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Business News/ Opinion / Does cable TV empower women?
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Does cable TV empower women?

Mere exposure to cable television does not change gender equations in a society

A still from the TV serial Sasural Simar Ka. To make a case for TV’s impact on gender dynamics requires more detailed information on the content of the TV programmes. Premium
A still from the TV serial Sasural Simar Ka. To make a case for TV’s impact on gender dynamics requires more detailed information on the content of the TV programmes.

In a popular Indian soap opera, Sasural Simar Ka, the protagonist, Simar, recently faced a unique test. Simar was told she would have to quit her job if her husband didn’t like the laddoos she made for him! Given that these kinds of subplots are common in a typical Indian television programme, it is hard to believe that watching TV leads to emancipation of Indian women. Yet, that is precisely what Robert Jensen of the University of Pennsylvania and Emily Oster of the University of Chicago seemed to have found in a 2009 study that made the case for positive effects of cable TV on attitude towards women in rural India.

Five years later, a new study by Vegard Iversen of the University of Manchester and Richard Palmer-Jones of the University of East Anglia has challenged the findings of the earlier study. Iversen and Palmer-Jones contend that exposure to cable TV may not have any desirable effect on attitude towards women. Instead, the reported gains in women’s empowerment in the Jensen-Oster study may be because of other factors such as women joining self-help groups.

In the Jensen-Oster study, conducted between 2001 and 2003, women were surveyed in 180 villages of these states: Delhi, Haryana, Bihar, Goa and Tamil Nadu. During this period, 21 out of the 180 villages got new cable TV connections. Using this dataset, the paper argued that the introduction of TV led to a decline in spousal violence and fertility and an improvement in female autonomy.

Jensen and Oster used son preference and acceptability of domestic violence as the measures to make their case. Their study suggests that in villages with new cable connections, “women are less likely to report that it is acceptable for a husband to beat his wife, and less likely to express a preference for sons. Behaviour traditionally associated with women’s status also change: women report increased autonomy (for example, the ability to go out without permission and to participate in household decision-making) and lower fertility".

What is the underlying mechanism that explains why this would happen? According to Jensen-Oster, “the program offerings on cable television are quite different than government programming. The most popular shows tend to be game shows and soap operas. For example, among the most popular shows in both 2000 and 2007 (based on Indian Nielsen ratings) is Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (Because a mother-in-law also was once a daughter-in-law), a show based around the life of a wealthy industrial family in the large city of Mumbai. As can be seen from the title, the main themes and plots of the show revolve around issues of family and gender".

Most of us know that themes of the popular soap operas on cable television are hinged towards conservative families and espouse traditional values. So, the theory that TV programmes will bring gender-friendly change appears far-fetched. Broad numbers also seem to belie that claim: the latest census reported a decline in child sex-ratio from 927 girls per 1,000 boys in 2001 to 918 in 2011, even as cable TV spread rapidly in the country. So, the Jensen-Oster findings do appear odd given what we know about social attitudes towards women and the nature of TV programmes.

Besides, there is no other empirical evidence to show that cable TV programmes universally succeed in inculcating so-called pro-social behaviour (behaviour beneficial to society). Even the case studies that demonstrate positive effects of cable TV on female autonomy are very context-specific. For instance, Eliana La Ferrara of the Bocconi University and her colleagues measured the impact of novellas in Brazil on fertility. The paper corroborates Jensen-Oster findings— introduction of pro-social TV programmes did lead to a decline in fertility. However, there is an important difference between the two studies. The Brazilian soap operas portrayed families that were much smaller in size than in reality. In contrast, the Jensen-Oster study fails to establish a plausible link between programme content and behavioural change.

Given the counter-intuitive nature of the findings, Vegard Iversen and Palmer-Jones decided to replicate the Jensen-Oster study. The duo reconstructed each of the measures used by Jensen-Oster: acceptability of beating, female autonomy and son preference. Their reworking of the Jensen-Oster analysis shows that the introduction of cable TV had no impact on the gender attitude for households with illiterate women. They also contend that the effect of cable TV may show up just because Jensen-Oster omitted a crucial variable in the analysis (joining a self-help group could have been a reason for change in female autonomy, for instance).

What this suggests is that a more complex process may be at work than the more appealing and straightforward hypothesis of cable TV being the main agent of social change. A lot depends on how viewers think about the stories and characters shown therein.

A 1991 study by Michael Brown and Michael Cody of the University of Southern California on the very popular TV programme Hum Log suggested that while the viewers identified with the characters, there was very little change in attitude towards women.

“One of the lessons learned from Hum Log is that the intended effects of ‘prosocial’ television content are not simply dependent on degree of viewers’ awareness and involvement but on viewers’ perception of the positive and negative television role models used to create that awareness and involvement," wrote Brown and Cody in their Hum Log study.

To make a case for TV’s impact on gender dynamics requires more detailed information on the content of the TV programmes. In the absence of credible causal links between TV programmes and gender equality, it may be better to continue to focus on the more traditional ways of achieving gender parity—better laws, improved access to educational facilities and generating awareness about employment opportunities—as Jensen himself shows in another study.

Sumit Mishra is a research scholar at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai.

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Published: 28 Nov 2014, 01:27 AM IST
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