This study examines how women are portrayed in four of Disney’s feature films, withthe focus on the presentation of relations between women. The films examined areSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Sleeping Beauty (1959), The Little Mermaid(1989) and Frozen (2013). The aim is to analyse the development that has taken placefrom a gender perspective, from the earliest film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs(1937), to the latest, Frozen (2013), and to reveal the significance of the femalecharacters for each other. The films’ portrayal of women and female relations isdiscussed in relation to previous criticism of Disney for their stereotyped portrayal ofwomen, and through a thematic comparison with the known fairytales on which thefilms are based. The analysis has been performed with the aid of content analysis basedon Stukát (2011) and Ledin & Moberg (2010). The theoretical foundation is gendertheory, chiefly using Jarlbro (2006), Nilson (2010) and Davies (2003).One finding of this study is that it is only in the recent films that more room has beengiven to a positive relationship between women. In the early films there is more hatebetween women, who are therefore not shown as good objects for young girls toidentify with, whereas the later films often depict relations between women as loving.However, the mother figure and female friends are often absent from Disney’s films.These relationships are often described as being the most important for girls’ identitydevelopment, and therefore the early Disney films can be assumed to lack goodidentification possibilities for girls. Another finding is that the female characters havebecome more complex in the recent films, not following traditional female behaviour.

Content analysis of The Dallas Morning News focuses on sources, bylines, photographs, and main characters to determine the quantity and quality of portrayals of women. The study included front pages and main local news pages during one week each from 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, and 1990. Change was charted by year for both sexes. In 1950, few representations of women were included and many were stereotypical. Some stereotyping persisted in 1990, and men outnumbered women more than 3 to 1 as story sources, nearly 3 to 1 in front-page bylines, more than 2 to 1 in photographs, and more than 2 to 1 as main characters. Women still lag behind men, despite feminists' efforts to improve coverage.

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