Prejudice Under the Microscope
Posted on: Tuesday, 6 May 2008, 09:00 CDT
By Yvonne Cook
TV's portrayal of women in science is undermining efforts to promote equal opportunities in the field, according to recent research.Yvonne Cook reports
Decades after equal opportunities legislation came into force, only one in five professionals working in science, engineering and technology is a woman. And one reason for this could be what our children watch on television.
Representations of women scientists in children's TV are stereotyped, selective and sparse, according to new research presented to the annual conference of the government-funded UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology (UKRC).
A team of researchers from The Open University recorded two weeks' worth of programmes containing any aspect of science, engineering, technology and maths on all five UK terrestrial channels, and analysed all those aimed at children and young people. They followed this up by working with groups of children aged eight to 15, to see how their attitudes to these subjects were affected by what they watched.
One of the researchers' first findings was that men figured more heavily in all the programmes, with educational programmes and cartoons being the most biased. In educational programmes, the ratio of words spoken was 70:30 in favour of men; in cartoons, women's words made up less than 30 per cent.
"What we found in the programmes that we looked at is that representations of science and technology and professionals in these fields are very gendered," says Elizabeth Whitelegg, senior lecturer in the OU's Science faculty and co-leader of the research with social scientist Dr Richard Holliman.
"Even where women were better represented - in current affairs programmes, for example - they were often not the people identified by the programme as 'experts'. They were the presenters. The perception this gives children is of an absence of women in these fields."
And the women scientists who do appear tend to conform to a narrow stereotype, particularly in fiction and cartoon series, says Whitelegg. "The female scientist tends to be unrealistically young for the position which she has reached, slim, attractive with long blonde hair which she flicks in a rather alluring manner, and wearing glasses which she takes off at crucial moments.
"There aren't very many diverse images of women scientists. This is something which other researchers have found, and which our research backs up. With men, stereotypes do exist, but you get a much broader range of representations.
"It is a problem because if you only ever show high achievers as beautiful, then that's not a goal that many girls will feel they can achieve. You need to show the more ordinary ones as well."
The UKRC also believes that the media plays a key role influencing girls' views of science. It cites the big increase in applications from girls to study forensic science at university in the wake of the BBC drama Silent Witness, featuring the work of female pathologist Sam Ryan.
Dr Jennifer Carr is one of the scientists on Whitelegg's team involved in analysing children's reactions to what they see on TV. She says that when children were shown just two static images from programmes such as The Simpsons and Spiderman, they could identify which episode of the programme they were from, and recount the narrative.
"The recall of these episodes was quite staggering. Children can remember these things for a long time, and the impressions they get from watching them are very important," she says.
The researchers did uncover some positive images in the programmes, she adds, sometimes in surprising places. "A good example is Lisa Simpson in The Simpsons. There is a very strong focus on maths and science in this series and on the fact that Lisa is good at these things. And she's fun, she's lively, she plays the saxophone. She appeals to both boys and girls."
On the other hand, even programmes aimed at young children can contain quite subtle gender stereotyping.
"We recorded an episode of Captain Scarlet where Captain Scarlet and Lieutenant Green, the female engineering officer, go to visit a new spaceship. The scene cuts between Captain Scarlet who is off discussing the weaponry and the engines, and Lieutenant Green who is left in the command area where the whole conversation is with a guy from the other ship who wants to take her out to dinner, and she tries to deflect his advances. And Captain Scarlet is aimed at eight, nine, 10 year olds."
Whitelegg is also co-author of an Institute of Physics report called "Girls in the Physics Classroom", looking at how girls are turned off physics at school. She says the media is one factor in a "great web" of influences putting girls off science as they grow older. As well as narrowing girls' range of career options, it is also damaging to the economy, she says.
"The UK needs a lot more scientists, engineers and technologists for the future, and we don't have the numbers of people we need going in to that area after they leave school. It is a waste of resources when girls are as capable of doing science at school as boys are, as their results show, but they are not being attracted to careers in it."
The OU research team's report makes a number of recommendations for change in the way science, engineering, technology and maths are presented in children's programmes, including giving a higher profile to women as experts and targets for the number of science professionals featured. The media watchdog Ofcom has asked for the recommendations from the report to feed into its ongoing Public Service Broadcasting Review. The researchers are also planning to expand their research to cover digital TV channels, websites, and the magazines and games associated with children's programmes.
However, it is becoming more difficult to influence the content of children's programmes, Whitelegg says, as a growing number are imported from other countries, primarily the US. "We are not expecting our research to change the world overnight. But uncovering these issues will hopefully result in some guidelines for the media industry."
The UKRC annual conference also discussed research by Cardiff University which reveals that women scientists are often judged by the media on the basis of their sex appeal. Copies of all the research can be found on the Resource Centre website under Research at www.ukrc4setwomen.org.
The Open University is partnering the UKRC to offer a new online short course called Return to Science, Engineering and Technology, with fee support available for women seeking to return to work in science after a career break. For details go to www.open.ac.uk/ study and search for T161.
(c) 2008 Independent, The; London (UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Source: Independent, The; London (UK)
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