Gender Stereotyped Portrayal of Women in the Media: Perception and Impact on Adolescent

It has been widely recognized that media can play an instrumental role in bringing social transformation and social change by promoting and disseminating information. The content of media reflects the pattern of value in any society. The prevailing attitude of the society gets revealed through the way subjects dealing with women are treated by the media. Whether deliberately or unintentionally, the way women have been portrayed in media is exaggerated form of real life circumstances and assumptions and it has very little relationship with the real life. The matter of concern is that it has a great impact on life style of today’s adolescents as they imitate and identify themselves with the character shown in the content of programmes of printed or electronic media. The purpose of the study is to find out the perception of adolescent’s regarding sexstereotyped portrayal of women in the media and its relationship with real life experiences. A sample of 100 students in the age group of 17 to 20 years was selected by using purposive sampling technique. The sample of 100 students comprised of 50 boys and 50 girls. The data collection for the present study was undertaken with the help of a self constructed questionnaire. The questionnaire includes 70 questions to elicit the perception of boys and girls belonging to the age group 17 to 20 years towards sex stereotyped depiction of women in print and electronic media. The statistical analysis of data collected included percentage, mean, standard deviation and ttest. The findings of the study show that there is stereotypical representation of gender roles in media and in some ways it reinforces the traditional patriarchal notions of gender as perceived by the adolescents. Female students showed more agreement with typical stereotypical representation of women in traditional role or as a sex object and they felt a need of regulation on the content of media as compared to male.