of illustrations, titles, stories and characters. For instance, coding the illustrations revealed “a ratio of 11 pictures of males for every one picture of a female” (p. 1128) overall (including humans and animals). Images of humans displayed slightly less gender disparity as compared to images of animals. The ratio of male to female animals with an identifiable gender was an incredible 95:1 (p. 1128). Given that the ratio of males to females in society is roughly 1:1, it is clear that women and girls were significantly underrepresented in children’s books, leading Weitzman et al. to suggest that females are portrayed as less important in society than are males.
Further, Weitzman et al. show that the stories portrayed stereotyped gender roles: “in the world of picture books boys are active and girls are passive” (p. 1131). Girls often wore restrictive clothing that prohibited active roles, but this was not the case for boys. Girls were depicted more frequently indoors than out, and the reverse held for boys. And girls were most often depicted as performing “service roles” such as “pleasing and helping” males by cooking or cleaning for them (p. 1132–1133). Adult females were restricted to a few roles, such as mothers, mermaids, or fairies/fairy godmothers, whereas males were depicted in a large range of roles such as “storekeepers, housebuilders, kings, spiders, storytellers, gods, monks, fighters, fishermen, policemen, soldiers, adventurers, fathers, cooks, preachers, judges, and farmers” (p. 1140–1141). They also note, “Picture books actually deny the existence of the discontented, the poor, the ethnic minorities, and the urban slum dwellers” (p. 1148).
Subsequently, researchers have wondered whether changes in society since 1972, when Weitzman et al. published their work, are reflected in children’s books. Williams et al. (1987) conducted a much more rigorous content analysis of influential children’s books published in the 1970s and 1980s. This study showed that women and girls, while still underrepresented, had come closer to parity in illustrations, as compared to books published from 1961–1971 (in Weitzman et al.), and that the percentage of books with central female characters had tripled. These changes were statistically significant. However, gender roles still tended toward the traditional, stereotyped roles in the majority of books. Gooden and Gooden (2001) reported that gender equity was reached with respect to females represented as the main character in “notable” children’s books published from 1995‐1999. However, more male (human or animal) characters than female appeared alone in pictures, and while the prevalence of gender stereotypes had declined, stereotypes were still common. A key change was that women were sometimes portrayed in work roles, such as “doctors, chefs and even milk vendors” (p. 95).
These studies are based on the method of content analysis from the positivist tradition. In content analysis, the researcher chooses a sample of materials and then codes them for a variety of factors. Coding artworks allows the researcher to make quantitative statements about them and to test hypotheses. Content analysis can be used for textual materials, such as children’s books, and also for visual materials, as in England, Descartes and Collier‐Meek (2011), who study the gender roles portrayed by movies featuring “Disney Princesses.”
Content analysis can be useful for uncovering changes over time. McCabe et al. (2011) use this technique when looking at changes in children’s books over the twentieth century to contribute to the debates on the portrayal of gender. After coding 5,618 children’s books published from 1900–2000, they discovered that the disparity between males and females persisted across the century, but was lower in periods in the 1900s–1920s and from the 1970s on, when women’s movements were active, and greater in mid‐century during periods of traditionalism or backlash against feminism.
Understanding Rituals
Goffman (1987 [1976]) took a very different approach to learn about gender relationships. He examined advertisements to learn about contemporary society in his well‐known study, Gender Advertisements. He argues that, in order to make their meaning clear, advertisements point to familiar rituals from everyday life. Rituals include formalized behavior called “displays,” which are useful because they “provide evidence of the actor’s alignment in a gathering, the position he seems prepared to take up in what is about to happen in the social situation” (p. 1, emphasis original). Displays, then, reveal the structural relationships—the alignments—among people. The depictions in advertising are schematic representations of displays; they are “hyper‐ritualized.” Goffman argues that advertisements are an excellent source from which to learn about structural relationships in everyday life, precisely because they present, unambiguously, these hyper‐rituals.
Goffman looked at thousands of print advertisements to show the structural relationship between men and women. He showed that women are structurally subordinate to men, and we can see this through a variety of displays common in advertisements. For instance, subordination is shown through “relative size” (p. 28), especially the height of the participants. Taller participants carry more authority. In the advertisements Goffman examined, men are routinely shown with their heads higher than those of women. While it is true that men are, on average, taller than women, Goffman suggests that this physical difference alone does not account for the way men are shown in advertisements. Rather, advertisements are constructed to make a particular meaning, and it would be possible for advertisers to portray women as taller than men. Moreover, it is actually the height of the head rather than actual height which conveys the authority. So in one picture that Goffman shows us, there are three men, one standing and two seated. The context, and the heights of the heads, show that the men work in an office and the standing man is the boss. It would be easy for advertisers to use images of sitting men and standing women, but it is telling that they almost never do so. Indeed, Goffman finds some exceptions to the “men are taller” rule, but in each of these, there is something else going on which explains the woman’s height. In one case, the woman is dressed in upper‐class clothing and she stands next to a shorter man dressed as a chef. It is clear that, as his patron, she has more status than he does. In another case, the woman is tall; she is also stout and dressed as an opera singer complete with a pike and horned helmet! She’s powerful, but also ridiculous; the exception that proves the rule.
Goffman describes a number of other displays that similarly reflect the unequal nature of gender relations in society. He posits that a “classic stereotype of deference is that of lowering oneself physically in some form or another of prostration. Correspondingly, holding the body erect and the head high is stereotypically a mark of unashamedness, superiority and disdain. Advertisers draw on (and endorse) the claimed universality of the theme” (p. 40). He goes on to show that “children and women are pictured on floors and beds more often than are men” (p. 41), and that women are posed with a “bashful knee bend” (p. 45) or with a “cant” (bend) of the head or body that “can be read as an acceptance of subordination, an expression of ingratiation, submissiveness and appeasement” (p. 46). Another display is “Function Ranking” in which men “perform the executive role” in face‐to‐face interactions between men and women (p. 32).
Goffman’s influential study was based on advertisements printed in the 1960s and 70s. More recent studies have found that many, but not all, of Goffman’s findings still hold in contemporary advertising. Cortese (1999), for instance, finds that the relative height of men and women often follow the pattern Goffman described, but heights are also reversed, with women portrayed higher, such that the finding on relative size no longer applies (pp. 27–28). Gender reversals are also found in function ranking, with women taking the lead, but Cortese finds that “traditional function ranking remains a big draw for marketers” (p. 33). Similarly, Kang (1997) found that relative size and function ranking had declined in advertisements, but that stereotyped portrayals of women have increased.
Race
Entman and Rojecki (2001) examine the popular arts, American television commercials, prime‐time television shows, and top‐grossing Hollywood movies,5
