Guide to the tool kit &
Screening Gender – an introduction
The training toolkit ‘Screening Gender’ is a co-production between five public service broadcasting organisations: NOS (Netherlands), NRK (Norway), SVT (Sweden), YLE (Finland) and ZDF (Germany). A sixth broadcaster, DR (Denmark), was part of the consortium during its first year of operation. The project was developed over three years (1997–2000) and was co-financed by the Commission of the European Communities.
The kit contains a variety of tools designed to provide insight into gender and gender portrayal on television. The materials can be used in a wide range of training contexts – for example, in courses on various aspects of programme-making (interviewing techniques, script and scenario writing, commentary, visual grammar, and so on); in seminars to raise awareness among decision-making groups such as managers, programme buyers, commissioning editors; in discussions with trainers themselves to help focus on training themes and priorities. There are many potential applications.
VIDEO 1:
Who’s in the Picture?
Video clips from programmes of the participating organisations, showing how men and women were portrayed on television in 1998/1999. The clips were selected to illustrate nine features or factors that play a role in gender portrayal. The video is designed to introduce these different aspects of gender portrayal, and to stimulate thinking about how and why they occur.
For a detailed list of contents of "Who’s in the Picture?", see Section E.
VIDEO 2&3:
The Wider Picture
Video clips from six programme genres – news, current affairs, documentary, sitcom, crime series, talk show – and a seventh segment illustrating different types of programme presentation. The aim is to show what can be gained by going beyond the traditional formulae and by aiming for a ‘wider picture’ in terms of gender portrayal. This video goes more deeply into programme-making alternatives. It is designed to focus on gender portrayal issues and possibilities from the perspective of specific programme formats and genres.
For a detailed list of contents of "The Wider Picture", see Section E.
This is My Picture
Interviews with five television professionals, working in a variety of programme genres, from the organisations participating in the Screening Gender project. Each one explains how an awareness of gender influences their work, and the difference this can make to programmes and to viewers.
For a detailed list of contents of "This is My Picture", see Section E.
WRITTEN MATERIAL
1. GUIDE TO THE TOOLKIT
The Guide that you are reading now. It outlines the various elements of the kit and provides a general orientation for trainers.
2. SCREENING GENDER – AN INTRODUCTION
General introduction to the concept of gender and how gender is portrayed in television.
3. RESOURCES FOR VIDEO ANALYSIS
Who’s in the Picture?
The Wider Picture
This is My Picture
4. WHO SPEAKS IN TELEVISION?
A comparative study of male and female participation in the television programmes of six European broadcasting organisations.
5. ADDITIONAL TEXTS
An article outlining the rationale behind the Screening Gender project.
Summarises a focus group study of Finnish women’s programme preferences.
Extract from a Dutch study exploring new quality standards for public television.
6. READING LIST
Key texts for those who want to broaden and deepen their knowledge of the issues presented in Screening Gender.
7. PROJECT TEAM
The organisations and individuals who contributed to the project.
i. Images of men and women – quantitative
Who’s in the Picture? item 1, 2, 3
The Wider Picture item 1
ii. Gender portrayal – qualitative
a. exclusion and inclusion (selection, interview techniques)
Who’s in the Picture? item 3, 4
The Wider Picture item 2, 3
This is My Picture item 1, 2
b. construction of stereotypes (roles, setting, commentary, camera)
Who’s in the Picture? item 5, 6, 7, 8
The Wider Picture item 4
This is My Picture item 3, 4
iii. Changing roles of men and women
Who’s in the Picture? item 9
The Wider Picture item 5, 6, 7
This is My Picture item 5, 6
iv. Experiences of programme makers
This is My Picture
What prior knowledge of gender portrayal can we expect our students to have? Would they naturally feel that the media portray men and women in a stereotypical fashion? If so, how does this stereotyping show itself? Which programme elements contribute to the stereotyping? If time allows you to consider this issue in more depth, at the start of the training you could ask students to watch a recent programme. Then organise a discussion around these general questions. At the very end, in the final training session, ask the students to watch and discuss the same programme again. The extent to which they can apply what they have learned will give an indication of the distance travelled during the training.
VIDEO 2&3
When television entered the living rooms of our parents and grandparents in the 1950s and 1960s, people referred to the new medium as "a window on the world". This expression not only articulated hopes about a shared world that was coming into reach for everyone, everywhere. It also reflected the idea that it was the task of the media, and television journalism in particular, to open up that window on the world. The media would thus offer viewers a mirror of their common reality.
This view, that assumes we live in a transparent world, now seems over-simplistic. It has gradually been replaced by one that starts from the responsibility of journalists and programme makers to reflect a reality which is actually extremely diverse. After all, what we see on our television set always involves a specific interpretation of the world, a particular reconstruction of its reality. In fact, what we see is a reality experienced and understood by programme makers. It is a version of reality that comes into being during a complex production process, entailing many choices – of subjects, guests, script, plot, location, lighting, sound, camera angles and movements, editing, music, commentary, and so forth. Decisions on these and other issues affect the image of reality that reaches the audience. Programme makers thus play a pivotal role in the way television re-presents the world.
This toolkit is concerned with one particular aspect of representation in television – gender portrayal, or the ways in which men and women are portrayed. How do women and men appear on the television screen? Literally, how does the camera record or ‘picture’ men and women? Are there any concrete differences in the ways women and men are pictured? Is there a discrepancy between the roles played by men or women on the screen and in the external world? Is it a straightforward matter to identify stereotypical patterns or approaches to gender roles in television programmes? Or is it more complicated than it might seem to be?
The materials in the toolkit ‘Screening Gender’ illustrate and analyse those patterns of portrayal. In this Introduction, we present and define our basic concepts: "portrayal", "stereotype", and "gender".
What is the difference between the concepts of sex and gender? Sex as a human characteristic refers to a biological fact: the difference between male and female. But societies tend to attribute all kinds of meanings to the two sexes. Over time, these cultural meanings develop into gender roles or identities we describe as masculine and feminine. Gender refers to these historically, socially and culturally constructed differences between the sexes.
So gender is not something that solely applies to women. It is a concept that actually depends on an interpretation of the relationships between women and men. And this interpretation is not fixed, but changeable. Evidence of changing views or interpretations of gender can be found throughout society – in politics, education, health care, business, media, and so on.
Acceptance of the idea that men and women should have equal opportunities is now so widespread that it is easy to forget how recently this notion entered our culture. Only a century ago, in the 1890s, it was possible to embark on a serious scientific study to establish whether women had brains at all. Finland was the first European country to give women voting rights – in 1906. But many European women had to wait much longer – in France, for instance, until 1944. Other rights have been slow to arrive in some countries. In the 1960s, a married Dutch woman still had no right to sign legal documents without her husband’s consent; and even into the 1980s, if she and her husband were seeking a mortgage her income would not be taken into account by the bank. Historically speaking, then, the social liberation of women is a relatively recent phenomenon. So it should come as no surprise that the changes triggered by the modern women’s movement have not yet been absorbed into all cultural domains – including the media. Gender portrayal, or the depiction of the feminine or masculine gender role, is also a cultural phenomenon. Just like gender roles, portrayal is always evolving.
What are gender images? In biology, the difference between male and female is an unambiguous matter. But in culture and society male and female characteristics are much less fixed. How do we express our cultural understandings of male and female traits? A brief exercise may help to illustrate this. Of the words in each of the pairs below, which word is "masculine" and which "feminine"?
knife
fork
banana
apple
hyacinth
gladiolus
Peugeot
BMW
pink
blue
spoon
fork
In responses to this exercise, a fork is usually designated as feminine when it is paired to a knife, but as masculine when paired to a spoon. This demonstrates that whether an object is perceived as masculine or feminine depends at least in part on the context in which it is set. But in many cases it is not at all clear why a particular object is labelled ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’. For example, in English the terms ‘mother country’ and ‘fatherland’ are practically synonymous. It is difficult to pin-point the factors that, on any particular occasion, prompt us to use one rather than the other. This toolkit is designed to improve our understanding of the elements that shape our cultural views of ‘the feminine’ and ‘the masculine’ and that, in turn, help to determine the nature of gender portrayal in television programmes.