Representation Of Women Research Paper

Media is everywhere. Even more so today than ever before. We get bombarded with pictures of what’s important to society everyday on television, movies, and social media. A huge majority of these images perpetuate gender inequality. It is by no means blatantly telling people that women are the weaker sex. All of this is happening in a slightly subtle way. It starts with the under-representation of women, the definite lack of women in speaking roles or any roles at all. If a women is there, more often than not, they are faced with sexualization. The camera is more focused on the body rather than anything else. This can be summed up in the idea of the “male gaze,” which helps enforce gender roles. In Films, Women make up a mere 29% of all speaking roles and only 16% of protagonist parts according to the documentary “Miss Representation.” That is far from an actual representation of the amount of women that make up, which is 51% of the United States’ population. The few roles that are out there for women are very limited due to the disproportionate number of images that portray women only as young, white, heterosexual, and economically privileged. This can be explained by the lack of women in leadership or creative roles in the industry. A lone 10% of writers and 7% of film directors …show more content…
It is a horrible indictment of our society of we assume that one half of our population is just not interested in the other half.” This idea is often what kills female lead from getting the green light for production. It makes sense that this is still a common assumption when the people who are in charge of these decisions are men; only 4.6% of S&P 500 CEOs are women. Although this ideas is starting to change with some of the biggest contemporary movie hits are led by a female protagonist, like the Twilight Saga and The Hunger