Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2012

This special issue on Gender Relations in the Media is to be understood in the context of certain topics and important discussions in the area of feminist media studies, including post-feminism, sexualization, gender violence and feminist research methodologies. This set of articles brings together important aspects regarding the future of the field, such as newsroom studies from a professional perspective, the glass ceiling faced by female professionals, the need for consensus on the concepts we use to analyse gender inequalities, the construction of femininity and masculinity from gendered representations and the incorporation of a gender perspective in the media professional practices. This special issue includes articles by authors of very diverse origins and covers a wide range of themes, making for an issue rich in material for discussion and reflection.

This article argues that a post-feminist spirit underlies the representation of the successful television series Mad Men (AMC 2007–). Set in the flourishing New York advertising industry during the early 1960s, Mad Men depicts the rapid changes experienced in gender identities and cross-gender relationships in both the public and private spheres. This article contends that a post-feminist sensibility – a term proposed by Rosalind Gill – can be felt at different levels as the fiction develops. First, it permits self-indulgence in the viewer: the time set justifies the depiction of blatant sexism and at the same time imposes a lapse so wide that feminist awakening can be simultaneously viewed as urgent in the 1960s and as a victory already achieved. Second, it inspires nostalgia and venerates pre-feminist glamour and straightforwardness. Finally, a post-feminist spirit imbues the representation of female characters but, most notably, plays a crucial role in the depiction of men, particularly the protagonist Donald Draper.

Feminist studies have repeatedly analysed advertising, which is considered a socialization agent capable of maintaining traditional gender attitudes. In recent decades, the amount of scientific research related to gender and advertising has increased. In this context, using a quantitative method we examine concepts, characteristics, productivity and specific procedures used for measuring sexism in the field of advertising. For this purpose, we carried out a systematic review of 215 articles published in English and Spanish between 1988 and 2010 and included in seven national and international databases. Our results show that, despite an increase in the amount of research, the different elements of the advertising communication process have not been studied to the same degree and also that a variety of techniques have been used to measure sexism. Moreover, information about the instruments and measurements used in these studies is incomplete.

The aim of this study was to analyse female participation among creative advertising professionals who worked on top advertising campaigns between 2004 and 2008 (according to the Spanish advertising trade press). A total of 581 advertising campaigns were reviewed. This study found evidence of horizontal and vertical segregation in the advertising industry. Female advertising practitioners were under-represented in industry accolades. The lowest female participation was found in the creative department, while women outnumbered men in the account and the media services departments. Segregation was found in job positions and team composition and gender division was encountered in the account categories creatives were working in. This study suggests that female creatives occupy lower job positions than men and are less involved in the decision-taking process of the final advertising products.

Seven press conferences in the United States were analysed in order to understand the gender construction of political wives at these media events. Press conferences where male politicians address sexual impropriety are a regular news occurrence in the United States. The male politician’s wife can often be seen standing next to her husband, although she rarely says anything at these carefully orchestrated public events. Through a textual analysis of the husband-politicians’ remarks at their press conferences, this study examines how these events reflect gender norms. Findings indicate that the political wife is a complicated part of the ‘scandal script’ because she is read by the researcher as a symbol of support and shame in relation to her husband-politician.

The focus of this work is on gender relations and representations in the media in Nigeria. While there are studies establishing a lower number of female journalists across the globe and press under-representation of women, there seems to be much less evidence that establishes whether there is a relationship between the lower number of female journalists and press under-representation of women. We applied the research tradition of the newsroom ethnography method to investigate female journalists’ perceptions of gender relation issues in the media. Personal and group interview techniques were used for this study of 30 female journalists in Nigeria. The findings revealed that the factors responsible for the low number of female journalists in Nigeria are that journalism requires and demands effort and commitment for success to be achieved (and this could make some women feel they cannot combine the pressure with their domestic responsibilities as women), corruption in the media (the brown envelope syndrome), cultural factors and the fact that women do not want publicity. It was also revealed that a reason for under-representation of women was largely because there were more male newsmakers in society. It was recommended that women should aspire to positions of authority to become newsmakers and that every necessary effort should be made to ensure equality in gender representation in the media and society in general since this is essential for meaningful development, especially in the developing world.

Here we reflect on the pervasiveness of a traditional model of gender relationships in media representations, considering the results of a cross-media project, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, which studies whether the media encourage or prevent gender violence. The traditional model, hegemonic in TV series and music videos, links violence and suffering to attraction and thus may promote the understanding of aggression and pain as constituents of desire and love. Moreover, especially in music videos, there is a growing amount of women’s post-feminist portrayals that reify classical femininity at the same time that they over-come traditional limitations of women’s characters such as passivity or martyrdom. Instead, (new) pop divas like Lilly Allen or Madonna engage in a violent curse of revenge against masculinity. Results gain further importance in relation with teenagers’ self-portrayals on the Internet, which strongly resemble the gendered representations found in the mainstream media.