Modeling the Impacts of Media on Gender Role Expectations (Case Study: 15-Year-Old and Older People in Yasouj City)

Introduction: Today’s life is based on living in a media world. Media has an important effect on socialization of human beings. They can affect people’s gender role expectations. Television, satellite, the internet, magazines, and newspapers have not only controlled the entrance of information to our minds, but also made us spend a great deal of our times on them in everyday life. According to many studies, television and satellite programs such as films, serials, news, entertainments, documentaries, and advertisings are among the most widely used media with substantial impacts on people's lifestyles. The questions dealt with in this study were how and to what extent they could affect the gender role expectations of 15-year-old and older people in Yasouj City and what kind of model could be used to explain them. Materials & Methods: The current study was based on a quantitative method and a researcher-made questionnaire was used to gather the required data. The statistical population of this research included some parents with their children, who could answer the research questions, in Yasouj City. Based on the census of 2016 made by the Iranian Sencus Organization (1396), the population of Yasouj City was 134532 people with 34850 families. The research sample size was based on a "Lane" sampling table at 95% level of confidence interval (Alpha=0.05 and N=373 people). First, the different areas of Yasouj City were identified based on a multi-stage random sampling method. Then, the questionnaires were distributed in the main streets and blocks randomly determined in each area. It was mostly tried to choose half of the parents with half of their children in the sampling process. The dependent and independent variables were gender role expectations and media utilization, including foreign and domestic media uses, respectively. The data were analyzed by using SPSS-25 and AMOS-23 statistical software. Discussion of Results and Conclusion: The model’s parameters showed the significant effects of the level of trust in television, age, cultural capital, rate of television use, rate of satellite use, and level of trust in satellite on the level of gender role expectations. These factors could explain 59% of the variance in gender role expectations. However, the effects of identifications with satellite and television on gender role expectations were not significant. The following results were obtained by performing a moderation analysis on the effects of the variable of parent-child status on the relationship between the uses of satellite and television and gender role expectations. The standard coefficient of the effect of using satellite on gender role expectations for the group of parents was -0.32. The same effect on the use of TV was estimated to be 0.52. However, in the group of children, these values were equal to -3.33 and -0.02, respectively. The effect of television use on gender role expectations among the parents was stronger than among the children. The effects of satellite use on gender role expectations at the sample level (statistical population) were not significantly different between the parents and children. According to the findings of this study, domestic media like television were promoters of traditional values to a greater extent and increased gender segregation, while such media as satellite further reduced the belief in segregation of gender roles. Another indirect and, of course, important result of this investigation was the inconsistency of the programs broadcast on the Iraninan national television with the cultural requirements, especially with regard to gender in today's world of youth as it was turned out that Iranian Radio and Television had littele effect on young people’s gender beliefs and only affected the group of parents. It could be concluded that Iranian Radio and Television could lose many of their viewers and leave the field to the influence of other media if they do not change their orientations towards gender issues.