This study seeks to investigate factors influencing gender representation patterns in educational leadership positions in high schools around Phokeng. In South Africa and some other countries, teaching in schools remains a profession where women are highly represented, but women continue to be under-represented in educational leadership p9sitions. Male over-representation in the leadership and management of educational institutions is internationally known and documented and persists despite the availability and implementation of gender equity acts and policies. The study used the case study approach, underpinned by feminist theory to investigate factors that influence gender representation patterns in high schools around Phokeng. Semi-structured interviews and open-ended, qualitative questionnaires were used to collect data. A total of 12 purposefully selected participants were included in the study: four principals, four deputy principals and four heads of departments. Data was collected on the following areas: The nature and extent of gender representation patterns in educational leadership positions; possible reasons for the current gender representation patterns in educational leadership positions in high schools in areas around Phokeng; strategies that can be applied to address the current gender representation patterns in order to suit gender equity concerns in education. The findings reveal that women represent a high percentage of employees of the education system, but women continue to be under-represented in educational leadership positions. Furthermore, the study found that gender stereotypes, family responsibilities, low self-image and self-esteem as well as lack of confidence are some of the reasons for under-representation of women in educational leadership positions. The investigation also established that the implementation of the Employment Equity Act and similar policies should be intensified in all educational institutions as one of the strategies to close the gap of under-representation of women in educational leadership positions. The main recommendations emanating from the study are that women teachers need training to equip them with appropriate knowledge and skills; therefore they should be capacitated to improve their self-image, self-esteem and should acquire strategies to balance their family responsibilities with their work life. In that case, society can improve its perception about women, practical affirmative action strategies could be employed to improve the representation of women in educational leadership and to promote non-discriminatory working relationships and respect for diversity in a job situation. / Thesis (M.Ed) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2013

Gender representation is a frequently addressed field within media and communication studies in general and in the subject of TV advertising in particular. Previous research mainly focused on the detection of commonly exploited stereotypes that are used to portray women and men respectively. Much emphasize has been placed on the relationship between the sexes regarding social roles and professions, embedded in a cultural and ideological context. The purpose of this scientific work however is to examine how the construction of gender stereotypes in media takes place, which practices are used to connote meaning. Using a qualitative method, namely a visual discourse analysis, the aim of the study is to unveil subtle but also obvious symbols and characteristics that are used to represent feminine and masculine traits respectively in order to expand the current body of research. This proceeding marks an approach to have a closer look at the social interaction of females and males in TV advertisements in order to get an insight in the allocation of power and subsequently, social roles. Four TV advertisements are used as objects of investigation. As a theoretical fundament, the gender theories of sexism, masculinism and feminism are introduced. The findings suggest that the representation of women and men still follows strong patterns of stereotyping, not just on the level of role allocation but also on a behavioral level. However, the study comes to the conclusion that an asymmetric treatment of the sexes is not necessarily the result of gender stereotyping; in the case, both sexes are stereotyped similarly, not depicting either men or women dominating their counterparts in a global context.

Through extensive research which culminates in a choreographic component, this thesis explores the lack of diverse representation within artistic and entertainment industries in regards to race and gender. In pursuit of a concise argument, most of the focus is on race and the conditioned view of gender as binary. Looking specifically at dance and film, it considers and analyzes why this absence persists, along with ways to ensure progress. The analysis and exploration unfolds in five central chapters: Research, Conception of the Dance, One and the Same, and Try It On Make It Fit. By detailing all that goes into creating a space that consistently hinders representation of minorities, this project will provide a better understanding of how minority communities are affected as a result. With this knowledge, I hope to present solutions that are simple with an attempt to demonstrate the urgency for new methods that expand portraits of diverse and authentic representations outside of the “norm.” The significance of this project lies in the articulation of an issue that is too often ignored. Change will not happen until it becomes unacceptable for people to remain ignorant and complacent on the subject.

The goal with our research has been to describe how often and in what way female athletes are represented in the sport section in Sweden’s biggest evening newspaper Aftonbladet. The material we’ve used are the newspapers that we collected during two weeks in 2008, the 3rd of November to the 9th of November and the 11th of November to the 17th of November. We’ve conduced two qualitative researches – a text analysis and an image analysis – and one quantitative analysis on our material. We’ve based our analysis on, among others, theories on the sportmediacomplex, critique feministic analysis and normative theory.        In these articles women are designed into four different stereotypes. We’ve chosen to call them the star, the victim, the sensation and the absent. On the basis on our theories we believe that these four stereotypes are creating more sexism and in that way they are contributing to the suppressing of women as a whole.        Our quantitative analysis shows that men occur more frequent on the sport pages than women. Almost nine of ten of the articles in Sportbladet are about men and male athletes. We believe that in this way Sportbladet contributes to the invisibilisation of female athletes and further more to the discrimination of women.

Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communications / Tom Hallaq / Traditionally, men have been the primary face and voice of live broadcasting. Limited research has compared Designated Market Areas by news content. This study compared and analyzed gender representations between large and small market news programs in the Northwest region of the United States. Hard news stories are those which audiences expect to be included in a newscast and are more likely time-sensitive. Soft stories, on the other hand, are those known to be not as crucial or time-sensitive as hard stories. The purpose of this study was to examine two major topics: (1) gender representation as news anchors and reporters, and (2) gender representation in types of stories covered. Data of gender representation was compared and analyzed between a large and small news market. Notable differences and similarities between both markets were revealed. This study found female news reporters present 16% more hard stories than male reporters even when females were underrepresented as overall news talent compared to male news talent. Males represented 55% of news talent compared to females at 45% of news talent. Male anchors also presented more news stories as overall news talent, indicating visible gender inequality in the presentation of news stories. Another important purpose of this study was to introduce a preliminary study by comparing and analyzing gender representation data by television market size. An important difference found regarding news anchors, was the large market sample more equally represented both males and females as anchors, whereas the small market sample did not. The data revealed a 56% disparity by exhibiting males 78% of the time and females only 22% of the time in the small news market. Both markets also displayed significant differences in the total count of news anchors, reporters, and news content.

This thesis critically investigates how female and male opioid users are represented in local newspapers in Ohio, one of the states which has been most severely affected by the ongoing ‘opioid crisis’ in the United States. Through an analysis of 20 articles from the The Plain Dealer and The Columbus Dispatch, the study aims to highlight how women and men who use opioids are portrayed, and what ideologies are hidden in the texts. Guided by Fairclough’s framework for critical discourse analysis and van Dijk’s sociocognitive approach, the analysis was performed on three levels: text-level, whereby journalists’ word choices, contextualisation and linguistic emphasis were studied; discursive level, which focused on processes involved in the production and consumption of the news pieces, and; sociocultural level, which entailed analysing historical and current developments of drug policy locally and nationally. The study finds that journalists downplay the seriousness of (white) male opioid use by calling men by their nicknames, by portraying them as ‘mischievous’ and by using jokey undertones when referring to their drug use. Female opioid use is constructed as abnormal by use of words such as ‘erratic’ and ‘unruly’ and women are discursively penalised for failing in their roles as caregivers to children. This thesis exemplifies how language use by local journalists’ in Ohio reinforces societal perceptions of male and female opioid users, which may influence counteractive measures by authorities.

With multimodal methods and material gaining traction in classrooms, the need to critically assess these becomes increasingly important, especially in order to verify their efficacy and ability to meet the needs of each individual student, regardless of ability or special requirements. In the case of this study, the focus is on textbooks produced for the course Historia 1b at the upper secondary level of the Swedish education system. By analyzing the readability, layout, and functions of illustrations in three textbooks, as well as the gender representation in the material, the aim of this study is to generate a quantifiable dataset, on which conclusions regarding the efficacy of said illustrations can be made. Additionally, the results of this study are compared to those of previous studies, to ascertain whether there is a quantifiable difference in the use of illustrations in textbooks published for use in different curricula.  The results of this study indicate that there is a marginal improvement in the use of illustrations between textbooks produced for the current and the previous curriculum. Additionally, the data suggests that the representation of women in illustrations in textbooks has increased in comparison to previous studies. However, the findings indicate that there is still a need for further improvements regarding the use of illustrations in textbooks, as well as more thorough evaluations of the possibility of diminishing returns in the case of their readability.

The aim of this research is to investigate the representation of the female gender in theTerminator franchise and to examine whether there has been an evolution in thisrepresentation throughout the years. For this purpose, the representation of the lead femalecharacter, Sarah Connor, has been examined in the films The Terminator (Cameron, 1984),Terminator 2: Judgement Day (Cameron, 1991) and Terminator Genisys (Taylor, 2015), inwhich Sarah Connor is the only main female character. The thesis begins by providing athorough presentation of the situational, specific and the theoretical background of the threefilms analysed. Then, the methodology used in the research is described and linguistic, visualand contextual data are provided. These data are then analysed and discussed in relation tothe background of the films and to the objectives set at the beginning of the research. Inparticular, the linguistic aspect of gender representation is explored based on the waylanguage is used to represent women in the Terminator films. After a thorough analysis ofdata collected and discussed, the research concluded that there has, indeed, been an evolutionin female gender representation in the Terminator films, which reflects an evolution in theperception of gender by society itself.

The aim of this thesis was to deepen our understanding of how audiences represent male and female dark fictional characters (DFCs) by exploring how Harry Potter fans discuss four of these characters on Reddit. Drawing on affective disposition theory as a guiding framework as well as previous investigations of gender representation and online fan cultures, I collected and analyzed 117 posts (containing 9,693 comments) about four DFCs from the Harry Potter franchise. I chose two male DFCs (Lord Voldemort and Severus Snape) and two female ones (Bellatrix Lestrange and Dolores Umbridge) for my investigation. The data were analyzed using a productive hermeneutics approach. Fans’ representation of these characters intersected with the extent which the characters’ fictionality was salient, how they were visualized, the online culture of Reddit, and fans’ presumed identification with these characters. Bellatrix was defined by her portrayal by Helena Bonham Carter in the films and her combination of valuable masculine and feminine traits. Moreover, she was a figure of pure fantasy, which allowed fans to love her depravity. Umbridge and Snape, by contrast, were hated for intruding into the fantasy that Harry Potter offered, reminding fans of bullying and overly controlling teachers. Snape, however, was redeemed by his complexity and embodiment of geek masculinity. Voldemort was valued for his intellect and power but also criticized as a peer failing to rise to his intellectual potential; fans at turns identified with and undercut him through humor. Taken together, the results indicate a need to qualitatively explore how DFCs are received by audiences, as it can add further nuance to our understanding of how morality and gender influence media consumption.

Historically, sport has been a male phenomenon and this has also left an impression onsports coverage from the media. There has always been an imbalance in reportingbetween the sexes, but in recent years it has been possible to see an improvement froman equality perspective. The purpose of this essay is to find out how the local sportsnewsrooms work for equal sports coverage, and what obstacles and difficulties there areto get the reporting completely equal. To answer the study's questions, a structuredinterview is conducted with three sports managers and five sports journalists from fourdifferent local newsrooms in Sweden, to get their views on the job towards equal sportscoverage.The essay uses four different theories that are used as a basis and help when theinterview answers are analyzed in the results and the discussion. The theories used arethe agenda theory, framing theory, the gender theory and the gatekeeping theory. Theprevious research shows varying results on equal sports coverage. Several studies haveconcluded that there are more female sports journalists who are making an effort formore equal coverage, while other studies believe that interest in women's sports hasincreased after newspapers made a stronger investment in women's sports.The essay uses a qualitative interview study and a thematic analysis to be able tointerpret the experiences and perceptions of the interviewees. The method is best suitedwhen it comes to studying people's behavior and values in society, which fits well withthe essay's purpose.The results show that the local sports editors work daily for equal sports coverage, butthat it is not as simple as one might think. There are a number of factors that emerged inthe results that make it more difficult to achieve completely equal coverage. The numberof elite teams each catchment area has, the inroads of commercialization and theeconomy of the newspaper, as well as old norms and how it has looked throughouthistory are the factors that all interviewees highlight as playing a big role in why thereporting is still not equal between the sexes. This essay shows that the problem stillexists but that it has gotten better, and that hard work is being done to get as equal areporting as possible.