The Influence of Television Cartoons From the Flintstones to the Power Puff Girls

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The Influence of Television Cartoons From the
Flintstones to the Power Puff Girls The Influence
of Television on Childrens Gender Role
Socialization
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The gender biased and gender stereotypes
behaviors and attitudes that developing young
people are exposed to on television will have an
impact on their perception of male and female
roles in our society. Susan D. Witt, PhD
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Did You Know??

• Television is the most influential form of media
  in shaping ideas of race and gender for children.
  
• Preschoolers spend an average of nearly 30 hours
  a week watching television.
• By the time children are 16 years old, they have
  spend more time watching television than going to
  school.
• On average, children are exposed to 20,000
  advertisements a year.

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Do Children Notice they Live in a Boys World?

• Since 1970, research has shown that females have
  been under represented on television programs, in
  commercials, and on cartoons.
• Male characters are portrayed in a much greater
  variety of roles and occupations.
• Female characters were seen as the mother, maid,
  nurse, girlfriend, teacher, and waitress.
• Research found that 75.5 of the characters in
  childrens television were make and 21 were
  female.

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• Male action heroes have been a staple of
  childrens television for over 50 years.
• 83-91 of the voices for voiceovers and
  narrations are male
• The Muppets all have male voices, including Ms.
  Piggy.
• In 101 top grossing G-rated movies between
  1990-2005, there are three male characters for
  every one female character fewer than one out of
  three of the speaking characters (both real and
  animated) are female fewer than one in five of
  the characters in crowd scenes are female more
  than four out of five (83) of the film
  narrators are male.