Abstract
A content analysis of seventy episodes of infants’ and toddlers’ programs broadcast during 2017 on BabyTV and Luli channels in Israel revealed a mixed bag of conservative and more progressive gender-related messages, with persistent domination of white male characters and gender-appropriate characteristics and appearances. The analysis uncovered a significant category of genderless characters who were constructed, to a large degree, as devoid of meaning: They do not have personality characteristics, they are not part of a family and do not have friends, they do not lead activities, and most importantly, they have no voice. The implications of these representations and the messages they convey about gender for the very young are discussed.
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Notes
- 1.
All named members of production teams were coded male, female, or gender unknown based on the information available.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Dr. Idit Sulkin for her contribution to the development of the codebook, Galit Rovner for research administration, and Yael Kfir and Mor Yachin for their hard work on coding the data. This research was supported by the I-CORE Program of the Planning and Budgeting Committee and The Israeli Science Foundation (1716/12).
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Lemish, D., Elias, N. (2019). Perpetuating Gender Stereotypes from Birth: Analysis of TV Programs for Viewers in Diapers. In: Hermansson, C., Zepernick, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Children's Film and Television. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17620-4_27
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