Representation of Gender

Gender Identity refers to whether the characters are men or women. It could also include transgender, transvestite, and androgynous characters.

There are several gender stereotypes widely seen on television:

Male Stereotypes

• Traditional masculine man – often shown as being muscly, strong, brave, heterosexual, working in manual jobs such as building, plumbing etc. They are often aggressive, tall, and dominant over women, works to provide for family, does no cleaning, cooking or childcare
• New Man – Often shown as being less masculine but still heterosexual, very peaceful, looks after the family, stays at home to look after family, does cleaning and cooking etc, shown as equal to women
• Gay Man – Often shown as being very feminine, weak, working in jobs such as fashion or hairdressing, bitchy, etc

Female stereotypes

• Traditional feminine woman – often shown as being girly, likes pink, wears dresses, does feminine jobs such as working in fashion, hairdressing or stays at home to look after the children, needs a man to cope, weak, scared of things, needs rescuing, pure and innocent
• Sexy woman – very flirty, dresses in a revealing way, more powerful than traditional women, uses men to get what she wants, no loyalty to other women, bitchy
• Lesbian Woman – Often shown as dressing in a masculine fashion, doing masculine roles, hating men, looking masculine

It is important to remember that not all characters will fit into these categories and you may have characters that are mixtures. All you need to do is work out what the technical elements say about them. If you get “gender” as an issue in the exam, you should be thinking about the following things when watching the clip:

• Can I identify what gender the characters are in the clip?
• Are people from different genders shown as having different interests, personalities, attitudes, behaviours? If so, how?
• Is their gender represented as being important in their life?
• Are people of different genders portrayed as being better, more powerful, than others?
• Are people from different genders portrayed as being abnormal /weaker/ more pathetic than others?
• How do other characters in the clip treat the characters of different genders?
• What is the message the clip is trying to portray about gender?

Here are some clips featuring gender that you should watch to practise for the exam: