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An Investigation of Sex-Role Stereotyping in Music Videos

Article  in  Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media · March 1992

DOI: 10.1080/08838159209364168

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 Title: An investigation of sex-role stereotyping in music videos. By: Seidman,
Steven A., Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 08838151, Spring92,
Vol. 36, Issue 2

Database: Communication Source

AN INVESTIGATION OF SEX-ROLE STEREOTYPING IN MUSIC

VIDEOS

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American Accent
Section:
PROFILE
This study investigated sex-role stereotyping of occupational roles and the behaviors of music-
video characters in a random sample of 182 MTV music videos. It was found that both male and
female characters were shown in sex-typed occupations. Male characters were more
adventuresome, domineering, aggressive, violent, and victimized than female characters, while
females were more affectionate, dependent, nurturing, and fearful than males. It was also found
that a large percentage of female characters wore revealing clothing and that they initiated and
received sexual advances more often than males.

MTV (Music Television) has been described as a 24ohour flow of advertisements --for clothes,
soft drinks, songs, and the channel itself (Kaplan, 1987). Music videos not only appear to reflect
society and its norms, but may also help socialize young people by communicating ideas about
proper behavior and the selection of career paths, as well as influencing males and females to
develop distinct personality characteristics (see Bennett & Ferrell, 1987). This study investigates
the sex-role stereotyping of occupations as well as the affective behaviors and manifestations of
male and female characters shown on MTV.

Begun in 1981, MTV quickly spread to over 17 million U.S. homes in two years and to 28 million
by early 1986 (Cocks 1983; Kaplan, 1987). However, MTV's expansion began to slow and its
Nielsen ratings declined dramatically, which may have caused executives at Viacom (which had
just purchased MTV) to alter the channel's format to include less "album-oriented rock" music
(Denisoff, 1988). Even MTV Chairman Tom Freston admitted that the audience was "bored *..
with clips that featured heavy-metal music, smoke-filled sets and pretty girls in revealing lingerie
-- but not much imagination" (Polskin, 1991, p. 7).

Freston and his associates turned, in part, to rap music to reinvigorate their music-video
channel, with lyrics reemerging as important in rock music (DeCurtis, 1990). This study takes a
look at the content of MTV just before the change. Specifically, this study focuses on the issue of
sexual stereotyping of characters in terms of their occupations and affective behaviors.

Researchers who examined the music-video world of the early to mid-1980s reported that
female characters were depicted less desirably than males both behaviorally and occupationally
(Brown & Campbell, 1986; Sherman & Dominick, 1986). Females also were shown as sex
objects more frequently than males, and this was associated with increased sexism in the music
videos of the period. It has been calculated that about one half of the females in music videos
wore "provocative clothing" (compared to about one tenth of the males) (Sherman & Dominick,
1986). Vincent, Davis, and Boruszkowski (1987) found that there was significantly more sexism
present in rock videos in which the female characters were dressed in such a manner. They also
found that women were "put down" or "kept in their place" by males in almost three fourths of the
programs. Female characters in these videos were also cast in occupational roles that tended to
be less socially desirable. Brown and Campbell (1986) concluded that female main-characters in
music videos were depicted as "less active, less goal-directed, and less worthy of attention" (p.
101) than were males in music-video clips,

Brown and Campbell (1986) investigated the activities of male and female music-video
characters, but their investigation was limited by a small sample (which was not selected
randomly) and by combining music videos shown on MTV and those aired on the Black
Entertainment Television channel for the analyses of the characters (with almost all of the black
characters in the study seen in music videos shown on the latter channel). Nevertheless, the
authors concluded that the behavior of female lead-characters was less desirable than that of
males generally, and that both black and white women in these music videos were less
frequently shown doing what the authors termed "professional work" (which included making
business telephone calls, and doing clerical office work and manual labor). This study used a
larger sample than other studies and was limited to the examination of videos shown on MTV
before Viacom instituted major format changes.

Methodology
Sixty hours of music videos broadcast on MTV were videotaped during the first 20 days of
February, 1987. The researcher selected 3 one-hour spots at random to be videotaped from the
24 available each day, after scheduled interview and concert shows were excluded.
"Performance videos" (i.e., clips that show only a studio or concert performance) were not
included in the content analysis. Thus, only music videos that showed characters doing more
than performing on stage or watching a performance were analyzed. All persons shown in each
video were included in the study and coded only once.

Two coders were given a chart which listed affective behaviors and manifestations (i.e.,
aggressiveness, affection, violence, nurturance, dominance, victimization, dependence,
happiness, sadness, activity, passivity, fearfulhess, anger, adventuresomeness, sexual pursuit,
being pursued sexually, wearing revealing clothing). These were derived from research by Bern
(1974), Bushy (1975), Hillman (1974), Sherman and Dominick (1986), and Women on Words
and Images (1975). In addition, the coding chart had columns for descriptions of characters, and
their genders, races, and occupations. The coders also were given definitions for each variable
listed. "Aggression," for example, was defined by the following actions: "to threaten; to assault or
injure purposively in an unprovoked attack; to belittle, harm, blame, accuse, ridicule; any attempt
to cause distress in another." The coders then received training and practice (with four hours of
videotaped music videos that they were given) in recognizing and listing characters and in
coding the 17 affective behaviors and manifestations as being either present or absent, as well
as in noting the demographic information for each character. Occupational roles were classified
beforehand as stereotypically "male," "female," or "neutral" (see O'Connor, 1982; Panek, Rush &
Greenawalt, 1977).

All but three of the intercoder reliability coefficients (i.e., the percentage of perfect agreement
about character traits) for affective behaviors and manifestations ranged between .77 and .93
using Scott's (1955) pi method (employed because of the nominal nature of the variables). The
Scott's pi coefficients for happiness (.52), activity (.51), and passivity (.43) were well below the
minimum usually considered acceptable (Wimmer & Dominick, 1991) and the data for these
variables were discarded. Scott's pi coefficients were high for the gender (.97) and race (.92) of
the characters, and acceptable for their occupations (. 77). A third coder, with the same training
as the previous coders, was employed to assign a final rating independently in all instances in
which a disagreement had occurred on a variable for a character.

Results
In the 182 videos analyzed, 1,942 characters appeared. Almost two thirds (64%) of the
characters in the MTV clips were male and slightly more than one third (36%) were female. The
racial distribution was 89% white and 11% non-white. Occupationally, the 953 characters that
could be classified were coded as "military personnel" (31%), "blue collar" (22%), "white collar"
(15%), "entertainers" (14%), "miscellaneous" (6%), "dancers" (5%), "athletes" (4%), and
"parents" (4%). "Entertainers" were primarily singers.

Almost all of the occupational roles thought of as stereotypically male (e.g., manual laborer,
physician, mechanic, firefighter) were portrayed by males (see Table 1). Likewise, occupational
roles that could be characterized as stereotypically female (e.g., secretary, librarian, telephone
operator, cheerleader) were played mainly by females. Occupations that either gender
commonly holds in society (e.g., artist, singer, actor, office worker, laboratory assistant) were
more evenly distributed between the genders in the music videos (with males taking almost two-
thirds of the neutral roles).

The distributions for some occupations were striking. For example, 98% of the soldiers, 94% of
the security and police personnel, 91% of the photographers, 90% of the athletes, and all
scientists, politicians, and business executives and managers were males, whereas 89% of the
hair stylists, 83% of the dancers, and all fashion models and telephone operators were females.
In the neutral category, 77% of the persons shown waiting on tables in restaurants, 74% of the
entertainers, 54% of the parents, 47% of the students, and 40% of the medical workers were
females.

A higher percentage of women shown on MTV were employed as blue-collar (22%) rather than
white-collar (9%) workers when compared to males in these categories (X[sup2] = 11.02, df = 1,
p < .01). In fact, there were more than three times as many females in blue-collar jobs (most
frequently, waitress, hair stylist, and construction worker) as in white-collar positions.

As for race, 95% of the non-white characters who had classifiable roles (n = 123) were clustered
in only six categories (i.e., military personnel, entertainers, dancers, manual laborers, parents,
and athletes), with the gender distribution similar to that of the overall sample for these
occupations. Of the 95 non-white males in occupational roles, only 5 were not in one of the
above categories (only two held white-collar jobs); of the 28 occupationally classifiable non-
white females, 27 were seen as entertainers, dancers, parents, or soldiers (with the remaining
worker a parking-meter reader).

Comparisons with United States Census data indicate that the portrayals of occupations in the
world of MTV was different from the real world in many respects. For example, between one
third to one half of many managerial positions are held by women; one eighth to two fifths of the
scientists in various fields are females; and females make up more than one tenth of the U.S.
Armed Forces (J. Grano, personal communication, September 25, 1991; United States Bureau
of the Census, 1990).

As shown in Table 2, male characters in music videos on MTV were more adventuresome,
aggressive, domineering, victimized, and violent than females. Female characters were more
affectionate, dependent, fearful, and nurturing than males, and more likely to pursue others and
be pursued sexually. More than one third of the female characters wore revealing clothing
(compared to only 4% of males).

When the affective behaviors and manifestations of the non-white MTV characters were
analyzed, the results were quite similar to the overall (i.e., mainly white) findings. There were,
however, some differences: Non-white female characters were sadder (X[sup2] = 9.96, df = 1, p
< .01) than were non-white males, but were not more adventuresome or active in sexually
pursuing others than were non-white male characters. On the other hand, although non-white
female characters shown on MTV were more dependent (X[sup2] = 26.97, df = 1, p < .001) and
nurturing (X[sup2] = 9.39, df = 1, p < .01) than were non-white males, this was not the case for
white characters.

Sex-role stereotyping was not as extreme within the blue-collar group as for the entire sample.
Blue-collar females were seen more frequently in revealing attire (X[sup2] = 39.21, df = 1, p <
.001) and were more likely to pursue others sexually (X[sup2] = 10.23, df = 1, p < .01) than were
blue-collar males, but were no more likely to be pursued sexually than were the males. Although
blue-collar males were found to be more aggressive (x[sup2] = 6.99, df = 1, p < .01) and
adventuresome (X[sup2] = 5.26, df = 1, p < .05) than were the females in this group, none of the
other comparisons were significant statistically. There were too few white-collar female
characters to make meaningful statistical comparisons with white-collar males.

Discussion
In 1987, the world of MTV contained few or no women mechanics, scientists, politicians,
athletes, or business executives. However, women were seen much more frequently in such
blue-collar positions as waitress and hair stylist than as white-collar workers, or they were
shown as dancers or entertainers. The finding that male characters were stereotyped in
traditional "male" occupational roles and that females were more likely to be in sex-typed
"female" or "neutral" jobs in MTV videos is consistent with results obtained by researchers of
prime-time television shows (Signorielli, 1989) and commercials (Meyers, 1980). It also is
consistent with the exploratory finding of Brown and Campbell (1986), who reported that female
characters were shown doing office tasks and manual labor less frequently than were males in
music videos. It was found here that most of the female characters were in occupational settings
other than the office and factory. It was in the home, the fashion showroom, the classroom, and
the art, film, and dance studios that women had their place in stereotypical "feminine" and
"neutral" roles. It also was disturbing that very few non-white characters in MTV music videos
were shown in white-collar roles.

As for affective behaviors, male characters on MTV were found to be more aggressive,
domineering, violent, and victimized than were female characters. This finding is similar to that
of Kalis and Neuendorf (1989), Sherman and Dominick (1986), and Vincent et al. (1987).
However, earlier studies (Brown & Campbell, 1986; Caplan, 1985) discerned no statistically
significant differences in the aggressive behavior of male and female characters, either as
initiates or receivers.

It also was determined that female characters were more affectionate than were males in MTV
videos. This finding is consistent with that of Meyers (1980). Additionally, the present study
found that female characters were more fearful than were males. In our society, females are
more likely than males to be encouraged to display their emotions, particularly if it shows one's
vulnerabilities. This was even more the case for non-white female characters, who were found to
be significantly sadder (as well as more nurturing and dependent) than non-white males.
Interestingly, it was found that Caucasian women pursued others sexually more frequently than
did white males, but this was not true for non-white females. In contrast, Brown and Campbell
(1986) found that black males and females were more sexually active than their white
counterparts.

It is important to note that MTV, in general, portrayed males as more adventuresome,

aggressive, and domineering, and females as more affectionate, nurturing, dependent, and
fearful, because such stereotypically masculine characteristics are considered more positively
than are feminine traits in American society (see Bern, 1974; Rosenkrantz, Vogel, Bee, &
Braverman, 1968). Female music-video characters also were excluded from most white-collar
professions, denigrated as "sex objects" or as "second-class citizens" in the working world, or
omitted from the workplace altogether. While music videos by several recording artists have
presented adolescents with more realistic and worthwhile female role models on MTV (see
Lewis, 1987), most music videos (and mass media) do not seem to do so. The mass media,
particularly television, are important reinforcers of sex-role stereotypes (see Beuf, 1974;
Greenberg, 1982; Morgan, 1982). Females are often shown as wives and mothers or as objects
of sexual desire (Davis, 1990; Tuchman, 1979) and are rarely portrayed in viable nontraditional
roles (Meyers, 1980; Signorielli, 1989).

The conclusion could be drawn that by perpetuating these stereotypes the mass media are
partly responsible for the more negative self-concepts found in young women than in young men
(Rosenkrantz et al., 1968). In addition, occupations dominated by males have been shown to be
considered more prestigious than have traditionally "female jobs" (O'Connor, 1982). While no
one would charge that MTV is responsible for the second-class status of women, there are
indications (Hansen & Hansen, 1988) that it has been a force in the continuation of stereotypes
that exist about how females should believe, act, and work.

Table 1 Percentages of Stereotypical Occupational Roles on MTV

Legend for Chart:

A - Stereotypical Occupational Role

B - Male (Gender of Character[*])
C - Female (Gender of Character[*])
D - Total Number (Gender of Character[*])

A B C D

"Male" Roles 94.2% 5.8% 652

"Female" Roles 12.3 87.7 65
"Neutral" Roles 62.7 236 236

Totals 80.8% 19.2% 953

*X2 = 243.73, df = 2, p < .001.

Table 2 Percentages of Affective Behaviors and Manifestations on MTV

Legend for Chart:

A - Category
B - Male %
C - Female %
D - Chi-Square

A B C D

Adventuresomeness 10.7% 3.3% 32.55[**]

Affection 8.3 17.6 37.87[**]
Aggression 19.6 7.9 46.28[**]
Anger 8.0 9.4 1.05
Dependence 1.0 3.2 11.42[**]
Dominance 8.2 3.5 16.34[**]
Fearfulness 6.3 10.2 9.98[*]
Nurturance 2.2 3.6 6.94[*]
Pursued Sexually 2.6 14.3 95.07[**]
Pursuing Sexually 6.6 11.4 13.54[**]
Revealing Clothing 4.2 36.7 352.94[**]
Sadness 5.4 5.6 .05
Victimized 13.5 6.1 25.83[**]
Violence 11.7 2.6 47.82[**]
n = 1,248 n = 694
*p < .01. **p < .001.

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~~~~~~~~

By Steven A. Seidman

Steven A. Seidman (Ph.D., Indiana University, 1982) is Associate Professor and Chair of the
Corporate Communication Department at Ithaca College. His research interests include sex-role
stereotyping and the use of music and visuals in the communications media. The author would
like to thank Amy Brayford, Lawrence Jones, Susan Mason, Susan Osinchak, John Payne, and
Jocelyn Steinke for their assistance in conducting and completing this project. This manuscript
was accepted for publication January 1992.

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