WORK-FAMILY IMAGERY AND GENDER STEREOTYPES - TELEVISION AND THE REPRODUCTION OF DIFFERENCE

This article explores how popular cultural imagery reflects and reprod uces work-family segregation and gender inequality. Social constructio nist research on television, advertising, and gender is reviewed, and theories explaining gender inequality in the workplace and the home ar e summarized. Results of a study of 1699 television commercials from t he 1990s are presented, and hypotheses about the relationships among g ender, family relationship, work status, occupational category, job au thority, and interaction style of characters are evaluated. Compared t o men characters, women in the advertisements were less prevalent, mor e likely to be shown in families, less likely to hold jobs, less likel y to be employed in professional occupations, more likely to be employ ed 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 demonstrat ed that gender, job characteristics, family membership, and target aud ience all significantly influenced the likelihood that a character wou ld display stereotyped behaviors. Results suggest that media imagery h as changed only slightly, with men predominantly portrayed as workers and women as sex objects. (C) 1997 Academic Press.