European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - October 20, 1991, Darmstadt, Hesse                                On the air Duck tales a Wall Disney production is one of the More enlightened children a shows. Wah Disney  a to gives jump Start to sex role by Scott Williams a television writer what do you want to be when you grow up if you re a kid and you watch an average amount of television a mind boggling 22 hours a wee you might be getting the wrong idea about what you can become a boy or girl Man or woman. To reinforces traditional sex roles  and women. A men Are powerful authoritative dominant and aggressive women Are subservient and relatively unimportant except in family roles and As sex objects a a 1987 study noted. Over the years males on to have outnumbered women about 3-to-l. Dozens of studies and Content analyses have shown that television in general and kids to in particular is dominated by males. A male voice overs run 9-to-l in commercials generally a said John Murray a psychologist at Kansas state University. A a that a Independent of who appears on the screen. The voice of authority from behind the screen that is predominantly  too often that male voice has been telling woman what fabric softener is Best or How to get that carpet really clean. Even Public television has its problems with sex roles according to Tannis Macbeth Williams a psychologist at the University of British Columbia who ran a Content analysis based on a week of children a to in october 1985. She divided the kids programs into a informative educational a predominantly Public television shows and a non informative a or network mainstream. In children so a informative programs the prominent characters were All or mostly male in 54.3 percent of the programs an even mix in 31.5 percent and All or mostly female in 14.2 percent. The prominent characters in a non informative children a shows were mostly male in 67.3 percent of the shows an even mix in 25 percent and All or mostly female in 7.7 percent. In statistical terms the categories Are virtually identical Williams said. The same is True in showing characters that were  the informative shows had All or mostly males 76.5 percent of the time an even mix in 13.7 percent and All or mostly female in 9.9 percent. For the mainstream shows the powerful or authoritative or knowledgeable characters were All or mostly male in 67.2 percent of shows an even mix in 19.2 and All or mostly female in 13.6 percent. Before Williams presented her findings at a conference she said an acquaintance who worked with pm so sesame Street asked about them. She was dismayed when Williams gave her the bad news about gender portrayals. A when i said that she said a Damn it i knew it id been telling them and telling them a a Williams recounted. A at least that was evidence there were some people involved who Felt that they should be doing a better Job in this  even commercials aimed at boys and girls Are noticeably different. Boys commercials have stirring visuals sound effects and action. Commercials for girls have dreamy dissolves soft focuses and gentle background music. A a children a toy advertising is the most sexist part a fumed Peggy Charren an activist whose Cambridge  action for children a television has lobbied for better kids to since 1968. A you see two Little White boys playing with their toys or two Little Blond girls playing with dolls or animals most of which Are connected to hair lots of hair a she said. A i thought at one time these four children were All part of one  How kids assimilate these cultural messages Isnit Clear. One theory suggests that by age 3 or 4, children watch to with their own a social scripts a their Learned expectations of what is Likely to happen. They bring those Little scripts with them and the More often their expectations Are met the More difficult it becomes to change them. Studies have found that historically boys choose to watch More cartoons and action adventure shows than do girls. Children also tend to pay closer attention to characters of their own sex or behaviour stereotyped to their own gender. Programmers have known this for years.4 they program to boys a said Debbie Solomon a Chicago based specialist in children a programming for the j. Walter Thompson advertising Agency. A the reason they do that is girls will watch boy programs but boys Are a lot less Likely to watch girl programs. So when they develop their programs they tend to gear them to a male audience. That a been pretty traditional. Stereotyped sex roles Are slow to die off in children a cartoons and the saturday morning shows because so much of the Library dates Back for years a sometimes generations. Those classic Warner Bros cartoons of the �?T30s and �?T40s, reflecting the attitudes of their Era Are still on the air. But Many of the worst offenders Date from the �?T70s, �?T80s and �?T90s. A cartoons and saturday morning programs generally have been More stereotyped Quot said ale tha Huston a University of Kansas psychologist who specializes in children and television. A in those there Are the male heroes who Are All powerful who do things a she said. Females tend to be insipid characters. They done to do anything positive. A they get into trouble that men have to get them out of. That is a particularly bad source of  Charren says action for children a television also is unhappy with the state of saturdays. A for the first time in 23 years we Are recommending that parents not allow their children to watch saturday morning to a she said. A parents should tape Public television programs and tape the stuff off Cable. They should buy used video take them out of the Library and Exchange tapes with friends. A if they children want to pick one program they should have an older sibling tape it without the commercials. Its just so ghastly its not Worth talking  t Huston notes that viewership for the networks saturday morning has been declining in recent years. Cable to has been picking up the Slack. In a 1991 study Cable television supplied 59 percent of the children a programming scheduled in the new York City area. A one of the things in be observed is that when one kind of stereotype is reduced a lot of stereotypes get reduced a Huston said. A when you have programs that try to reduce sexual stereotypes you also get fewer racial and ethnic stereotypes. You get three dimensional  much of the research predates More enlightened children a animation that began in 1987 with Walt Disney a Duck tales and continues with Warner  tiny Toon adventures and independents like Selvana  Beetle juice. Cable tvs Nickelodeon a division of Viacom enterprises is intent on developing More children a programs like its fall shows Clarissa explains it All an action series about a Normal 14-year-old girl and Doug an animated series about a 12-Ycar-old boy unsure of his place in the universe. Turner program services even created Captain planet and the Plant cars Young environmentalists who Combine their Powers to create a pollution busting superhero who serves the planetary goddess Gaia. Quot granted he a a male character a Charren said with some satisfaction. A but he has a female  20. 1531 sunday a Page 15