More Than a Side Character: How Media and Pop Culture Shape the Way We See Women
⚠️ Trigger Warning (TW):
This post contains discussions of sexism, gender stereotyping, body shaming, objectification, sexual violence, and gender-based discrimination in media and pop culture. Please take care while reading.
From Hollywood blockbusters and reality shows to TikToks, music videos, and advertising, pop culture is the lens through which billions of people understand the world. It’s where our stories are told, our identities are shaped, and our imaginations are formed. But what happens when that lens distorts, limits, or erases the experiences of half the world’s population?
For decades, women in media have been reduced to stereotypes, background characters, or plot devices—rarely the heroes of their own stories. This isn’t just lazy storytelling. It’s political. Because media doesn’t just reflect culture—it creates it.
This blog post explores how the representation of women in media and pop culture reinforces structural inequality, shapes societal expectations, and affects women’s real lives. We’ll break down the patterns, share the data, and spotlight the feminist voices demanding better.
Representation Isn’t Just About Being Seen—It’s About Being Valued
When we talk about representation, we’re not just talking about screen time. We’re talking about power: who gets to speak, who gets to lead, and whose stories are deemed worthy.
Consistently, women have been underrepresented or misrepresented across the media landscape. According to the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media:
In 2019, only 37% of top-grossing film leads were women.
Only 34% of speaking characters in children’s television were female.
In 2022, just 24% of protagonists in global films were women of colour.
And behind the camera?
Only 21% of directors, 19% of writers, and 25% of producers of the top 100 grossing films in 2022 were women (USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative).
In the UK, just 11% of working film directors were women in 2021 (Directors UK).
When women don’t hold creative power, female characters are often filtered through the male gaze: sexualised, simplified, or silenced.
Persistent Stereotypes and Tropes That Harm
From fairy tales to franchises, female characters have long been written into narrow, repetitive boxes. These tropes are not harmless—they teach audiences how to view women and teach women how to view themselves.
👸 The Damsel in Distress
Passive, helpless, and always waiting to be saved. Think: Sleeping Beauty, Lois Lane, or countless romantic comedies where women’s lives revolve around male leads.
🖤 The Femme Fatale
Powerful, but dangerous. Desirable, but destructive. She’s punished for her sexuality or ambition. Think: Basic Instinct, Gone Girl.
🔫 The “Strong Female Character”
Physically tough, emotionally repressed, often written like a man with a ponytail. Strength is defined by masculinity, not complexity.
🧠 The Cool Girl
A woman who drinks beer, watches football, and never complains—because she exists to be chill and desirable to men. As Gillian Flynn wrote in Gone Girl: “She’s not real. She’s a construct.”
😡 The Crazy Ex / Psycho Woman
She’s emotional, irrational, hysterical—and often violent. This trope punishes women for expressing emotion or desire. It reinforces stigma around mental illness and frames women’s anger as unhinged rather than valid.
These characters may seem fictional—but the attitudes they promote are very real.
The Real-World Consequences
Media isn’t just entertainment—it’s social conditioning. The stories we consume shape our beliefs about gender, race, power, beauty, and violence. Here’s what research shows:
💼 In Politics
Women politicians are more likely to be scrutinised for their appearance, tone of voice, or family choices than their policies. A 2021 UN Women study found that 73% of women politicians have experienced online violence, often targeting their gender or appearance.
⚖️ In Courtrooms
Rape myths and victim-blaming narratives—reinforced by media—continue to affect how survivors are treated in the legal system. Studies show that jurors are more likely to believe a survivor if she fits the media-fabricated image of the "perfect victim" (white, passive, sober, conventionally attractive).
🏫 In Education and Self-Image
Girls begin to lose confidence as early as age 8, particularly in subjects like science and maths, where they rarely see themselves represented as competent or leading characters in media.
A 2020 Plan International survey found that 59% of girls aged 14–24 said harmful gender stereotypes in media limit their aspirations.
💔 In Relationships
Romantic comedies often promote emotionally unavailable men and teach women that love requires patience, self-sacrifice, or fixing someone “broken.” In contrast, assertive women are cast as “too much” or “hard to love.”
Intersectionality Matters
Representation issues become even more glaring when we look beyond white, cisgender, able-bodied women.
Black women are often cast as angry, sassy sidekicks or hypersexualised figures.
Asian women are portrayed as submissive or exotic.
Latina women are hypersexualised or framed as fiery and emotional.
LGBTQ+ women are either oversexualised or killed off (hello, bury your gays trope).
Disabled women are nearly invisible in mainstream media.
Plus size women are rarely shown as desirable, powerful, or successful—unless the plot is about their weight.
When these identities are erased or stereotyped, it reinforces a cultural hierarchy of whose stories matter—and whose don’t.
Who Tells the Story Matters
One of the most significant factors influencing female representation is who’s behind the scenes.
When women—and especially women of colour—are not writing, directing, producing, or editing, the stories told about women often lack authenticity or depth. It’s not enough to insert a “strong female lead” into a male-written script. Representation requires systemic change across the industry.
That’s why initiatives like #TimesUp, The Geena Davis Institute, and The Inclusion Rider are essential—they push for equitable hiring practices, funding opportunities, and accountability.
The Rise of Feminist Media
There is, however, a growing movement to reclaim the narrative. Feminist creators, critics, and platforms are pushing back—and changing the game.
TV shows like Fleabag, I May Destroy You, Pose, The Bear, and Sex Education offer complex, flawed, powerful portrayals of womanhood and queerness.
Documentaries like Miss Representation and This Changes Everything expose gender bias in Hollywood.
Social media movements like #MeToo, #OscarsSoWhite, and #RewriteHerStory have spotlighted structural inequality and demanded accountability.
These examples show us what’s possible when women take control of the narrative.
What Needs to Change
🎬 More women—and more diverse women—in decision-making roles.
Hire them. Fund them. Trust them to tell complex stories that reflect real life.
🖥️ Media literacy education.
Teach young people to recognise harmful tropes, question what they see, and think critically about how media shapes perception.
🎥 Support feminist and independent media.
Follow, subscribe to, and share creators and publications doing the work to centre underrepresented voices.
📣 Call it out.
When you see misogyny, racism, or erasure in media—name it. Social media gives us the power to challenge narratives in real time.
Conclusion: We Deserve to See Ourselves Fully
At Sisters for Justice, we believe stories shape reality. The way women are represented in media and pop culture reflects—and reinforces—our position in society. When our stories are reduced to tropes, erased from history, or filtered through the male gaze, we are denied our full humanity.
But when we are allowed to be complicated, messy, brilliant, flawed, powerful, and whole—on screen and off—we change the world’s understanding of what womanhood can be.
Representation is not just about presence. It’s about agency, nuance, and truth. It’s about who gets to take up space, and who gets to tell the story.
And it’s time women told our own.
