Literature Review

The Role and Impact of Media in Addressing Gender Inequality

1. Introduction

In recent years, gender inequality has become a serious issue as it will affect an individual

confidence level. Gender inequality, also known as gender discrimination, refers to the biased treatment

of an individual where women are not given rights or priority because they are being categorized as the

individual that will need to stay at home to look after the child and to complete all the house chores.

Hence, social media plays an important role in helping to create awareness in society about the human

rights of women and encouraging policymakers to step commitments to the issue of gender inequality.

This issue will need to be raised in society to prevent violence against women where people abused

them or criticized them with words that will affect them physically and mentally. According to Cosmo

Magazines, gender discrimination has been present for as long as 8000 years, hence it is safe to say that

it is a huge social issue that will need to be tackled. Well, people often assume that this issue has not

much impact on people all across the world but there are many studies such as the one conducted by

Kim et. Al. (2020) have clearly shown that those victims who experience gender discrimination

experience more depressive symptoms, unmotivated and more.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Factors of gender inequality

First of all, one of the factors which caused gender inequality is uneven education. As research

shows, men have more access to education than women. (Soken-Huberty, 2022) One-quarter of young

women aged between 15 and 24 in the world do not finish primary school. This is because some families

a long time ago were in conditions of poverty which had stricken them to think that acquisition of

education is of utmost significance in sustainable living conditions. Thus, they aspired to get their sons
enrolled in schools to get engaged in good employment which possessed this viewpoint that they

preferred to invest in men’s education than women’s. When women are not educated on the same level

as men, they are less likely to be given opportunities or rewards, and they may be disrespected by men

due to their lack of knowledge.

Furthermore, cultural factors such as patrilocality, old-age support from sons, the dowry system,

patrilineality, and many more factors also cause gender inequality. For instance, when a woman gets

married, she needs to cease her birth family and has to join her husband’s family. Under this system,

parents possibly reap more of the returns on investments in sons than daughters. This is because men

will remain a part of their family, whereas daughters will financially and physically leave the household

upon marriage. This culture and phenomenon are much more common in Asia and the Middle East than

in Europe and the Americas. (Jayachandran, 2015)

Apart from these, women’s lack of legal protection is one of the reasons for gender inequality. A

study found that close to 1.4 billion women lack legal protection against domestic economic violence.

(Bank, 2018) Not only economic violence, but women are also not legally protected against specific

types of sexual harassment such as at work, school, and in public places. Violence against women takes

many forms, including physical, sexual, emotional, and economic. As a result, women are afraid to stand

up to defend their rights as it is useless even though they voice out. As time goes by, women will think

that they are not good enough and suffer from low status. This will cause an important impact on

women’s ability to thrive and live in freedom.

Lastly, the root cause of gender inequality is the role and place which society assigns to women.

(Ramadan, 2021) Society determines the differences and values of men and women and plays a starring

role in every arena, whether it’s employment, the legal system, or healthcare. A narrow-minded society

thinks that women should stay at home and take care of their husbands and children, instead of spending

time working outside. They assume that women are not able to do anything by themselves and always

limit women’s abilities. This is because they think women are more sensitive and emotional compared to
men. It leads them to be ridiculous and irrational which causes them incapable of having important

positions in the working field or even in the government industry. To sum up, gender inequality is

caused due to uneven education, cultural factors, lack of legal protection, and societal mindsets.

2.2 Effects of Gender Inequality

The issue of gender inequality has increasingly attracted attention in the contemporary. The fact

that gender inequality has a wide range of negative effects that significantly affect our day-to-day lives.

The impact on women's physical and mental health, the growth in domestic violence and sexual violence,

and the issue of women's ability to survive after losing their support are a few of the effects that we will

talk about.

First, in a workplace with which gender inequality, women are at a disadvantage. Women are

traditionally identified with positions that are weak, unskilled, unworthy of being independent, etc. As a

result, women are highly susceptible to discrimination at work and sexism from the sexes who are

bullying them. Women typically earn less than men do, for instance, and have fewer opportunities for

advancement and workplace benefits. Men frequently receive preference for job benefits and promotions,

and women face significant discrimination at work.

Women are under a lot of pressure in situations such as these, where they have the same

workload but different salaries, and as a result, they are more likely to suffer from physical and mental

health issues. Additionally, women are physically weaker than men, making it impossible for them to be

properly qualified to consider issues related to life and health. Psychologically, women started to

develop a variety of unhealthy viewpoints as a result of a substantial time of unfairness. Women are

beginning to accept this underappreciated, unacknowledged phenomenon as common and unavoidable.

Depression, anxiety, and stress are now common psychological conditions among women. Men are

more likely to treat women disrespectfully in words and deeds due to historical inequity.
 Then, as men's disrespect for women got increasingly worse, it led to societal issues like bullying

and sexual assault by males against women. We were raised with the idea of hierarchical superiority due

to the influence of the Asian feudal system. The environment in which people grow up has gradually

fostered this kind of concept from childhood to maturity into bullying and sexual assault. The boys were

trained by their parents to have morally damaged children, and as they grew older, these patterns of

behavior led to more severe incidents of sexual abuse. Women are not understood or assisted, which

worsens the problem in a setting where they have nowhere to turn to for justice.

In some of these places, women are exclusively permitted to work at home with their husbands

and kids and are not permitted to work outside the home. Women are educated from an early age with

the notion that women should strive to be good mothers and wives, as well as responsible for their

husbands' daily needs and procreation. Women gradually lost the independence they formerly had in

society. This problem has made women afraid of being physically resisted and has created a circle of

domestic violence deeper. We have always been concerned about gender inequality, and I hope that will

change once we realize its negative effects.

3. Methodology

3.1 Method used

Gender inequality is the social phenomenon in which men and women are not treated equally. It

has existed in our society since ancient times. It gives women unequal treatment not only in the

workplace but also in the home. Therefore, a few relevant studies have been conducted to learn more

about gender inequality. Researchers use quantitative and qualitative to get the results of these studies.

One of the qualitative studies was investigated by Stephanie Seguino to propose the impact of

gender inequality on economic growth. (Seguino, 2000) The data were collected with GDP from 1980 to

1983. Through the data, we can know that women have more authority in developed countries than in
other countries. Next, the salary distribution is also aware that the capital owned comes from the

authority.

Another qualitative study was done by Asha S George, Avni Amin, Claudia Marques de Abreu

Lopes, and TK Sundari Ravindran using analysis to elaborate on structural determinants that influence

inequities and health outcomes. (George, Amin, Lopes, & Ravindran, 2020) It shows how the decisive

factors assign who should do what and when. In 1920, institutions of gender inequality were created,

including families, communities, and markets. Gender inequality institutions, such as families,

communities, and markets, were created in 1920, affecting health risks, vulnerability, access to services,

and outcomes.

Cailin Susan Stamarski and Leanne Son Hing conducted qualitative research that talked about

the influence of gender inequalities in the workplace. (Stamarski & Hing, 2015) Employees can gain

equal access to performance and promotion opportunities by strengthening the company's human

resources policy. Furthermore, businesses can implement flexible work systems to ease the burden on

female employees and increase the retention rate of working mothers. Policies that standardize and

objectively measure performance can also assist businesses in reducing gender discrimination.

Moreover, another qualitative method done by Estelle Loiseau and Keiko Nowacka also

conducted decision-making processes on women in social media through a questionnaire. Social media

has opened up the landscape of relationships. In 2014, the kidnapping of Nigerians was supported by 1.2

billion people through media and UN Women's advocacy. In Beijing, China, only 11 percent of women

participated in politics in 1995, but now 22 percent do. (Loiseau & Nowacka, 2015)

Besides, another qualitative method of research conducted by 2021. It discusses how gender

inequality affects everyone. As children, boys received 8 times more attention in class than girls. One in

every three Australian women over the age of 15 has experienced physical violence. Women with

disabilities are easier to have sexual assault than usual women.

inequality in development. (Jayachandran, 2015) According to the data, the male-to-female college

enrolment ratio in the United States continues to skew. The male-female labor-force participation rate

with GDP per capita. The correlation is almost non-existent. When it comes to marriage, the lower the

status of women, who can't even make their own decisions. Women in developed countries, according to

statistics, have more power and freedom to choose themselves.

Another qualitative method was done by Mark J. Brandit and P. J. Henry in 2012. The research

was conducted through interviews. (Brandt & Henry, 2012) The interviewees were asked to complete

the study for partial course credit for an introduction to psychology course. These findings suggest that

both men and women who face social rejection are more likely to support authoritarian values than those

who do not.

Furthermore, Claudia Wagner, David Garcia, Mohsen Jadidi, and Markus Strohmaier have

conducted a quantitative method of assessing gender inequality in an online encyclopedia. They use a

collection of around 120k notable people that have been used in previous research for studying the

mobility of notable people. (Wagner, Garcia, Jadidi, & Strohmaier, 2015) To find Wikipedia articles

about those individuals, they use Wikipedia search API and search for the full name to select the right

person they are looking for.

Next, there are another authors, Brooke Erin Duffy and Emily Hund who conducted

entrepreneurial femininity and self-branding of fashion bloggers. They carried out a qualitative analysis

of the top 38 US fashion blogs’ textual and visual content. They also supplemented information gleaned

from in-depth interviews with eight professional bloggers. (Duffy & Hund, 2015)

Lastly, Susan Moller Okin conducted a qualitative method to discuss gender inequality and

cultural differences. Feminists think it should have different ways to treat men and women in law and

other aspects of public policy. They regard feminist concepts like "gender" and "woman" as unjust as

any other category or generalization that doesn't account for every difference. (Okin, 1994)
4. Results and Discussions

4.1 Compare and contrast the sample sizes and locations

The similarity of sample sizes in the ten journal articles is that they mostly contained big sample

sizes. In a research written by Brooke Erin Duffy and Emily Hund, the sample size is 38 individuals,

which is the smallest sample size (Duffy & Hund, 2015) and the biggest sample size belongs to authors

Mark J. Brandt and P. J. Henry, with 161,165 individuals (52% women, 48% men) in one of their study

(Brandt & Henry, 2012) . Then the sample size gathered by authors Claudia Wagner, David Garcia,

Mohsen Jadidi, and Markus Strohmaier is 124,824 altogether (Wagner, Garcia, Jadidi, & Strohmaier,

2015), followed by Mark J. Brandt and P. J. Henry’s another study, which has a sample size of 71 men

and 175 women, which brings the sum to 246 (Brandt & Henry, 2012) . The other six journals do not

state specific sample sizes as the journal by Seema Jayachandran (Jayachandran, 2015) , Cailin Susan

Stamarski and Leanne Son Hing (Stamarski & Hing, 2015) , Estelle Loiseau and Keiko Nowacka

(Loiseau & Nowacka, 2015), Susan Moller Okin (Okin, 1994), and Stephanie Seguino (Seguino, 2000)

contain data from several sources. Besides that, the last journal by Asha S George, Avni Amin, Claudia

Marques de Abreu Lopes, and T K Sundari Ravindran uses individuals from over 70 countries (George,

Amin, Lopes, & Ravindran, 2020).

A difference that can be found when comparing the journal articles is the location of the sample

sizes. The research done by Brooke Erin Duffy and Emily Hund took place in the United States (Duffy

& Hund, 2015). Next, Mark J. Brandt and P. J. Henry attained participants from 54 different countries in

their first study and students from the psychology subject pool of DePaul University, America for their

another study (Brandt & Henry, 2012) . In Claudia Wagner, David Garcia, Mohsen Jadidi, and Markus

Strohmaier’s journal, their participants are from different countries because they obtain the data from

freebase, HA, and pantheon (Wagner, Garcia, Jadidi, & Strohmaier, 2015) . Moreover, the other six

journal also obtained data from several sources, which come from different countries too. Lastly, the
sample size of the journal by Asha S George, Avni Amin, Claudia Marques de Abreu Lopes, and T K

Sundari Ravindran is from 70 different countries (George, Amin, Lopes, & Ravindran, 2020).

5. Conclusion

To conclude, from these studies we know that the issue of gender inequality is still not being

exposed much by society and people are still working hard to get women's rights in the next few years.

Gender inequality should be solved as it will affect the individual emotions and lead them to sickness

like depression anxiety or stress. Hence, society should work hand in hand to bring up this issue and

respect women's rights as it is believed in a few years, women can also stand the same height as men.

From the method of studies, we know that society is aware of this issue as there is a collection of online

encyclopedias where they collect feedback from people who also studied the research before this. The

suggestion for further studies is that we could enlarge the markets to create more awareness to the

people around the world to respect women’s rights and give more opportunities for women to voice out

their opinions. On the other side, women should get equal rights from society to pursue what they want.