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Depictions of Gender on Primetime
Television: A Quantitative Content Analysis
Alexander Sink and Dana Mastro
Department of Communication
University of California, Santa Barbara
To document current portrayals of women and men on primetime television, a
quantitative content analysis was conducted. A 1-week composite of primetime
television programming across 9 broadcast and cable networks was randomly
sampled, yielding 89 programs and 1,254 characters. Consistent with prior findings, women were significantly underrepresented on primetime TV when compared with men. Analyses examined representations of gender in the realms of
occupation, aggression, sexualization, and stereotypically masculine and feminine
attributes, with comparisons drawn across different age groups. Contrary to
popular belief, these findings suggest that the current state of primetime television
does not represent a “golden age” for women. Although it appears that some
gender stereotypes have declined when compared to previous decades, others
(e.g., dominant men, sexually provocative women) have persisted. Implications
are discussed in terms of cultivation and social cognitive theories.
Alexander Sink (M.A., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2015) is a doctoral student in the
Department of Communication at University of California, Santa Barbara. His research interests are
focused on the role of media in issues of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination, and his current
research projects focus on portrayals of sexual minorities in entertainment media content.
Dana Mastro (Ph.D., Michigan State University, 2000) is a Professor of Communication at the
University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research documents depictions of Latinos in English and
Spanish language U.S. media and empirically examines the range of intergroup and identity-based
outcomes associated with exposure to these portrayals.
Correspondence should be addressed to Alexander Sink, University of California, Santa Barbara,
Department of Communication, 4005 Social Sciences & Media Studies Building, Santa Barbara, CA
93106-4020. E-mail: sink@umail.ucsb.edu
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INTRODUCTION
In a recent interview, Emmy-winning actress Julianna Margulies proclaimed, “It’s a
wonderful time for women in television” (Scott, 2014). Margulies, who appeared on
the acclaimed CBS legal drama The Good Wife (2009–2016), is not the first to suggest
that a new age of primetime television is upon us—one that showcases and celebrates
powerful female characters. Indeed, examples of strong and successful women currently on primetime come to mind with relative ease, as shows featuring prominent
and influential women (e.g., Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder) have received
much praise and attention in the popular press (e.g., Putnam, 2014). If these examples
do, in fact, generalize to the primetime landscape as a whole, this would represent a
notable advancement for women on TV (Scharrer, 2012). However, before definitive
claims can be made regarding improvements in the status and standing of women on
television, it is first necessary to systematically analyze the extent and quality of these
depictions. The current quantitative content analysis endeavors to do just that. As such,
this study marks the first broad-based quantitative assessment of gender portrayals,
that we are aware of, in more than a decade (see Scharrer, 2012, for review). Given the
small but consistent influence of media exposure on self-perceptions and broader
gender conceptualizations, documenting these portrayals is of great social significance. Although effects cannot be determined from content analytic results, when
coupled with theory they offer insights into the types of outcomes that can be expected
and examined in subsequent experimental and survey studies.
Media and Gender Stereotyping
Evidence from the realms of business, education, and politics (among numerous
others) indicates that women continue to experience marginalization in the
United States. Not only are women paid less than men at every educational
level and in every job category (Coontz, 2013), but they are also consistently
underrepresented in fields related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (Saucerman & Vasquez, 2014). Such disparities are rooted in gender
biases that privilege one group (men) over another group (women; Dovidio,
Hewstone, Glick, & Esses, 2010). Although there are numerous sociocultural
contributors to these biases, media exposure is among the many factors that
meaningfully influence gender-role conceptualizations (Scharrer, 2012). Indeed,
a number of empirical studies demonstrate that media use, particularly television
viewing, exerts a small but significant influence on gender role attitudes and
gendered behavior (see Oppliger, 2007, for meta-analysis). More specifically,
media exposure has been linked with a wide range of negative outcomes
including (a) acceptance of beliefs regarding hypermasculinity among college
men (Scharrer, 2005), (b) tolerance of sexual harassment and violence (Lee,
Hust, Zhang, & Zhang, 2010), (c) acceptance of dysfunctional relationship
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beliefs (Ward, 2002), and even (d) hampering women’s educational and vocational aspirations (Davies, Spencer, Quinn, & Gerhardstein, 2002).
Consequently, the definition of women provided by mass media content holds
social significance.
Although the depiction of gender across a variety of media platforms remains
a central focus of content analytic inquiry (e.g., Armstrong & Gao, 2011; Fowler
& Thomas, 2015; Prieler, 2016), the last comprehensive, peer-reviewed analysis
of gender on primetime television stems from a sample of programming that is
more than 15 years old (Signorielli & Bacue, 1999). Certainly, the television
landscape is likely to have changed dramatically since the time of Seinfeld and
Dawson’s Creek. Yet the contemporary status of gender characterizations on
primetime TV is, regrettably, undocumented. The current investigation addresses
this gap by examining depictions of gender in modern primetime television. To
this end, the present study was guided by existing content analyses of gender
differences in the media as well as by insights from prominent theories of media
effects.
MEDIA AND GENDER ROLE LEARNING
Despite the fact that television viewers are often unaware of the impact that
media images may have on them, and may not even believe that media use can
influence their attitudes, beliefs, and actions (Perloff, 2002), empirical evidence
demonstrates that media representations can and do influence people’s cognitions
and behaviors, under certain conditions (see Nabi & Oliver, 2009, for review).
Both cultivation theory and social cognitive theory (SCT) provide frameworks
for understanding how and why the characterizations of gender offered by the
media are meaningful.
Cultivation theory posits that long-term exposure to the messages, values, and
standards provided by the media (and television in particular) shifts a viewer’s
worldview toward the television version of reality, with this effect being more
pronounced for heavy viewers than for light viewers (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan,
Signorielli, & Shanahan, 2002). Through the selective presentation of different
groups (e.g., men and women) in terms of how and how often they are seen, the
media shapes cultural perceptions and governs views about the composition of
the social world (Gerbner et al., 2002) Accordingly, both the number and nature
of media characterizations contribute to how consumers of media perceive the
world around them.
SCT also emphasizes the critical role of media exposure in making sense of
one’s social environment (Bandura, 2001). In its simplest form, SCT suggests
that the mechanisms through which people learn from media exposure are
consistent with processes associated with learning from real-world models of
WOMEN ON PRIMETIME TELEVISION 5
behavior. By observing the behaviors of others (e.g., peers, parents, media
figures), an individual can develop rules that guide subsequent thoughts and
behavior. This observational learning is governed by the principles of attention,
retention, production, and motivation, with media exposure most likely to affect
audience behavior when members are attending to attractive and/or similar
models realistically performing uncomplicated, personally relevant, and
rewarded behaviors.
When assumptions rooted in SCT and cultivation theory are taken together,
they highlight the mechanisms through which media content can contribute to
the construction of social reality and articulate how symbols in the media can
potentially influence viewers’ schemas of gender roles (Dill & Thill, 2007). For
example, people are partially socialized to issues such as gender identity (or
aggression, ethnic stereotypes, etc.) by observing media figures that model these
concepts (Dill & Thill, 2007). Repeated exposure to these media messages
encourages the learning of scripts or mental routines (i.e., schema) that can
then become activated when a person encounters ambiguous or challenging
social situations (Huesmann, 1998). Because of the influence of these media
messages, understanding the exact nature of content that is shaping schema
related to gender is essential.
GENDER REPRESENTATIONS ON PRIMETIME TELEVISION
Existing content analyses examining depictions of gender on primetime television reveal two consistent patterns. First, women persistently appear at a rate
below their proportion of the U.S. population. Second, women are largely
confined to a narrow set of roles on television that emphasize sexuality, idealized
beauty standards, and gender stereotypic occupations/lifestyles (Scharrer, 2012).
Thus, disparities exist both in terms of the quantity and quality of gender
portrayals on television.
Quantity
Despite the fact that women constitute 50.8% of the population of the United
States (U.S. Census, 2010), women have historically been underrepresented on
television (Signorielli & Bacue, 1999). Given that the sheer quantity of images of
a group in the media (e.g., racial/ethnic group, gender, etc.) conveys a message
about its relative value and strength in society (Harwood & Roy, 2005), presence
in the media is meaningful. If a group is relatively absent or underrepresented in
the media, the implicit message is that this group cannot succeed and does not
have a place in society (Fryberg & Townsend, 2008). Accordingly, exposure to
numeric disparities in representations has the potential to influence schemas
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related to the relative importance of men and women in the real world. Given
consistent patterns of underrepresentation across numerous media platforms, the
following hypotheses are posed:
H1: Male characters will significantly outnumber female characters on primetime
television.
H2: The proportion of females on primetime television will differ significantly from
the proportion of women in the United States population
