Blackwell Reference Online

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Images of women in the media have presented a serious problem and challenge to feminist activists and scholars concerned about women's status in society. In the US in particular, but also in other parts of the world, the type, quality, and number of → images of women in various fictional and nonfictional →  Genres (in film, television, and magazines especially) have been well documented since the 1970s. Consistently, such research documents women's subordinate status to men, demonstrated by their key absences (such as in →  news ) and attention to physical appearance or domesticity (such as in commercial advertising). While documenting problematic visualizations of women has been a dominant approach to assessing women's relationship to the mass media, other approaches have raised challenges about the theoretical and political shortcomings of a focus on “images.” Consequently, more sophisticated understandings of the relationship between mass media, reality, and political and economic structures have taken hold in feminist communication scholarship (→  Reality and Media Reality ; Media and Perceptions of Reality ). Nonetheless, analysis of women's media images in countries around the world has been important in efforts to make changes for women. The International Women's Media Foundation ( http://www.iwmf.org/resources/stats.php ) compiles study results showing, for example, how ... log in or subscribe to read full text