GENDER & MEDIA

Gender in social media

Mass media play a significant role in a modern world, by broadcasting information in fast pace and giving entertainment to vast audiences. It includes press, television, radio, books and the Internet. By creating a certain type of message, media can manipulate people’s attitude and opinions. It also concieved many different stereotypes and body images.
What is stereotype?
People organize their knowledge about the world around them by sorting and simplifying received information. They create schemes, which are certain representations of the reality displaying its most typical and fundamental elements and properties. One of the most important types of schemes used for orientation in the social environment are the stereotypes, representing the opinions among members of a certain group about the other groups. Because of many simplifications and generalizations that they produce, stereotypes present incomplete, subjective and sometimes false image of the reality. They are often based on tradition and are resistant to change.
Stereotypes in commercials
Women are more often presented in commercials, because they are seen as responsible for making everyday purchases. Men generally advertise cars, cigarettes, business products or investments, whereas  women are shown rather in the commercials with domestic products. They are also more likely portrayed in the home environment, unlike men, who are shown outdoors. Women are more often shown in sexual way when advertising cosmetics, but they also appear in the commercials directed to men. When a beautiful woman accepts and praises the male cosmetics, it is treated by men as a guarantee of its quality. The ideal image of man in mass media is  “a real man”, athletic, successful, professional, seducer with a beautiful woman by his side. He also has to have a smartphone and a branded car. He has to do something adventurous and extremely interesting. Furthermore, more and more commercials are directed to children. They indicate “the proper place” in the society for girls and boys. Girls are shown as babysitters nursing dolls or cleaning house with a pink cleaning kit, when boys do sports or play computer games
Breaking gender stereotypes
In spite of significant presence of the stereotypes in commercials, advertising specialists more and more often use non-schematic ideas of the promotion of products and services. Women are presented as liberated, strong and independent of social expectations and men are shown while washing or cleaning. The most popular, non-stereotypical commercial is Dove campaign aimed at women at every age and with different kinds of figures. It emphasizes natural beauty instead of perfect shapes. The female viewers prefer to watch women, with whom they can identify, so the campaign proved to be a great success. Male roles in advertising are redefined as well – British commercial of a cleanser called Ajax presents handsome men cleaning kitchen with this product. In the other example, a man is striping for his girlfriend and then throws his clothes in the washing machine called Ariston. This situation is opposite to the traditional scheme, in which a girl is a seductress and a man is a viewer.
Conclusion
Commercials are the powerful tool used for creating and shaping people’s opinions. Their structure is simplified in order to be understood by mass receivers. Advertisement text contains dominant and well known characteristics of the reality. Therefore stereotypes are very often used in the commercials as one of the most popular techniques of persuasion. However, they describe specific groups in relation to the whole regardless of individual differences.
The main aim of mass media is to be universal and suitable for everyone, in order to gather the largest possible audience. Thus television, responsible for providing the central social discourse, is supposed to be “a mirror of the society”. However, because of stereotypical way of explaining the reality, some groups are underrepresented or ignored, and therefore the society image is incomplete. For instance, the way in which male and female roles are presented in commercials reflects the traditional notions of gender, where women are dominated by men. Although people are aware of the dangers posed by generalization, they tend to be conformists and would rather submit to the dominant patterns than oppose them and risk a negative reception of such behavior from the others.

source: http://krytyka.org/gender-stereotypes-in-mass-media-case-study-analysis-of-the-gender-stereotyping-phenomenon-in-tv-commercials/

DIFFERENCES IN UPBRINGING BOYS AND GIRLS

Raising a child is a complex task which varies from country to country, one culture to another, family to family. Finally, it greatly depends on character and personality of every child. Raising a kid is a comprehensive process. However, in spite of perceived differences in social context, there are a lot of different ways to bring up children. In the internet exist many blogs which are about methods of birnging up  children in the whole world.
In some blogs there is incuded advice of correct raising up kids and similarities and differences in raising boys and girls. For example girls should be prepared for childbearing. Most mothers are  teaching their daugters how to cook or clean while boys are brought up to become breadwinners.
The other blogs are about not respecting women’s rights in countries like  Iran, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria or African countries e.g. Chad.

First of all- differences in upbringing boys and girls don't result only of culture or religion, of course these two have enormous importance for many people but there is a much more important thing: our nature. There are psychological differences between men and women and these are the one and only thing we should care about when we bring kids up. For example girls are more sensitive  and like gathering in opposition to boys who like hunting, it is obviously a generalization but it shows how evolution shaped us. So we won't give a girl a shooter game but rather a doll. We don't think about evolutionary aspect of decisions like this, we have no idea that there are still many things which we do  instinctively and there's nothing wrong with it. This "discrimination" is healthy for us. Girls, who are usually more sensitive than boys, put up with criticism badly, they think that they have to be perfect at everything, while boys need criticism to shape a strong character. We can't treat boys and girls the same because they are diffrent... but they can also be similar. Boys can like dolls, what then? Nothing, this isn't a problem though it's in conflict with evolution. Every child is special so if our son wants to play with dolls we should accept it because if we won't he can feel bad with himself for years. The point is just "be kind to your own child!".