tailieunhanh - Girls and Boys and Television A few reminders for more gender sensitivity in chi ldren’s TV

The Government understands that IPTV will indeed play an important role in the future of television broadcasting. It is Government‘s expectation that local TV will develop in two phases, the first as outlined in this paper through services carried on the DTT platform; the second through IPTV. The inherent limitations of spectrum, including the geographic interleaved spectrum proposed in this framework, mean that not all viewers will be able to receive local TV in the first phase. However, the Government aims to have the best superfast broadband in Europe by 2015. The Government‘s programme will bring. | Girls and Boys and Television A few reminders for more gender sensitivity in children s TV Why do we need gender sensitivity Television is highly appealing to children all over the world. It offers them exciting stories material for their imagination access to other worlds they would not come across in daily life - and visions of what it means to be a girl or a boy - a woman or a man. The goal of any quality children s television is to support both boys and girls in becoming active members of the society they inhabit. But what kinds of world views is children s television offering What roles is it presenting to girls and boys A simple count of the main characters in children s television in 24 countries reveals that in only 32 of cases girls or women are the main characters while boys and men do so in 68 . In some series women or girls are almost entirely absent. A brief look at the ratio of male to female in The Smurfs or among the fish in the ocean in Finding Nemo raises the question Who can really imagine a world in which only one woman features among hundreds of men This fairly straightforward comparison of numbers already illustrates that television portrays a biased representation of the social world. Some may argue that questions of gender equality are passé and belong to a previous century. Yet the reality of children s television proves to us that today gender equality is still a long way off. Not only are girls shown in restricted roles but little attention is given to issues of boys and the crises they confront. What is called for here is gender sensitivity which offers quality for girls and boys which draws attention to critical stereotypes and clichés and points out alternatives which are beneficial and appealing to girls and boys. The purpose of this reminder is to provide some explanatory notes with regard to these issues. Dr. Maya Gotz International Central Institute for Youth and Educational Television IZI Germany In co-operation with Dr. Reinhard