Representations of gender in the past and present

In the past the representation of women was somewhat degrading and even can go as far as mysoganistic with the poor allocated jobs that the women especially in the media used to receive. Examples of these women in the media not getting decent jobs but getting unrecognisable jobs very much run throughout the media arena. For the women who were working very much in the media, they would not get the top jobs but would mostly be taking orders from their male counterparts who were all ways above them in the job ranking throughout numerous countries. For the women who were acting in the media, their job titles were obviously actor however, the acting would not be seen as major roles in the programmes as they were still playing second fiddle to the men who ere involved in the same job title. The description of the james bond series is significant as it shows how the role of women has changed over a period of time in the same series, which shows the different attitudes of the producers and the directors, what they feel should be the role of the woman. 'M' shows a solid female character throughout the bond series as she is the leading woman and she is also the most powerful character in the movies however, even though she is the most powerful character because she is in charge of bond, he still goes out of his way in order to disobey his boss and it is seen quite often during the bond series.

Gender in the present
With the issue of gender in the present time, there are various arguements to suggest that gender has become more advanced and that it has become more about equality and less about a patriachal society, however strong cases can and have been made to suggest that the roles of gender and the gender roles have not changed the slightest bit. One of the arguements to suggest that gender roles have become more advanced and alot more different can be seen by some of the texts that have been talked about, for example in the hit sitcom show 'Friends' the male characters have often been shown to have a very feminine side to their personalities and the women in the show have been seen to be wearing the trousers in the text and equality can be seen from the same text as a group from both genders are in one apartment where they are being represented as being equal to each other, which goes some way to suggest that there is no such thing as a patriachal society in todays world. An example to show that men are still getting the more prestigious roles in the media were seen and witnessed during the 2001 election where people like paxman and snow were taking care of the more serious things like the heavy, solid interviews and the bbc correspondant Fiona Bruce was taking care off and just giving little interviews to the 'ordinary people'. So by the two examples that have been given it is easy to see why there are strong arguements against both sides of the arguement however in my opinio women are coming up in the media world but not quick enough, judging by the media guardian top 100.