The role of Media on aggression against women

Some scholars believe that aggression against women is related to media sexual violence. Media affects either directly or indirectly on sexual behavior of men. TV shows influence on people’s thought patterns in their sexual activities. For example   “a civil suit brought against NBC television alleged that the portrayal of rape in a television movie, Born Innocent, directly resulted in an imitation rape by several juvenile viewers”. Although, thought patterns of sexual motivation is not only shaped by media exposure, magazines and TV shows such as movies, advertisements and etc, have a main role, but not linear, in the way that some viewers act in their sexual life.

In an academic study, Malamuth and Check found that “college men’s frequency of reading explicit magazines correlated positively with their beliefs that women enjoy forced sex”.

Some studies indicate that men’s aggression against women is not directly related to what they watch on media and there are certain naturalistic variable in their individual life which learnt by them during their life span. But the thing is that according to observational learning theory, people learn everything through observing in their life span especially in their childhood that television has an important part in children’s daily life.

Roots of discrimination against women in media

Women often have been portrayed in media as “a considerate wife and a devoted mother”. It means that only reproductive role of women in the life is emphasized on media and their productive roles in the socio-economic, cultural and political parts are being neglected. “Women have been viewed as the weak whose voice and discourse power has been neglected in all the fields of mass media”.

 This discriminative image of women in media is rooted in the real life that women encounter to inequality in many aspects of life. In politics, they have little access to political positions in parliaments and they are not given permission to be involved in decision making process within the families and communities. In economics, not all women have ownership rights and their access to resources is narrowed by patriarchal structures in communities. On the other hand, they do not have appropriate circumstances in workplaces and have many challenges with their employers. In social life, women are not able to confront with male dominant customs and traditions. They have to obey their fathers and brothers before marriage and their husbands after marriage. In many countries man is bread winner and superior to woman even though women play a main role in family economics. Unfortunately, a large number of women in the world are suffering from various types of discrimination and mass media not only are neglecting women productive roles but also enforce male dominant structures.