Woman; 346; Women's Image: Down The Tube

Chain chain. Women and in-depth exploration of the world women with good evening and welcome to woman. Tonight we're going to look at the image of women in television. With me is Joyce Snyder. Joyce at the National co-coordinator of the now media task force. She's from New York City. Also here is Kathleen Bach. Cathy is national coordinator of the now media task force also. Cathy is from Washington D.C.. Welcome to both of you. Hi Cathy how much television does the average American watch. Well nearly 95 percent of all of the homes in the United States have TVs and they're turned on for about six and a half hours a day which roughly averages to about nine full years what people spend watching

television out of their lives so we consume a lot of television. We're exposed to 75000 commercial messages a year. It's a lot of advertising 75000 and rire. That's incredible. That's just in television alone. Kathy how did you get involved. I mean you're very interested in this both of you and I mean you've been doing this for a long time how did you begin. Well it's at a grassroots level. I got picked up hitchhiking one one day while I was in Pittsburgh there you know hitchhiking in real time. I was a student at the University at the time and we were working at a grassroots level in Pittsburgh and started working at the Pittsburgh stations. I was in a college course and we needed a project. And one thing led to another and we found ourselves in the middle of license you know period negotiating major contracts with all the Pittsburgh stations. Interestingly enough access magazine which is a public media magazine reported that Pittsburgh has one of the best markets with

regard to the sensitivity of citizens groups and public interest. Public affairs program. So we feel that all our work was put to some good use. You were watching television when and I know I didn't have that and it was that it was in 1970 and I was working as a trade magazine editor on a magazine that dealt with the advertising industry and the Codex who was formerly New York's coordinator for media an absolutely fantastic woman a good activist. She called me up because I was managing editor and said Can I have a guest column and your magazine said to discuss what she said. The portrayal of women on television I said Oh it's my favorite subject I'm dying for someone to do that. And she told me that there was a group called Now that was organized one of the task forces was organized around that issue and I just said When can I join I was delighted that there were activists dealing with the problems. I suppose the question you must get a lot is what do you want. What do you want from the advertisers What do you want from the program directors and so on.

Well the question of what do you women want really has been. It's been answered over and over again and finally it's been put down on paper actually by Public Broadcasting in what they call the definition of women's programming and part of the concerns it's really three fold one that that women are integrated into all programming that we integrate the roles of women and men and show women in men in a variety of roles not just in sexual stereotyping that women participate in all parts of television which brings in the question of employment. Women are in all the levels the top management as well as down to to the support staff. And the third concern is the television developed programming of concern to women so that issues like rape and issues like the battered housewife are covered and they become important issues they become the problems that television in the media deal with on a day to day basis rather than ghettoizing

them into quote women's programming but that they're really integrated throughout. What do you think the thing is that people find most annoying about television. It's specially women what do you think annoys the most commercials. Thank you yeah. It's been proven this far back as 1972 that women object to their image in commercials for example Redbook magazine did a survey of its readers and they are hardly blaming them honest red graders and they reported that 74 percent of them objected to the media portrayal of women in commercials. The Screen Actors Guild did a similar study of women last year and there were some men in the study but mostly women. And that was in the 70 percent range as well. People really do object to the media portrayal of women and this cuts across all kinds of women. Women that don't consider themselves to minister really object to this. We get hundreds of letters a week and I think that it's those 30 second spots that get women

turned to media issues. But that's where it starts. You know one commercial that degrades women to men. Can you give me a couple of examples quickly without naming any product names. I'll give you one that's currently on the air it's a bread and the man is a vegetable farmer and he said if it's not fresh I'm out of business. This is his line of work. And then the woman is at home serving the bread and she's serving her husband she says if it isn't fresh and that a business which isn't it's kind of subtle and studious but it says that a woman security is dependent on serving the man and the man security is dependent on his business which is vegetable farming. So I find that kind of thing very subtle but serious. Do you think people actually believe what they see in television commercials. I think that television commercials just are not reality based. They show women in the home whether in fact women spend part of their time in the home or not

preoccupied with the rings around collars and were not preoccupied with the shine on our floors housework is not fun we don't go mopping up floors in long white gowns. So it's really a question of touching base with reality. But they really do believe the commercials because I know one case of a paper towel irate consumers wrote in and said why doesn't the paper towel whisk up water as a vacuum cleaner would like I see on the commercials that was used to illustrate what a good water Samper up or at the paper towel was and people actually expected that paper towel to do as the commercial said. So you can see how believable commercials really are. They weren't believable they wouldn't create them that way. And I think in commercials we're working toward what our main goal is. Again this issue of women and men being shown in a variety of roles. Joyce and I recently gave a presentation before the National Association of Broadcasters review board and we did this long presentation and

finally at the end the head of the anti-B code said to us. Now let me make sure I've got this today what you women want is you want women to be put traders people. Is that right. And that's it we want women in a variety of roles not sexual stereotyped in the home but rather women shown in all kinds of professions and occupy. Well I've always felt for a long time that the men look equally foolish. You know exactly you know sticking their heads out of cuckoo clocks in the church. Yes but I think women have more to lose when you consider that women make 60 percent of a man's paycheck. Check on some jobs which is likely all constitutional definition of a slave to the Rights of Man. When you consider that women are in the position to begin with I think that we have to take their ridiculousness with which were portrayed on television with more seriousness we are the oppressed majority we have more to lose than the silly men on the commercials. Also it's a consumer issue and I think the fact that we do consume

75000 commercial messages a year and that we're really paying for television it's not free every time we buy soap or we buy a dish watch a washing detergent or we buy a pair of jeans that's advertised on television. We're paying for television so it's really a consumer issue and we have a right to request and demand that women and men are shown in different roles because broadcasters are supposed to be working in the public interest. They've got a public trust and I think that you know we've really got as consumers a right to demand that programming be responsive to our needs. Well is the FCC the only agency that regulates and who regulates television commercials is there something separate for that. The Federal Trade Commission does that as well. You know in the Riyadh they they checked the reality that they check to see if in fact what the commercial is claiming and what the product is claiming is is the reality.

And you know a consumer protection will certainly lots of people have pointed you know out to advertisers and to broadcasters that they're not happy with the image that's being portrayed of women and men. But it seems to me that the thing keeps continuing I mean they say may seem to be continuing to make the same mistakes that we point out to them why is that. I think it's a very conscious or rather subconsciously calculated kind of plot to keep the status quo to keep women subservient. And I think the men in power or rather the media people in power because I don't know necessarily that the men that oppresses orifice the profit motive that oppressive but just for the sake of conversation I think their men find the status quo psychologically comforting as well as economically profitable. Because if they showed women as they really are in a variety of roles I think that perhaps would upset the number of women in the workforce or upset the

economic balance of things upset the status quo in any way. So it's to their interest to portray them as they are and they're very meke veiling about it I feel Well also there's a lot and the individual can do they can write a letter to the product. Company the parent company and say look we really don't like our image. We really don't like a particular ad that. They can write to the agency itself and they can write to the television station to the local station and say look you know how do I register a complaint. I would really feel that it's degrading to see women in that women in those kinds I really think people have lost faith in writing letters. I mean I don't do that anymore myself and I'm not sure that it does any good but you seem convinced otherwise. Oh yeah I was there definite power to the pen. To write to the advertising agency and address it to the I'm sorry the advertiser rather than the advertising agency because the agency is hired by the advertiser. But if you direct it to the advertising manager they figure that every one letter for every letter that a

person bothers to write represents how hundreds of people feel. In fact there was one commercial on it was for a detergent where a man had a greasy shirt and this commercial was supposed to demonstrate how the detergent got out of grease and the spot closed with Greek style music and three Greeks wrote in to the makers of the products saying this is very insulting to people of Greek heritage because it equates being Greek with Greece and those three letters were reported never times in age and the maker of the product was so upset of this fact that they yanked the commercial. Now mind you this is the same manufacturer that makes the ring around the collar. Commercials now you know how many women have ticketed have written letters have boycotted that product because of those idiotic ring around the collar ads where the woman feels guilty for his dirty neck. Now they can take this other Greek commercial off because the three Greek letters but they still allow ring around the collar. That

to me proves that they really do not care about the way women are portrayed or else they're doing it consciously. So how is the letter going to do any good then. Well I think what we have to do is combine letter with political pressure and selective by you know selectively bind and purchasing your consumer dollars and you don't like a commercial don't buy the product is what you're saying. I make it not. It's not enough to say I didn't like this commercial but I don't like the commercial I'm not buying your product and I'm telling everyone I know. Has there ever been a study I mean now has talked for years about the image of women in the media and how they're not satisfied with it. Many many other groups to you w did some some very interesting monitoring in California and lots of women who are not connected with women's movement are not happy about it. But has anyone actually done a study and said This is how this image is affecting women or children or whatever. There have been several studies. None of them have been major however and most of them have

been done by women and have been criticized because they've been done by women. There's still not the definitive study of whether or not television really causes sex discrimination. Recently however the Commission on International Women's Year through the State Department sent a recommendation to the president that he direct the Department of Health Education and Welfare to conduct a launcher to nill study on the impact of television. On sex discrimination and sexual stereotyping. So hopefully the AGW will contract with someone like the University of Pennsylvania who did the study on violence and children's television in the islands so that we can raise the issue and people will begin to look at the question of sex discrimination and how much television really causes it. No more really talking though a couple generations away in terms of that

in terms of whether or not our children are going to be impacted by sexual stereotyping on television. That's right they say that whatever forms a child's behavior and attitude is that which is vivid early and repeated. And if there's anything that's David Hurley underpaid it's television. So it's really a huge menace that sex stereotyping on TV is there is there any proof that if you took two identical products. And pitched one advertised one in the traditional way and then advertised it in another way the way that you were both talking about and which is males go. Would women buy the one that showed them as independent people and so on more than the other way. I think I have an example of that which happened way back in 1970 or 1971. You're talking about the same product but two different brands.

OK well there was cigarette one cigarette and everything else. Yes I will not mention a brand cat or cigarette advertised to an independent liberated type woman who has come a long way baby like I did you know that for one and then another one advertised to a woman who the best one is rich and then and the TV advertising showed kind of like a sadistic man with sunglasses leaving the woman abandoning her in strange places. An Advertising Age said that the. Commercial with the sadistic man. Two women who are rich and then would be the most successful one rather than the one that advertised to the liberated woman because Advertising Age said it's easy for women to change cigarettes brand. But it's not so easy to change the psychological makeup of women. Women want to be abused. Well what they didn't reckon for what they didn't figure it was to come as the women's movement and

women's growing self-conscious. What happened is the sadistic cigarette is enjoying a very low share of market and the cigarette that had the image of a more independent woman has about a 1.5 share market. So that is the best example I know of right now. You know there is no absolute proof though is there but you suspect it would go that way across the board. Well that's the best example I can think of right now but I think it is in the advertisers interest as well as women's interest to try them in a variety of roles. The national advertising review board came out with such a statement just last year that you brought up another thing you said that they hadn't accounted for the women's movement I mean we are going through such an incredibly fast social and cultural changes. Can the marketing research really keep up with some of the changes and especially the changes in women. Well I can judge people's buying habits but I don't think they can judge what's going on in people's brains. Very often we don't always say what we really mean and when we're filling out samples or filling out forms it may not be what's going

on a non brain. I think that the increased number in divorces says that there's a lot going on in the American family right now the changing women's and men's needs are changing. We're going to have to start coping with that and dealing with that so the study results of a study one year may in fact not be where women are at the next year. So you know I think that we're cautiously approaching you know we should be cautiously looking at the statistics and statistics can say what you want them to say. Oh I agree and they really do manipulate their statistics. And also the motivational researchers use something that's called a focus group where they get women together they call them up and say How would you like to come to a coffee and Danish party and talk about a turkey. Am I talking about a detergent or talk about a hair product. And who in the world would want to come out of your house on a Saturday or after work or whatever and sit around a bunch of people talking about how bright your laundry is. Certainly I wouldn't want to do that kind of thing on my free time.

What happens is you get a lot of women who do not work they don't adequately sample the number of working women in these focus groups and they sit around and talk about how white their washing is and that's the basis that they get the research on from the focus group as one motivational researcher told me. Eight of the bunker type comes to the focus group. So I think that's one reason why the commercials are so and I mean. And. What the motivational researcher told me what's particularly frightening. She said it is the younger women in the focus groups who are talking about wider wash and spotty glassware in waxed yellow build up and all of these things with great seriousness rather than the older women. And she accounts for this by saying that they grew up with TV and they have a resulting TV mentality where they treat all of these little things as major crises and I think that's very dangerous and this station of how much damage television can do the female psyche.

And in addition if there's an ad campaign that's good we should give people positive reinforcement as well as negative reinforcement. So you know keep those letters going to the commercials that you like as well as to the ones that you don't want. Choice is that the only kind of motivational research the focus group. And now they have something called Psycho graphics where they do something called psycho drama where they act out the different roles of the commercial and they come up with the little Floridian oriented suggestions like having the product disappear into the wall will subliminally satisfy a woman's need for penetration or they will say a woman can't be shown with a cigarette in her mouth because that's a thowt symbol and a phallic symbol does not belong a woman of course that belongs on a man and they say things like women bake cakes because it satisfies them and acts the birth of a child. That's another one of their goodies and they. What about all these Floridian ballots that is just psychologists to determine what

women really want. Completely ignoring the needs of feminists who have been telling them certainly year isn't for nothing that women want to be treated as equals with some portion of human dignity. It isn't only men that are responsible for this though I mean you know really saying that are you know I think it's the profit motive rather than the masculine psyche that oppresses. Of course men are in control of our society. But there are as many women who have this kind of oppressive mentality and advertising as there are not there are a lot of good women in the media who stick up for women's rights and who are very responsible people with a great measure of feminism but some of them just because they're women doesn't mean that they're humanist. Did you know I have this image now. But you do me of people sitting around a boardroom table trying to decide how they can manipulate people I mean does that really do they do.

I brought with me a good example of this. They're always talking about advertising designs and new advertising waves of the future and just like women's wear reports new styles and dress they talk about new techniques and oppressing people. And I have this example from Advertising Age of brought with me about the new advertising wave of the future called horses head advertising where an executive of an ad agency used a scene from The Godfather where the severed horse's head was bloodied and put on the man's bed. And this is the way he describes horses hit advertising quote it hits the unsuspecting consumer on his blind side with the graphic image. So they have it and to sell it that it sticks in the mind like a lunatic nightmare. So folks that's what we're all getting a little dose of that every time I sit on the computer. Yes. Does advertising affect the content of a television program. It shouldn't. Let's put it that way. However and it's again it's not a question of

advertising as much as it is the corporations behind the advertisements. Unfortunately there are rules prohibiting this in television stations at least. It's called an abnegation of responsibility if advertisers have too much control over the television licensee. So legally it's prohibited However there are questions in our mind sometimes as to how much of a control advertisers do have especially in choosing network programs. Oh yes and in reality there is something that I call dollars and cents censorship. There are two firms that operate out of New York called AI Yes and Leslie Harris and these two firms monitor network programming for their advertiser clients. And if there is anything that is very controversial or something that does not jive with the advertisers concept of the right commercial climate. That commercial is yanked. So it's kind of like a subtle form of censorship because the network knows what kind of

controversy or programming they can get away with and what they can't. In fact the president of NBC TV said last August when we met with and now met with NBC that there has been a noticeable erosion of controversial program content because of the march show where Ma had an abortion and every single advertiser pulled out. Now when the financial support of broadcasting pulls out I think that the programmers know just exactly what they can get away with and they're very dependent on the advertising dollar. Kathy you said in the very beginning when we first began to talk that the thing that first annoys most women is the 30 second spot. And then they move on to to for their involvement and address themselves to some of the larger questions. Well there's a variety of ways that women can develop leverage with their broadcast stations either with directly to the stations go in and negotiating and meeting with their local

television station managers meeting with other women's groups doing their homework go in and looking at the public files checking out the employment statistics at the station. There are two other ways that women's groups in that the consumer groups can have a check on broadcasters through congressional pressure as well as federal agency pressure. The Federal Communications Commission license television stations in the public interest these licenses expire every three years. They go on a rotating basis by state. In May the Southern States will be up later in the year. The Midwestern states will be up for renewal. These are when stations are exceptionally vulnerable to citizen pressure. They make promises to the Commission to keep their license says over a three year period. And they've got it you know come through with those promises and yet there. Are license formative action

responsibilities in employment that local stations have. They need to go out to ascertain the community find out what the community needs already mean ascertain the community there's a process set up under community FCC rules says a station must go out and ascertain community leaders to go down and sit sit down with people and ask them what the problems are in the community. Keeping in mind that their responsibility is not to solve the problems but to present the problems present both sides of those problems not on a one minute to one minute basis but in overall programming. So that the community really is serviced by those public airwaves where where some places that people can get information like this when they need to have it. OK the Federal Communications Commission has available a variety of public service pieces of paper that and information there's a public interest law firm called Citizens Communication Center in Washington. Can you name the list sure that if people are interested I could write us and we could get in the loop in addition.

The international commission is going to be holding conferences all over the country 50 state conferences where these issues will be discussed and women will be encouraged to participate in their local communities. Cathy and Joyce I thank you both very much for being here we're out of time with you. Thank you for watching and good night. You say A. Woman is produced by w n e d t t which is solely responsible for its content and is funded by a public television stations of the Ford Foundation and the Corporation

for Public Broadcasting. You.