Representation of Masculinity and Femininity on Iranian Television on IRIB TV2 Children’s Programs

Children are one of the most important media audiences. This present research has studied children’s television programs on Iran TV2 using Tuchman and Connell’s feminist theory and content analysis method. The purpose of this research is to study the representation of femininity and masculinity in the characters of the children's program. The main questions of this research are: “which kind of gender stereotypes is represented on children’s programs on IRIB TV2? Which kind of contents would be reproduced by these stereotypes?” For this purpose, 23 episodes of children’s programs on IRIB TV2 have been selected by random sampling. Research findings show that male and female characters are distributed unbalanced on children’s programs. So that, male display rate is 40.5% (272 codes) more than that of female characters. Hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity has been represented on male and female characters on these programs. Gender stereotypes are shown in the form of Binary oppositions such as male active/female passive, male intelligent/ female unintelligent. The symbolic annihilation of women is represented on these programs, so that women mostly are shown in ineffective roles. Therefore, the research finding show that television and specifically children’s programs persists the unequal representation of male and female characters.