Work-family imagery and gender stereotypes: Television and the reproduction of difference

This article explores how popular cultural imagery reflects and reproduces work-family segregation and gender inequality. Social constructionist research on television, advertising, and gender is reviewed, and theories explaining gender inequality in the workplace and the home are summarized. Results of a study of 1699 television commercials from the 1990s are presented, and hypotheses about the relationships among gender, family relationship, work status, occupational category, job authority, and interaction style of characters are evaluated. Compared to men characters, women in the advertisements were less prevalent, more likely to be shown in families, less likely to hold jobs, less likely to be employed in professional occupations, more likely to be employed in service/clerical occupations, less likely to exercise authority, less likely to display active/instrumental behavior, and more likely to be pictured as sex objects. Logistic regression analysis demonstrated that gender, job characteristics, family membership, and target audience all significantly influenced the likelihood that a character would display stereotyped behaviors. Results suggest that media imagery has changed only slightly, with men predominantly portrayed as workers and women as sex objects. (C) 1997 Academic Press.