“Prime-time Television's Portrayal of Women and the World of Work: A
Demographic Profile.” By: Berg, Leah R. Vande; Streckfuss, Diane. Journal
of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Spring 92, 36. 2, p195+
PRIME-TIME TELEVISION'S PORTRAYAL OF WOMEN AND
THE WORLD OF WORK: A DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE
Content analyses of the attributes and actions of foreground characters in
organizational settings were performed. The analyses indicate that although there
has been some increase in the representation of women and some slight increase in
the heterogeneity of their occupational portrayals, women generally remain
underrepresented and limited in their depictions in prime-time organizational
settings. Women were portrayed as performing more interpersonal actions than
similar male cohorts and fewer decisional, political, and operational actions.
Although research on occupational role portrayals on prime-time television was
conducted as early as 1951, it was not until after the women's movement gained
strength in the late 1960s and early 1970s that the portrayal of occupational roles
of women became a focus rather than an afterthought in television content studies.
Several primary objectives of the women's movement -- the improvement of
women's visibility, role diversity, and equality in the mass media -- stimulated a
number of studies on the depiction of women in popular culture (e.g., Bate & Self,
1983; Dominick, 1979; Franzwa, 1974; Turow, 1974). However, few subsequent
studies extended these analyses into the 1980s. The present study does so by
adding a fourth decade of analysis into the portrayal of gender and occupation on
prime-time television. Additionally, this study extends previous ones by examining
the portrayal of prime-time male and female-characters and, most importantly and
uniquely, the organizational actions they perform in prime-time television's world of
work.
Previous Research on Working Women in Prime-Time Television
Research on the portrayal of the world of work on prime-time television has tended
to focus on three general areas: representation, employment status, and sex-typed
behavioral and psychological traits. In the following section, we briefly note key
content analytic research in each of these areas over the past three decades.
Representation. Beginning with Smythe's (1954) study four decades ago,
researchers have consistently found that women are underrepresented on television
(e.g., DeFleur, 1964; Seggar & Wheeler, 1973). Virtually no change occurred in the
3 to 1 proportion of male to female characters on prime-time television over the
30-year period from the 1950s through the 1970s (e.g., Butler & Paisley, 1980;
Dominick, 1979; Greenberg, Simmons, Hogan, & Atkin, 1980; Lemon, 1974;
Tedesco, 1974; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1977, 1979). Signorielli (1989)
concluded that by 1986 women were still underrepresented.
Employment status. Most researchers who have studied the portrayal of
occupational roles on television use the U.S. Census Bureau schema to compare the
occupational role distributions on television with those of the U.S. labor force.
Because each researcher has adapted this schema somewhat differently to suit
his/her research purpose, it is impossible to compare directly these findings on
specific occupational categories. However, these studies consistently have found
that women on prime-time television are portrayed in a much narrower range of
roles -- primarily as wives and parents -- than are men, and that men are more
often portrayed as being employed and as holding higher status occupations
compared to women (e.g., DeFleur, 1964; Downing, 1974; Gentile & Miller, 1961;
Long & Simon, 1974; Manes & Melnyk, 1974; Seggar & Wheeler, 1973; Signorielli,
1982; Smythe, 1954; Tedesco, 1974; Turow, 1974; U.S. Commission on Civil
Rights, 1977, 1979).
Sex-typed behavioral and psychological traits. Turow (1974) examined "advising
and ordering" in both prime-time and daytime television and found that men gave
directives in 70% (women in 30%) of the episodes. Other content analytic studies
of sex-typed behaviors on prime-time television have found that women were more
likely than men to be portrayed as emotional and in need of emotional support
(Greenberg, Richards, & Henderson, 1980); as sympathetic, nurturing, and
reinforcing (Downs & Gowan, 1980; Harvey, Sprafkin, & Rubenstein, 1979); and as
lacking interpersonal and occupational power (Lemon, 1977; Turow, 1974).
None of the studies reviewed above has examined differences in types of
organizational actions performed by prime-time working women and men. The
concept of organizational action is an important contextual variable, because it
reflects the type of behavior characters perform in the workplace. Vande Berg and
Trujillo (1989) regard organizational actions as being composed of five categories of
behavior: interpersonal function (development and cultivation of interpersonal
activities in the organization, which includes counseling, motivating, and general
sociabilities); informational function (disseminating information to or receiving
information from organizational insiders and outsiders); decisional function
(problem solving and conflict resolution); political function (display, development,
or use of power to accomplish individual or group self-interests); and the
operational function (directly resulting in manufacturing products, delivering
services, or everyday work tasks being done).
This study examines the ways female and male characters are portrayed on primetime television. The analysis will focus on equality of representation across
industries, occupational roles, hierarchical position, depictions, genre, and dramatic
tone. But this study will not be limited to comparing the presence of males and
females or these contextual variables. An additional set of comparisons will be
conducted to reflect the degree of activity of males and females. Thus, the patterns
of presence can be compared with the patterns of activity.
Methods
The sample for this study included 116 prime-time television program episodes that
covered two weeks of programming for each of the three major U.S. commercial
networks (CBS, NBC, and ABC). One sample week was from the spring of 1986 and
the other from the spring of 1987. The sample was restricted to regularly scheduled
prime-time network programs, excluding all specials, movies, sports, and news
programs. When regularly scheduled programs were unavailable for videotaping
during the scheduled week, makeup episodes were videotaped at later dates. In the
few instances where this was not possible, a comparable program (i.e., regularly
scheduled, of the same length, belonging to the same genre, and appearing on the
same network) was videotaped.
Of the 116 episodes in the sample, 115 contained at least one character with an
identifiable occupation and who performed an organizational action in at least one
scene. A total of 115 prime-time program episodes containing 1,944 characters and
7,601 actions were coded. This article reports only the findings for the 986
foreground characters. A foreground character was defined as a character (major
regular and minor regular series character as well as major and minor episode
character) whose speaking and action role served an important plot function.
Two parallel but separate sets of analyses were performed on this data in order to
examine not only the demography of organizational characters but also the types
and patterns of organizational actions performed in television's world of work. The
first set of analyses focused on the 986 foreground characters. The second set of
analyses looked at the 6,087 organizational actions performed by these characters.
For both sets of analyses, six contextual variables were used as points of
comparisons. These contextual variables were industry, occupational role,
hierarchical position, depiction, genre, and dramatic tone.
The five-category schema developed by Vande Berg and Trujillo (1989) was used to
provide a single overall organizational function code for each foreground character
and to code each organizational action in each scene. An action was defined as a
verbal or behavioral work-related activity performed in a single scene by a
character in an organizational context. Each action in each scene that served one of
the five organizational functions was coded as a separate action. A scene was
operationally defined as a sequence of related shots in which there was no change
of setting or break in the continuity of time. A change in scene was deemed to
occur, however, when the setting remained constant but the characters changed
(e.g., when a new character entered or a present character departed). This coding
is consistent with the procedures of other media researchers who have studied
prime-time actions.
Contextual Variables
When a foreground character was identified, a coding was made on each of the
following contextual variables: industry, occupational role, hierarchical position,
depiction, genre, and dramatic tone. Also these six contextual variables were coded
for each organizational action of each foreground character.
Industry. Defined as the work setting of the characters, industry was coded into
one of the 11 major categories of the U.S. Department of Labor's Standard
Industrial Classification schema. Transportation and communications industry
categories were collapsed into one industry category and an additional "other"
category was added to account for illegal and/or unidentifiable industry settings
(see Table 1). Also, several infrequently appearing categories (agriculture, mining,
construction, manufacturing, and wholesale trade) were collapsed into a single
category.
Occupational role. The U.S. Bureau of the Census classification schema was
adapted to describe character occupations not recognized by the government
coding system (e.g., student, lawbreaker, and customer/patient). The resulting 17
categories were collapsed into 10 in this analysis (see Table 2).
Hierarchical position. This was defined as the character's position within an
organization's formal power hierarchy. This variable was created by combining the
exclusively managerial typology of some management scholars (e.g., Hellriegel &
Slocum, 1985) with broader typologies of other organizational scholars (e.g.,
England, 1967) in order to account for such hierarchical differences as those
between resident physicians or detectives (upper level professional staff) and
nurses or patrol officers (lower level professional staff). Thus, following Vande Berg
and Trujillo (1989), 11 hierarchical categories were used to code characters as
indicated in Table 3.
Depiction. Each character and all organizational actions were coded according to
their plot function (positive, negative, or neutral). Positive depictions were defined
as those that benefitted the organization and its members or the broader society of
which the individual or organization was a part. The four positive levels included
charitable/philanthropic, sympathetic/helpful, socially or economically productive,
and friendly. Neutral depictions were defined as those displaying mere civility or
general politeness with no discernible positive or negative plot function. Negative
depictions were defined as those which hurt the organization, its members, clients,
and/or relevant outsiders, or which harmed the broader society. The five negative
variable levels included unfriendly, greedy/selfish, foolish, malevolent, and illegal.
Specific operational definitions of each depiction category can be found in Vande
Berg and Trujillo (1989,pp. 75-76).
Genre. TV Guide genre classifications were collapsed into four genre categories:
comedy, drama, action-adventure, and other (including science fiction and the
recent dramedies).
Dramatic tone. Dramatic tone was defined as the literary backdrop against which
the attitude of the "author(s)" toward the characters and their actions was
presented. Three categories of this variable were comedic, serious, and combined
serious and comedic (including irony and dramedy).
Reliability
Two independent coders trained for three hours in the use of coding protocols
independently coded the character and action data for the contextual variables. One
original coder and one new coder coded all data for sex. After viewing an entire
episode and completing the scene-by-scene coding of organizational actions
(hereafter referred to as the action analysis), coders gave each character a single
overall summary coding judgment for each of the variables (hereafter referred to as
the character analysis).
On the sex coding of foreground characters and their actions, there was 100%
intercoder agreement (using Scott's pi based on a 10% subsample of the data
coded by two independent coders). Intercoder reliability estimates for contextual
variables were: .87 and .84, respectively, for the character and action in the
industry analyses; .$4 and .82 for the occupational role; .81 and .79 for hierarchical
position; .74 and .71 for depiction; .96 and .93 for genre; .96 and .93 for dramatic
tone; and .76 and .79 for organizational function.
Results
Overall representation by sex. Male characters were found to outnumber female
characters by a factor of about 2 to 1. Of the 986 foreground characters identified,
640 (64.9%) were male and 346 (35.1%) were female (see Table 1). When the
gender comparison is made on occupational actions, the proportion of males is even
higher. Of the 6,087 occupational actions of foreground characters, 4,12 3 (67.7%)
were attributed to males..
By industry. Overall, there were statistically significant differences between male
and female foreground characters in our sample in terms of the industries in which
they worked. Twice as many male (29%) as female characters (15%) worked in
public administration industries (law enforcement, courts, national security), and
men outnumbered women in transportation, communication, and manufacturing
industries. Female and male characters were almost equally as likely to be seen in
agriculture, wholesale, and finance industries, while women were proportionately
more likely than men to be seen in the construction and retail trade industries. We
also found statistically significant differences between male and female actions in
terms of their industrial contexts (p < .001). Compared to male activity, female
activity was proportionally higher in the categories of service, retail trade, and no
industry.
When the findings of the overall character analysis and the scene-by-scene action
analyses were compared, we noted several differences. For example, while more
men than women worked in the transportation/communications industry, men and
women performed proportionately nearly equal percentages of the organizational
actions in this industry.
By occupational role. These findings confirm that the differential sex-based pattern
of the past three decades has continued into the late 1980s. Only professional and
technical workers were proportionately the same between men and women
characters. Men appeared more often than women in the occupations of manager,
service, military, and lawbreakers. Females were seen far more frequently than
males in household occupations and as students. They were also far more likely
than males to be portrayed without an organizational occupational role as part of
their characterization. These same differences resulted in the analysis by actions.
By hierarchical position. This study found that male characters who were
professional were more likely to hold higher status organizational positions than
females (see Table 3). However, as managers males were more likely to be lower
level compared to females, female characters proportionately were less likely than
males to hold upper level professional staff positions (e.g., staff physicians and
detectives), were far more likely than males to be found in the lower level
professional staff positions (e.g., nurses and beat officers), and were nearly as
likely as males to hold worker/laborer positions.
Significant differences were also found between the organizational actions of men
and women at the same level in organizational hierarchies. Male managers and
lower level professional staff members performed a significantly greater number of
organizational actions than did females at those same organizational levels, while
proportionally more organizational actions were performed by female workers,
female general staff members, and female upper level professional staff members
than by males at those same organizational levels. Also notable was the finding that
females performed proportionately more customer and client actions than did
males.
By depiction. The overall character analysis found statistically significant differences
between the ways males and females in organizational contexts are depicted.
Working women were proportionally less likely than men to be depicted as negative
characters, somewhat more likely than men to be depicted as positive characters,
and equally likely to be portrayed neutrally (see Table 4). When the analysis was
conducted on actions, the same pattern resulted with the exception that females
were depicted a bit less neutral than were males.
By genre. A significant difference was found between male and female characters in
terms of the genre in which each was most likely to appear (X[2] = 12.6, df = 3, p
< .005). Females were more likely than males to appear in comedies and less likely
to appear in dramas, while twice as many males as females appeared in actionadventure programs. The scene-by-scene analysis of the actions of organizational
members revealed similar findings. Females performed significantly more actions in
comedies and the "other" program category, while males performed significantly
more of the actions in dramas and in action-adventure genre programs (X2 =
34.66, df = 2, p < .001).
By tone. There were no statistically significant differences in the overall character
analysis in terms of the dramatic tone with which male and female characters were
portrayed. However, the scene-by-scene action analysis did reveal statistically
significant differences (X2 = 337.35, df = 9, p < .001) between the tone with which
the actions of female and male organizational members were portrayed. The
organizational actions of women were more likely to be presented comedically, less
likely to be portrayed seriously, and slightly more likely to be presented in a mixed
serious-comedic tone than were male characters' actions.
By organizational function. Proportionately, female characters were far more likely
than male characters to be portrayed performing interpersonal functions in
organizations, while male characters were far more likely to be seen fulfilling
informational, decisional, political, and operational functions in organizations. This
pattern was the same when analyzing actions.
Discussion
One major contribution of this study is the discovery of the utility of the dual
analyses used. As was noted in the findings section above, several significant
differences appeared in the scene-by-scene analysis of the actions of organizational
characters that did not appear in the single overall character analysis. This suggests
that future content analytical studies might gain additional insights by utilizing
similar two-pronged approaches in the analysis of prime-time portrayals.
A second major research contribution of this study concerns the findings. Although
nearly 57% of the U.S. civilian work force in 1988 were women (Sapiro, 1990, p.
23, quoting the Office for Economic Cooperation and Development), only 35% of
this composite six-week sample of 1986 and 1987 prime-time's organizational
members were females. This figure confirms what DeFleur (1964) noted some 25
years ago: "Overall, the world of work [on television] is a man's world."
In other areas, television's world of work remains a "man's world" as well.
Occupationally, this study confirmed that relatively little has changed over 40 years
of prime-time television in terms of the portrayal of working women. Thus,
although women on prime-time television in the late 1980s were nearly as likely as
men to be employed as professionals, women were still far more likely to hold lower
positions than males in their organization's status hierarchy (i.e., nurses rather
than physicians). Additionally, even though women were found on each rung of the
organizational hierarchy from Board Member/CEO to worker/ laborer, they tended
to be underrepresented in most managerial positions. When women did hold upper
level management positions such as CEO/ President, most often these positions
were inherited from their spouses or relatives (for example, Owner/Publisher of the
Los Angeles Tribune, Mrs. Margaret Pynchon, and the late owner of the St. Gregory
hotel, Laura Trent, both inherited their CEO positions). Such findings suggest that
television continues to present working women as lacking the competitively
achieved occupational hierarchical power and status of male workers.
The findings that female characters perform proportionately more
interpersonal/relational actions (motivating, socializing, counseling, and other
actions which develop worker relationships) and fewer decisional, political, and
operational actions than do male characters suggest that in organizational as well
as domestic life on television, the overall image of women continues to be one in
which women are portrayed and defined primarily through stereotypically domestic
"expressive and socio-emotional roles" (see Heibrun, 1976; Hire, 1976; Long &
Simon, 1974; Pearson, 1985). Television's working women continue to be portrayed
significantly less often than working men as decision-makers, as assertive
corporate politicians, and as socially and economically productive working persons.
From the dominant American corporate ethic (the aggressive, individualistic,
competitive capitalist ideology), such portrayals illustrate "why women still don't hit
the top" very often (Fierman, 1990). However, from an alternative
humanist/feminist perspective, findings that television's working women engage in
a large number of interpersonal actions such as counseling, motivating, and
interacting in caring ways with other workers can be interpreted as succeeding. As
Ehrenreich and others noted in the 1990 Time special issue, "Women: The road
ahead," the goal of the women's movement of the 1970s was not to "exchange
places with men" but to create "better places, in a kinder, gentler, less rigidly
gendered world" (p. 15).
From a feminist/humanist perspective, these images of working women and men
are not disturbing because working women are depicted as enacting a humane,
interpersonally-focused, cooperative, concerned, information-sharing style of
working and managing. Rather, the portrayals of the world of work are disturbing
because of the lack of change in the depiction of television's working men, who are
often presented as tough, self-centered, and aggressively competitive.
Research indicates both that children are active constructors of sex-role typed
attitudes and that television plays a role in the occupational socialization of young
viewers (e.g., Baxter & Kaplan, 1983; Durkin 1985; Morgan, 1982, 1987;
Rothschild, 1984). For example, Morgan's (1982) panel study of 6th-8th graders
concluded that television cultivates (especially in girls) such notions as "men are
born with more drive to be ambitious and successful than women." The present
study's findings that working men are seen more often performing operational,
decision-making, and political actions, while women were seen more often
performing interpersonal (relational) actions may help explain Morgan's adolescent
audience findings and his pointed observation: "The stable assumptions and images
about the norms of the adult world, as presented on television, may provide hidden
yet vivid and powerful constraints on their (adolescents') notions about the places
women should take in that world" (p. 954).
This study is grounded in cultivation theory. Like cultivation research, it "begins
with identifying and assessing the most recurrent and stable patterns in television
content, emphasizing the consistent images, portrayals, and values that cut across
programming genres" as an initial step in our "attempts to document and analyze
the contributions of television to viewers' conceptions of social reality" (Signorielli &
Morgan, 1990, p. 16). This study has added a fourth decade of analysis to the
study of patterns in television's portrayal of occupational roles and has extended
previous research by analyzing prime-time television's portrayal of the
organizational actions of working women and men. However, because television is
such a tireless and pervasive purveyor of images, there remains a need for ongoing
analysis of the patterns in television portrayals of the world of work.
Table 1 Industry of Characters and Actions Performed by Sex
Legend for Chart:
A
B
C
D
E
F
-
Industry
N (Characters[1])
%Male (Characters[1])
%Female (Characters[1])
N (Action[2])
%Male (Action[2])
G - %Female (Action[2])
A
B
E
C
F
D
G
457
2872
44%
46%
51%
50%
234
1862
29
34
15
23
Retail Trade
45
342
4
5
6
7
Finance
45
129
4
2
5
2
27
213
4
3
1
3
No Industry
141
502
12
7
18
11
Other[3]
37
161
3
2
4
4
986
6087
100%
100%
100%
100%
Service
Public
Administration
Transportation &
Communication
Totals
1 x2 = 40.92, df = 6, p < .001
2 x2 = 109.52, df= 6, p < .001
3 Includes agriculture, construction, manufacturing, and
wholesale trade.
Table 2 Occupation of Characters and Actions Performed by Sex
Legend for Chart:
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
-
Occupation
N (Characters[1])
%Male (Characters[1])
%Female (Characters[1])
N (Action[2])
%Male (Action[2])
%Female (Action[2])
A
Professionals
Managers
Service
B
E
C
F
D
G
195
1209
20%
20%
20%
20%
135
702
16
14
9
7
191
1765
21
31
17
26
Household
31
89
1
1
6
3
Military
30
269
4
6
1
2
Others
47
245
4
2
7
7
Student
77
291
7
4
9
6
Customer/Patient
98
595
8
8
14
14
No Occupation
130
628
12
9
16
13
Lawbreaker
52
294
7
5
1
2
986
6087
100%
100%
100%
100%
Totals
1 X2 = 60.57, df = 9, p < .001
2 X2 = 347.35, df = 9, p < .001
3 Includes clerical, sales, crafts, operatives, and
workers/laborers
Table 3 Hierarchical Position of Characters and Actions Performed by Sex
Legend for Chart:
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
-
Position
N (Characters[1])
%Male (Characters[1])
%Female (Characters[1])
N (Action[2])
%Male (Action[2])
%Female (Action[2])
A
B
E
C
F
D
G
49
194
4%
3%
6%
4%
53
318
7
7
3
2
Middle Manager
56
375
8
8
1
2
First Line Man.
65
364
8
7
4
5
CEO/Board
Executive/
Top Manager
Upper Level
Prof. Staff
160
1477
18
25
14
22
27
179
2
2
4
6
Staff
98
438
8
6
14
10
Workers/Laborers
77
334
8
5
7
6
Customer/Patient
121
773
10
11
16
16
93
829
10
14
9
13
187
806
17
12
22
15
986
6087
100%
100%
100%
100%
Lower Level
Prof. Staff
Small Business
Owner
Other[3]
Totals
1 X2 = 53.58, df = 10, p < .001
2 X2 = 315.43, df = 10, p < .001
3 Position where organizational hierarchy was not identifiable
Table 4 Depiction of Characters and Actions Performed by Sex
Legend for Chart:
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
-
Depiction
N (Characters[1])
%Male (Characters[1])
%Female (Characters[1])
N (Action[2])
%Male (Action[2])
%Female (Action[2])
A
B
E
C
F
D
G
9
35
1%
.5%
1%
.3%
176
682
16
10
22
13
174
665
18
11
16
10
205
1444
20
22
23
28
Positive
Charitable
Helpful
Soc./Econ.
Productive
Friendly
Neutral
180
2268
18
39
20
35
48
119
6
2
2
1
Malevolent
24
109
3
2
1
1
Foolish
41
114
3
2
5
2
Selfish
83
275
9
4
8
5
Unfriendly
44
376
6
7
2
5
986
6087
100%
100%
100%
100%
Negative
Illegal
Totals
Note. Ferguson (1976) explains that with the use of chl square,
error introduced by small expected frequencies is not of serious
consequence with two degrees of freedom since "an expectation of
not less than two in each cell will permit the estimation of
roughly approximately probabilities" (p. 202).
1 X2 = 23.34, df= 9, p < .005
2 X2 = 80.86, df = 9, p < .001
Table 5 Organizational Functions of Characters and Actions Performed by
Sex
Legend for Chart:
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
-
Organizational Function
N (Characters[1])
%Male (Characters[1])
%Female (Characters[1])
N (Action[2])
%Male (Action[2])
%Female (Action[2])
A
B
E
C
F
D
G
Interpersonal
339
2006
31%
30%
41%
39%
Informational
373
1740
38
42
37
41
103
387
12
9
8
7
49
5
4
Decisional
Political
Operational
Totals
145
4
3
122
617
14
15
10
10
986
6087
100%
100%
100%
100%
1X2=13.5, df = 4, p < .01
2X2 = 69.19, df = 4, p < .001
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Leah R. Vande Berg and Diane Streckfuss
Leah R. Vande Berg (Ph.D., University of Iowa, 1981) is an Associate Professor of
communication studies at California State University, Sacramento. Diane Streckfuss
(M.A., Southern Methodist University, 1990) is a client service representative at the
Arbitron Company. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Southern
States Communication Association Convention in Louisville, Kentucky, 1989. This
manuscript was accepted for publication December, 1991.