Exploring the Linkages Between Mass Media and Gender Representation

From the dutiful daughter-in-law of prime-time television to the muscular hero of an action film, mass media constantly tells us what it means to be a man or a woman. These images do not simply entertain us; they teach, normalise, and circulate ideas about gender that shape everyday life. Understanding the linkages between mass media and gender helps us see why representation is never neutral, and why the question of who is shown, how, and by whom matters deeply for any society striving toward equality.

How media defines what is “masculine” and “feminine”
The masculinity script
The femininity script
The feminist media critique
Hegemony, ideology, and the patriarchal gaze
Beyond the male gaze
The impact of gendered media on society
Shaping attitudes and self-image
Who tells the story matters
Policy, public discourse, and gender-based violence
Signs of change, and what still remains

How media defines what is “masculine” and “feminine”

Mass media is one of the most powerful institutions that constructs gender. Newspapers, films, television serials, advertisements, music videos, and social media platforms continuously circulate images of how a “proper” man or woman should look, behave, speak, and aspire. Over time, these repeated representations harden into social common sense, defining what counts as masculine assertiveness or feminine grace.

Research on Indian television advertising shows just how persistent these patterns are. A widely cited content analysis found that female characters in Indian ads were more often portrayed in relationship roles and depicted in domestic settings, while men dominated voiceovers and public, professional spaces. A more recent UNICEF and Geena Davis Institute study of the top 1,000 most-viewed ads in India in 2019 reached similar conclusions, noting that female characters were less likely to be shown in paid employment, and more likely to be selling domestic products and food, or shown handling childcare and shopping.

The masculinity script

Media constructs masculinity just as actively. Men in commercials are routinely associated with cars, finance, technology, and outdoor adventure. They are shown as breadwinners, decision-makers, and authority figures, often using fact-based arguments while a male voiceover delivers the final verdict. This narrows the cultural script for boys, suggesting that emotion, caregiving, and domesticity are not “masculine” virtues. Studies of children’s television advertising in India find that male characters dominate autonomous roles and product authority, while female characters are more often shown as dependent users of domestic products, with stereotypical reward patterns reinforced in cartoon-channel ads aimed at very young viewers.

The femininity script

Femininity, on the other hand, is overwhelmingly tied to appearance, care, and consumption. The woman of the detergent commercial worries about stains on her family’s clothes; the woman of the fairness-cream advertisement waits to be noticed; the woman in the kitchen ad nourishes everyone but herself. Even when working women appear, the focus often shifts to whether she can “balance” career and home. As one analysis of Indian commercials notes, advertisements typically portray women as multi-tasking wives managing domestic responsibilities, reinforcing the gendered division of private and public space.

The feminist media critique

The systematic study of gendered media owes much to second-wave feminism, which emerged from the mid-1960s onwards. While first-wave feminism focused on legal rights such as suffrage, the second wave turned its lens onto culture, family, sexuality, and representation. Feminists argued that women’s subordination was not just a legal problem but a deeply cultural one, embedded in everyday images and stories. As one academic survey of the period explains, the second wave located oppression in personal life, in fashion, representation, art, family, and love, insisting that mainstream norms operate as powerfully as repressive laws.

Hegemony, ideology, and the patriarchal gaze

Second-wave feminists borrowed analytical tools from Marxist thought, especially Antonio Gramsci’s idea of hegemony: the way dominant groups secure consent not through force but through culture and ideology. Applied to media, this meant that patriarchy was sustained not only by laws but by the seemingly harmless pleasures of films, novels, and magazines. The Sage Encyclopedia of Gender in Media summarises this position clearly, noting that second-wave feminists viewed patriarchy as a social construction in which media were major contributors to the establishment and maintenance of an unequal system, training women to be passive, submissive, and dependent.

A landmark intervention came in 1975, when British film theorist Laura Mulvey published “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” She argued that mainstream cinema was structured around a male gaze: the camera, the narrative, and the spectator’s position all assumed a heterosexual male viewer, while women appeared as objects of looking. As her essay later inspired media studies across the world, the concept became, as one recent reflection puts it, central to feminist debates not just in film studies, but also in media studies, art theory, and advertising.

Beyond the male gaze

Later feminists complicated Mulvey’s framework by insisting that gaze and representation are also shaped by race, caste, class, sexuality, and ability. The Black feminist scholar bell hooks introduced the idea of the oppositional gaze, arguing that women of colour have always looked back critically at the images that excluded or stereotyped them. In the Indian context, similar critiques have noted how advertising routinely privileges “able-bodied”, fair-skinned, upper-class and upper-caste female bodies, excluding women who are dark-skinned or differently abled. The feminist media critique, in other words, is not only about gender; it is about whose femininity and whose masculinity get to be visible at all.

The impact of gendered media on society

Why does any of this matter beyond academic debate? Because the images we consume shape our attitudes, our policies, and the choices we feel we can make.

Shaping attitudes and self-image

Repeated exposure to stereotyped images influences how viewers, especially young people, see themselves and others. Social learning research suggests that when audiences are continuously shown women in domestic, caregiving, or objectified frames and men as independent authority figures, these depictions get internalised as norms. A doctoral study of Indian television commercials concludes that media uses specific gender frames to convey messages to the audience and shape their perceptions about gender roles, with people mimicking the stereotypical behaviours they observe. For adolescents, this can affect everything from career aspirations to body image to who they think is “naturally” suited for leadership.

Who tells the story matters

Representation is not only about characters on screen; it is also about who produces the news and who narrates the nation. A study published by UN Women and Newslaundry on Indian newsrooms found that women constituted only 35.4 per cent of journalists, and wrote 39.8 per cent of articles across leading digital news platforms. Leadership positions skew even more sharply male. When women are under-represented in editorial decisions, the stories that get prioritised, the language used to describe gender-based violence, and the framing of issues like maternal health, unpaid work, or LGBTQ+ rights all tend to reflect a narrower viewpoint.

Policy, public discourse, and gender-based violence

Media framing also feeds directly into policy debates and public attitudes. When sexual violence is sensationalised, or when survivors are portrayed primarily as objects of pity rather than agents of justice, public discourse follows. Recognising this, the Press Council of India, in consultation with the United Nations Development Programme, has drawn up guidelines urging media to report atrocities on women and children responsibly and to avoid misleading and improper gender-based programming. Similarly, UNICEF has called for the advertising industry to use its reach to challenge rather than reinforce harmful gender norms, treating brand communication as a tool for social change.

Signs of change, and what still remains

It would be inaccurate to paint mass media only as a villain. Campaigns like #ShareTheLoad, films built around women-led narratives, and a growing genre of socially conscious advertising have begun to question domestic stereotypes and male privilege. Web series and OTT platforms have created space for more complex portrayals of women, queer characters, and non-metropolitan lives. Some advertisements now show fathers cooking, mothers leading boardrooms, and same-sex couples celebrating festivals.

Yet structural problems persist. Sexualised imagery, fair-skin bias, the near-invisibility of Dalit, Adivasi, and disabled women, and the persistent under-representation of women in newsrooms and decision-making positions all indicate that change is uneven. The linkages between media and gender are not fixed; they are continuously negotiated, and each generation of viewers, creators, and critics shapes what counts as a “normal” story.

What do you think? When you next watch a popular advertisement or a film, ask yourself: whose perspective is the camera taking, and whose story is missing? Can you recall a recent piece of media that genuinely challenged the gender script you grew up with, or did it simply repackage the same old roles in new clothes?

References

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Exploring the Linkages Between Mass Media and Gender Representation

Table of Contents

How media defines what is “masculine” and “feminine” 🔗

The masculinity script 🔗

The femininity script 🔗

The feminist media critique 🔗

Hegemony, ideology, and the patriarchal gaze 🔗

Beyond the male gaze 🔗

The impact of gendered media on society 🔗

Shaping attitudes and self-image 🔗

Who tells the story matters 🔗

Policy, public discourse, and gender-based violence 🔗

Signs of change, and what still remains 🔗