Gender Mortality In The Twentieth Century

The ‘notion of “sex” is defined as biological differences between male and female while “gender”, also known as “sex roles”, refer to certain behaviours and characteristic attributed to each sex that was a social construction.’ (Carter 2011, p.22) Basically indicating that sex is biologically driven while gender dictates how the society should act and behave as a man or woman with the elements of ideologies such as patriarchy and capitalism. However, the distinctions between the two terms are often eroded to the point where it is no longer possible to recognize the difference and the significance of doing so. Hence, this essay aims to discuss how media’s ability to produce social identities has influenced gender parity in the British society during the twentieth century. The essay will further explore how the media has …show more content…
Later on, the limited representations of women in the mass media left women in the first half of the twentieth century discouraged and prevented them to achieve individual success due to the lack of female representatives in the media. Feminism in media continued to decline during the 1950s, due to the combined occurrence of the Second World War and the Great Depression. However, during the rise of the second-wave feminism in the early 1960s, women were able to feel a slight sense of relief. According to Lazier and Kendrik, feminist messages were slowly incorporated into advertising. This led to several developments, such as more images of women in the workplace, in positions of authority and as independent beings (1993). The increase of women working in the news however did not change the status quo of the workplace, where men were dominating most of the higher-ranking jobs. Women were not only given less screen time as reporters, but usually only appear on the news as victims or celebrities. The absence of women working behind and in front of the camera in journalism according to Gallagher (2005) led to an undervaluation of women’s