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Career Ambition and Gender Stereotypes in Entertainment Media CAREER AMBITION AND GENDER STEREOTYPES IN ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA By GENEVIÈVE MARQUIS Integrated Studies Final Project Essay (MAIS 700) submitted to Dr. Nanci Langford in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts – Integrated Studies Athabasca, Alberta August, 2014 ABSTRACT Films are a reflection of society and culture and thus serve as a source of information for both children and young adults in their construction of identity. By examining several different disciplines such as psychology, visual culture, and gender studies, the paper provides an analysis of the literature found on gender stereotypes in entertainment media – as well as in motion pictures – which reveals that career ambition for leading female characters does not hold sufficient importance in the storyline. Existing research has found that entertainment media focuses on romantic relationships in which both men and women assume roles deemed culturally appropriate. By analyzing the following categories: social standing and social roles; age, physical appearance and representation; education and gender roles; and occupational profession and gender, the paper reveals that female and male roles remain highly gendered and that they are stereotypically portrayed. Knowledge of gender portrayals in entertainment media becomes important because it informs us about the perception of culturally acceptable roles for both women and men. 1 INTRODUCTION Films are a reflection of society and culture and thus serve as a source of information for both children and young adults in their construction of identity. In this light, the cognitive process involved in the construction of identity is based on situational theory in which both personality and identity are shaped by specific environmental factors that reinforce and influence behaviour (Wallace, 2011, p. 96). Since identity is a social construct that is “closely linked to or aligned with environments external to ourselves” (Wallace, 2011, p. 112), the process of selecting, arranging and understanding information about the self in relationship to the environment is based on perception. To this effect, the process of social perception consists of three elements: the perceiver; the target; and the context (Wilson & Rees, 2001, p. 127). In modern society, the context – or environment – is created and sustained almost exclusively by mass media. Television, film, magazine, newspaper, video, and the internet affect our perception of information about the world in which we live in and about ourselves. In addition, social perception is shaped by a plethora of gender portrayals, one of which is centred on professional occupations. In this paper I argue that mass media – particularly entertainment media – portrays specific gender norms for women and men. If children and young adults draw information about their world from the media, then motion pictures have an impact on the social education of these individuals (Tanner, Haddock, Zimmerman, Lund, 2003). Assumptions and ideas about gender portrayals on-screen have the ability to influence gender stereotypes off-screen (Lauzen, Dozier & Horan, 2008). In this light, what messages do stereotyped aspirations and occupations based on gender send out to audiences? More specifically, my research question is: how do the messages about female and male career ambition that the words and images of selected 2 Hollywood films portray exemplify existing research findings about entertainment media and gender stereotypes? With this question in mind, the paper sets out to identify different types of gender stereotypes in both entertainment media and motion pictures in order to examine the importance given to professional ambition in the storyline. This examination might help shed light towards understanding the importance of the role that the film industry plays in shaping children’s and young adults’ perception on career aspirations, professions, and gender roles. Much has been documented on stereotypes in media and this paper contributes to the literature on the subject (Collins, 2011; Lauzen, Dozier & Horan, 2008; Smith & Cook, 2008; Smith, Choueiti, Prescott & Pieper, 2013). By examining several disciplines such as psychology, visual culture, and gender studies, the paper provides an analysis of stereotypes in entertainment media to answer the question about career ambition. The paper begins with the argument that entertainment media is responsible for portraying specific gender norms between women and men. Moreover, the way by which entertainment media portrays gender stereotypes is responsible for shaping the way we see the world around us. How much emphasis then does the movie industry put on professional occupations? How is career ambition portrayed? While the findings are informative, they reveal that ambition – for both women and men – is a theme that is downplayed in entertainment media, especially in motion pictures. The analysis also calls for a need to re-evaluate themes in movies because if “basic social roles enacted by characters contribute to viewer expectation and beliefs about gender” (Lauzen, Dozier & Horan, 2008, p. 202), then the maintenance of the same only gets perpetuated again and again. In the end, the paper addresses a cross-disciplinary problem in the hope of contributing to a better understanding of how media and films influence perception. 3 METHOD In order to answer the research question, my method primarily draws on literature about gender and occupational stereotyping in entertainment media. The literature selection is an important part of the paper because it allows for an understanding of the topic insofar as to demonstrate what has already been found and what the key issues are. My literature was selected by using Google Scholar, a search engine which provides access to scholarly books and articles which I found to be very helpful. Keywords used for my research were 'stereotype and media', 'mass media stereotype', 'media stereotype and interdisciplinary', 'career stereotype and media', 'occupational portrayal and films', 'gender and media', 'gender film analysis', 'gender images and films' and 'gender portrayal and media'. My search yielded a wide range of interdisciplinary results from disciplines such as psychology, sociology, and cultural studies to gender studies and visual arts. In order to effectively select the literature in light of my research question, I sifted through the abstracts of the results and chose literature that dealt specifically with the portrayal of gender stereotypes in entertainment media. Once my literature was selected, I took notes about interesting pieces of information, insights found, and thoughts on how to organize my paper. I also selected literature from previous courses taken in my MAIS program. Having kept notebooks on all my readings, I sifted through them and selected articles that dealt with behavioural studies applied to organizations such as workplace settings. Articles and chapters dealing with psychological formation of identity and social perception were thus selected. It is important to mention that my method also uses motion pictures. Four films have been selected to examine how messages about female and male career ambition exemplify existing research about entertainment media and gender stereotypes: (1) Morning Glory; (2) My 4 Big Fat Greek Wedding; (3) I Don't Know How She Does It; and (4) Bridesmaids. The movies selected were based on purposive sampling – also known as judgement sampling (Palys, 2008) – of leading female character roles that had an impact on me. The selection was further refined to include criteria such as portraying lead female characters as being active players in their personal and/or professional lives, and that the movie genre depicted a somewhat normal day-to-day life. According to the research studies done on gender stereotypes in the media (Lauzen, Dozier & Horan, 2008; Smith, Choueiti, Prescott & Pieper, 2013; Smith & Cook, 2008; Collins, 2011), not only do lead female characters inhabit interpersonal roles that focus on romance, family, and friends but they are often sexualized and lack gainful employment whereas men are depicted in work-related roles. In addition, studies (Steinke, 2005; Seiter, 1986) have found that gender-related stereotypes are not created equal and convey cultural and social assumptions about gender roles. Because visual culture is embedded in films and mass media (Mitchell, 1995), the importance of research conducted on media's impact to act as a source of information for audiences cannot be under-estimated (Tanner, Haddock, Zimmerman & Lund, 2003). This becomes increasingly important when applied to cognitive behaviour in trying to understand the constructs of both personality and identity in which social perception plays a key role. The next section addresses key findings of the research literature. GENDER STEREOTYPES AND THE MEDIA In order to understand how the media uses stereotypes to portray women and men occupationally we must first begin by defining the term itself. For Wilson and Rees (2011), stereotyping is “a particular form of perceptual short cut and involves making assumptions and judgements about other people on the basis of limited information” (p. 130). Stereotyping is also linked to perception insofar that it is an unconscious psychological process that requires an 5 interaction of an infinite number of factors and variables which, ultimately, makes the process highly subjective (Wilson & Rees, 2011). The outcome
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