G-rated job market strays far from reality

Where do our youngest children see 178 times as many female entertainers and 86 times more male entertainers than there are in the U.S. workforce? The answer: In the most popular G-rated movies--which young children watch over and over on DVD and video.

According to "The G-Rated Job Market: Occupational Aspirations for Girls and Boys in Children's Films," a report from the See Jane program of Dads & Daughters, Los Angeles, there is significant divergence between occupations that movie characters hold and those held by real people. Characters also tend to follow gender stereotypes closely in occupations, while virtually no male characters engage in stereotypically female work. Researchers studied the 101 top-grossing G-rated films released from 1990-2004, analyzing a total of 4,249 speaking characters in live-action and animated films.

"Of course, we expect these films to tell fictional stories and frequently portray fantasies," notes Joe Kelly, president of Dads & Daughters. "So, we didn't expect complete congruity between film characters and real-life workers. However, I don't think we can entirely attribute the degree of distortion to fictional storytelling."

"The occupational world of G-rated movies frequently bears little resemblance to the work world that young viewers will soon inhabit themselves," according to lead researcher Stacy Smith of the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication. "For example, there are nearly three times as many white collar females and blue collar males in the U.S. workforce as there are among major characters in the film sample. There are more than two-and-a-half times more female professionals in the U.S. than there are in children's movies."

COPYRIGHT 2006 Society for the Advancement of Education
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning