davis pointed out that the media teaches society to think of females as being worth less, and that their worth is different than males. This is also shown in prison work. The men who work in corrections do not think that women are capable of handling the violence that is associated with prisons. The men in the study associate womens lack of ability to control inmates with their physical size and strength. Sadly, a lot of the women also believe these sentiments (Bitton, 2003, pg. 170). The men also state that women should not be exposed to inmates masturbating or to their crude manner of speaking, but the women state that they are grown women and that “it isn’t anything they haven’t seen before”. These ideologies put women in a double bind. If they allow the men to protect them than they are reinforcing the stereotypes that women are not strong enough or physical enough to do the work. There are few women who go against this and say that they get paid the same as the men so they want to do the same work that the men do. Most of the women list their families as their priorities and this cause them to be over-looked for promotions or to not seek promotions at all.