MEDIA AND GENDER SOCIALIZATION

How my society and the process of socialization influenced me who I have become?



How my society and the process of socialization influenced me who I have become?

Introduction

Socialization is a process by which the larger societal and cultural norms and values are transmitted to the individual. Successful socialization also involves an internalization of the larger norms and values into the consciousness of the individual actor. This process usually takes place when adults teach small children “right” from “wrong.” Children learn what is expected of them from the social system as well as what to expect from the social system and are simultaneously bound to the system by those expectations. Childhood socialization equips the individual with only a very general sense of how to respond to social situations, and a continued lifelong socialization process is necessary to prepare individuals with how to deal with more specific situations.

Discussion and Analysis

The title of this entry brings to the foreground a number of important issues in the study of gender. The pairing of the terms gender and socialization, for example, highlights the ways in which gender, following the arguments of mid-20th-century feminists such as Simone de Beauvoir, is shaped over time rather than bestowed at birth. The underlying arguments of de Beauvoir can be seen in more-recent theorizations of gender. Although philosophically distinct, the work of Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, Germaine Greer, bell hooks, and Eve Sedgwick betrays indebtedness to de Beauvoir's contention that gender identity is a socio-historical contingency rather than a biological fact. The term socialization, then, refers to the impact of discourses and ideologies in the shaping of the socio-psychological experience of categories such as gender or social class. The other headword for this entry is media, suggesting that gendering and gender socialization take place against the backdrop of contemporary media output and representations..(Ryan 2004)

This entry will consider the ways socialization, in light of social construction theory, takes place primarily in relation to language and representation. Gender socialization is not an event so much as it is a process that depends on a range of variables in the culture and in inter-subjective relationships. In Western cultures, the media industries shape some of the ways gender is perceived. However, the chapter will discuss the media in terms of their various subdivisions and functions and not simply their impact on gender socialization. (Ryan 2004)

Effects, Society, and Gender

We can begin to ...