Women in film 1986-2016: Has their representation improved or worsened?

Mc Crudden, Shauna (2017) Women in film 1986-2016: Has their representation improved or worsened? Masters thesis, Griffith College.

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Abstract

Women in film have been consistently underrepresented over the years. The representation of women and minorities in media is incredibly important, as people need to see themselves reflected back in the stories they consume. Young girls should be able to see well-written, complicated characters that are able to stand on their own without a man or anyone else. It is possible for the lack of representation to negatively affect the attitude towards women in society. This dissertation examines the 31 top-grossing films over a 30-year period, between 1986 and 2016. This is to analyse whether the representation of women in film has improved in the types of roles and increased in numbers, or worsened in the same respect. I conducted quantitative and qualitative content analysis on the 31 films and looked at the characters and how they are shown in each of the films. The analysis showed that there is a pattern of roles that women play which haven’t really changed in 30 years. And it also showed that while the numbers of women have indeed increased over the years and the roles have slightly improved, there is still a lot of work to be done on the stereotypical and similar roles that women are often reduced to.

Item Type: Thesis (Masters)
Uncontrolled Keywords: Women in film, Gender, Representation, Stereotypes
Divisions: Faculty of Journalism & Media Communications > MA in Journalism & Media Communications
Depositing User: Ms Dimphne Ni Bhraonain
Date Deposited: 05 Feb 2018 11:06
Last Modified: 05 Feb 2018 11:06
URI: http://go.griffith.ie/id/eprint/148

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