Gender Bias

This week in class we read an article about men and women roles on television. To refute my posting last week, women do seem to play a role on television of less importance. I can see how their roles portray them as less important or less capable. Even in the shows I mentioned last week, Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy, the women play dominate roles but their problems seem small compared to the men. A male doctor is the cardiovascular surgeon and said to be the best doctor in the hospital.

This raises the controversial issue of women being better or worse at high authoritative jobs. After reading a study conducted in Reader's Digest, there are pros and cons to this situation. They placed headphones on a male and a female. In each headphone, two separate stories were played and they were asked after to recall what was said. The woman tried to grab bits and pieces from each ear. However, the male ruled out one side and focuses intently on the other side and his story was much more detailed than the woman’s story. So, this concludes that women can better multitask but men can get a single job done better. Interesting how a mom could wash the dishes and hear the kids in the living room playing. She is able to do both or neither of the tasks. The father could do one or other completely but would not be able to participate in the other task. This sort of brings up the situation of sacrifice or gamble. You are gambling on whether the woman can complete both tasks successfully with the chance that neither will get done. The man is a more definite decision and involves sacrifice and opportunity cost.

In conclusion, the roles on television adhere to views by the public. What I mean by that is what the public finds acceptable. As long as the great reviews come in, the writers are doing their job and doing something right. Though it is off the topic, it reminded me of this situation with the headphones as I read about job positions.