Understanding How Women Are Represented in the Media and Why It Still Matters
If you’ve ever scrolled through Instagram, watched Love Island, or seen an advert that made you roll your eyes, you’ve already noticed something feminist sociologists have been studying for decades: the media doesn’t just show us the world, it shapes it.
Representations of gender, especially of women, reflect and reinforce the values of a patriarchal society. That means they often reproduce unequal power relations between men and women. Feminist research into the media explores how this happens, how it’s changed over time, and what it means for audiences today.
Gaye Tuchman (1978): The Symbolic Annihilation of Women
Gaye Tuchman’s classic idea of symbolic annihilation describes how women are often either ignored, trivialised, or condemned in media portrayals. In the 1970s, for example, TV shows such as Happy Days or The Brady Bunch showed women almost exclusively as wives and mothers. When women did appear in public or professional roles, they were usually judged on their looks rather than their abilities.
Tuchman argued that this underrepresentation sends a powerful message: women’s experiences and achievements simply don’t matter as much as men’s. This still rings true today — think about how sports news focuses on male athletes’ skills while female athletes often get comments about their outfits or appearance.
A recent Global Media Monitoring Project (2020) study found that only around 24% of people featured in news stories are women, showing that Tuchman’s argument is far from outdated.
Laura Mulvey (1975): The Male Gaze
Film theorist Laura Mulvey introduced the idea of the male gaze, arguing that mainstream cinema is built from a heterosexual male perspective. This means women are often shown as objects of visual pleasure rather than active subjects who drive the story.
Think of the way “Bond girls” are filmed in James Bond movies — the camera lingers on their bodies, while Bond himself is in control of the action. This pattern appears in many adverts and music videos too — such as the controversial “Blurred Lines” video, where women’s bodies are used to sell a fantasy.
Mulvey’s work highlights how deeply gendered the act of looking can be. Media encourages audiences to “see” women through male eyes, reinforcing power inequalities between men (as subjects) and women (as objects).
Naomi Wolf (1990): The Beauty Myth
By the 1990s, feminist debates had shifted. Naomi Wolf argued in The Beauty Myth that as women gained legal and professional rights, new forms of social control appeared through the pressure to meet impossible beauty standards.
Wolf claimed that magazines like Vogue and Cosmopolitan encouraged women to focus on improving their looks instead of challenging inequalities. Today, that same dynamic plays out on social media. Platforms like Instagram create endless opportunities for comparison through filters, influencers, and “perfect” body ideals.
Wolf saw this obsession with beauty as a way to keep women busy, anxious, and self-critical — in other words, as a modern form of patriarchal control.
Rosalind Gill (2007): The Postfeminist Sensibility
Rosalind Gill developed the idea of the postfeminist sensibility, which suggests that contemporary media presents women as “empowered” and “sexually confident,” but only within narrow, appearance-focused limits.
Campaigns like Dove’s Real Beauty claim to celebrate empowerment, yet still centre women’s worth around their looks. Reality TV shows such as Love Island are another example — they promote confidence and independence, but almost every contestant fits the same beauty ideal: slim, tanned, and glamorous.
Gill argues that this version of empowerment is shaped by consumerism — women are told they’re powerful if they buy the right products or look the right way. It’s a subtler but still powerful form of gender control.
💋 Angela McRobbie (2009): The Aftermath of Feminism
Building on Gill’s ideas, Angela McRobbie claimed that popular culture now suggests feminism is no longer needed. In what she calls the “aftermath of feminism,” women are portrayed as free and successful, yet still judged mainly on their appearance and romantic status.
For example, films like Bridget Jones’s Diary and Legally Blonde seem to celebrate independence but end up reinforcing traditional ideas about femininity — emphasising beauty, relationships, and heterosexual romance.
McRobbie argues that this creates a paradox: young women are told they’ve achieved equality, while media culture continues to recycle the same old gender norms in glossy, modern packaging.
bell hooks (1992) and Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989): Intersectionality
Feminism isn’t just about gender — and that’s the point made by bell hooks and Kimberlé Crenshaw, who developed the idea of intersectionality. They argue that we can’t fully understand gender inequality without considering how it connects with race, class, and sexuality.
hooks pointed out that Black women are often stereotyped or made invisible in mainstream media. When they do appear, they may be typecast as “angry,” “strong,” or “hypersexualised.” Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality helps explain how overlapping systems of oppression shape these representations.
Modern shows like Insecure or Bridgerton offer more diverse portrayals, showing how feminist media theory has evolved to include different voices and experiences.
Connecting the Theories
Across time, feminist research reveals a pattern:
- 1970s–80s: Media ignored or misrepresented women (Tuchman, Mulvey).
- 1990s–2000s: New pressures emerged through beauty and “empowerment” discourses (Wolf, Gill).
- 2000s–present: Media celebrates feminism while quietly reinforcing old norms (McRobbie).
- Today: Intersectional approaches (hooks, Crenshaw) challenge the idea that gender alone explains representation.
Together, these theories show how representations of women have changed in form — but often not in meaning.
Your Turn: Analysing Media Representations of Gender
Try this short activity to apply feminist theory to real examples.
- Choose a media text – a film trailer, music video, advert, magazine cover, or influencer post.
- Analyse it using feminist ideas:
- How are men and women represented?
- Can you see evidence of the male gaze or beauty myth?
- Does it claim to show “empowerment”? If so, is that empowerment genuine or shaped by consumerism (Gill, McRobbie)?
- Are race, class, or sexuality also part of how people are represented (hooks, Crenshaw)?
- Write a short reflection (about 200 words): To what extent have feminist criticisms of media representations become outdated in the 21st century?
You could compare a modern example with a 1970s or 1980s one to see how far representations have really changed.
References
- Crenshaw, K. (1989) Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex. University of Chicago Legal Forum.
- Gill, R. (2007) Gender and the Media. Cambridge: Polity Press.
- hooks, b. (1992) Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press.
- McRobbie, A. (2009) The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. London: SAGE.
- Mulvey, L. (1975) “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen, 16(3): 6–18.
- Tuchman, G. (1978) “The Symbolic Annihilation of Women by the Mass Media.” In G. Tuchman, A. Daniels, & J. Benet (eds.), Hearth and Home: Images of Women in the Mass Media. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Wolf, N. (1990) The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women. London: Vintage.
You can download a PPT summary of this below for use in classrooms.
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