Status of Women 1998 Abstracts
Commission on the Status of Women
Reframing Media Coverage of Women’s Health: Magazine Reports on Breast Cancer and Implants in the 1990s • Julie L. Andsager, Washington State University and Angela Powers, Northern Illinois University • This study examined how women’s magazines covered breast cancer implants, considering whether information focused on social or economic issues, extending similar research on newspaper coverage. Traditional and computerized content analysis methods were used to determine the issues, sources, and frames appearing in four Magazines. The sources used and the frames that emerged suggested that magazines presented breast cancer in ways compatible with a sense-making approach, though the same was not true for breast implants.
Media Coverage of Women’s Sports: Perspectives of Female Journalists and Athletes in the United States and Norway • Bente Bjornsen, Denver • This paper examines how female journalists and athletes feel about media coverage of women’s sports, focusing in particular on newspapers in the United State and Norway. Using a critical theoretical framework, the research explores how patriarchal power structures and values within mass media and sports shape portrayal of female athletes. Interviews with female ski racers and female sports journalists reveal that they believe female athletes receive less sports-related coverage in newspapers than do male athletes, and that newspapers view male athletes as more important.
An Examination of the Women Featured in Broadcasting and Cable’s “Fifth Estater” 1992-1997 • Constance Ledoux Book, Meredith College • The men and women selected by the editors of Broadcasting and Cable for recognition in the weekly column “Fifth Estater” were examined over a five year period. Using the data made available in the weekly column a content analysis of those covered was conducted. Units of analysis included race, education, type of medium where employed, the number of positions held before recognition and a host of personal issues. Women comprised 12% of the sample and were significantly different than men in several ways: education level, number of positions held before recognition, type of medium where employed, whether married, divorced or have children.
News of “Kiddie Killings”: Feminist Theories of News Coverage and Violence • Mia Consalvo, Iowa • This case study of three shooting sprees by young boys in the South argues that feminist theories of violence against women were ignored as possible explanators in media analysis of the killings. This research points to the need for feminist theory to broaden its view of violence against women to highlight issues of power and coercive control, and show how these acts of violence serve to maintain individuals’ control over situations and other people.
Gender, Beauty, and Western Influence: Negotiated Femininity in Japanese Women’s Magazines • Fabienne Darling-Wolf, Iowa • This analysis of five Japanese women’s magazines investigates how Japan’s long history of Western influence might have impacted this country’s cultural representations of female beauty. Intended as a pilot study for a larger scale project, this analysis explores how Western influence is integrated and negotiated in these publications. It concludes that while Western influence is evident, Western-style consumption is often reinscribed into specially Japanese constructions of gender and sexuality.
Suffocating Jezebel, Sapphire and Mammy: Persistent Cross-Media Stereotypes of African-American Women in “Waiting to Exhale” • E-K. Daufin, Alabama State University • The film “Waiting to Exhale” continues to impact the film and video industry, as well as on the fabric of African American women’s psyche and intimate relationships in the Black community. This study is based on a focus group of 28 African American viewers and a social-reality model critique. It looks at cross-media stereotypes in the film and their social, cultural and marketing ramifications.
Beyond Tokenism: Multicultural Communications Theory and Practice • B. Carol Eaton, Syracuse University • This paper addresses scholars and practitioners in mass communications about the importance of including comprehensive diversity and “multiculturalism” in all aspects of their work. To that end, this paper briefly outlines one theoretical perspective that can be used for multicultural mass communication research and practice. The paper then develops a working model of multicultural communications to help practitioners, teachers, and researchers in the field include class, ethnicity, gender, and other intersections of identity in their work.
Gender Differences in the Perceptions of Television News Anchors’ Career Barriers • Erika Engstrom and Anthony J. Ferri, Nevada-Las Vegas • A nationwide mail survey of 246 local TV news anchors was conducted to examine anchors’ perceptions of hindrances to their career progress. Women anchors; highest-rated barrier was the overemphasis on their physical appearance; lack of professional networks and support groups ranked the highest for men. Career barriers ranked highly by anchors of both sexes included: balance between work and family life, conflicting roles of wife/mother or husband/father and professional newscaster, and relocation.
Women Correspondent Visibility 1983-1997 • Joe S. Foote and Cynthia Price, Southern Illinois University • This study, covering 15 years from 1983-1997, is the first longitudinal study to examine the visibility of women correspondents on the network television evening news. After stagnating during the eighties, women’s visibility increased sharply during the early nineties, providing a firm foundation for incremental improvement. By 1997, more than half of women correspondents were among the 100 most visible, up from less than 25 percent fifteen years earlier, but their inclusion among the top ten remained elusive.
Blame and Shame: Teen-aged Mothers, Ideologies and the New York Times • Dustin Harp, Wisconsin-Madison • While taking into account the complexities of adolescent pregnancy within the context of a culture that both sexualizes teen-aged girls and admonishes them for being sexually active, this research explores ways in which the New York Times’ coverage of teen-aged pregnancy and motherhood from 1992 through 1996 reflected dominant ideologies of motherhood. Through text analysis, and drawing on a feminist theoretical perspective of the ideology of motherhood, the research investigates the nature of 18 articles.
Mary, Patricia, Maxine and Cynthia: Tracing the Stories Behind the First Rape Victim Identification Debates, for Columbia S.C. 1909 to the U.S. Supreme Court 1975 • Kim E. Karloff, California State University-Northridge • The press has been grappling with the issue of identifying rape victims long before Patricia Bowman and the Central Park Jogger made headlines. So have the courts. While Florida Star v. B.J.F. in 1989 served as the U.S. Supreme Court’s last statement on the legal debate, it first addressed the issue in 1975’s Cox Broadcasting v. Cohn, a broadcast case out of Georgia. State leaders and residents, however, have been stewing over the matter since the turn of the century.
Sexual Saints and Suffering Sinners: The Uneasy Feminism of The Masses, 1911-1917 • Carolyn Kitch, Northwestern University • During the 1910s, both the women’s rights movement and Socialism gained widespread support in American. This paper examines the intersection of these causes in the radical magazine The Masses, offering a rhetorical analysis of its verbal and visual imagery of women and the working poor. It argues that the magazine’s conflation of gender and class and its inability to transcend stereotypes weakened its arguments about both women’s rights and Socialism at a crucial political movement.
Listen Up: A Comparison of Male and Female Opinion on the Issue of Family Values • Myra Gregory Knight, North Carolina-Chapel Hill • Recently, many newspapers have intensified efforts to attract new readers, in particular working women. Some have hired female columnists, who are assumed to write more on topics of interest to women and in a style more pleasing to them. This study compares opinion columns by men and women to see whether such gender differences exists. The women were found to frame a “woman’s” issue differently and to employ a more “feminine” writing style.
Blurring the Lines: Postfeminism, Sanity and Ally McBeal • Abigail S. Leafe, Syracuse University • This research uses a theoretical feminist perspective to examine Ally McBeal, a new primetime television drama, giving special attention to the concept of postfeminism. The investigation revealed that, on Ally McBeal, the private sphere invades the public to the extent that they are hopelessly intertwined. The result, for the program’s protagonist, is complete chaos and loss of mental stability. Femininity, female gazes and bonding, as well as the program’s implications for women are also examined.
War Stories: Women Correspondents Battle to Cover the Vietnam Conflict • Christine Martin, West Virginia University • Although women correspondents have covered wars since the Spanish-American conflict, it was not until the Vietnam War that they achieved fill access to the battlefield and equal opportunities to cover all aspects of the conflict. Easily attained army accreditation, the burgeoning women’s movement and the unique nature of the Vietnam War • a Third World, essentially, political conflict • combined to offer women reporters unprecedented opportunities to cover the war and to prove themselves as worthy members of journalism’s elite crew • war correspondents.
Gender Roles in Rumpelstiltskin: The Effect of Fantasy Portrayals on Real-Life Attitudes • Katjar R. Pinkston • This research explored to what extent 82 fourth graders would respond to gender roles stereotypically after having watched a heavily stereotyped film of Rumpelstiltskin compared to a new, less stereotypical version. It was found that the 1965 group was more likely to reply that women were gentle and cried more often, while men got into fights, made most rules, and protected others than those who watched the 1986 version or who saw no film.
All I Really Needed to Know (About Beauty) I Learned by Kindergarten: A Cultivation Analysis • Susannah R. Stern, North Carolina-Chapel Hill • This study addressed young girls’ conceptions of beauty in conjunction with their media consumption to illuminate the early development of beauty standards and definitions. The relationship between amount of television viewing and perceptions of beauty were examined among 63 kindergarten girls. The results revealed that heavier television viewers differed from lighter viewers in their definitions of and standards for beauty. Overall, evidence was found for a cultivation effect; heavier viewers’ perceptions of beauty adhered more closely to those patterns which currently persist in television content.
The Portrayal of Professional Beach Volleyball Players in Three Major Newspapers, 1995-1997: An Analysis of Media Coverage of Male and Female Athletes • Troy Tanner, Brigham Young University • This study investigates print media portrayals of female and male professional beach volleyball players. Beach volleyball coverage in the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Sun Tribune and the Sun-Sentinel (Ft. Lauderdale) was examined from the years 1995 to 1997. Both quantitative content analyses and qualitative analyses are used to test the hypothesis that women professional beach volleyball players, consistent with the coverage of female athletes in general, are underrepresented, treated as inferior to men, and often framed within the context of sexuality rather than athletic ability.
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