Gender and feminist approaches — AQA GCSE Media Studies 8572
AQA GCSE Media Studies · 8572
Gender and feminist approaches
Media representations
What you need to know
Essentialist views of gender (that men and women have fixed, natural characteristics) and social constructionist views (that society, including the media, constructs them).
Feminist approaches: how the media have represented women and men, from the 1955 OMO advert to contemporary online media and video games, and how far representations have changed.
How representations reflect the values of their time, and why audiences now read older products differently.
No feminist theorist is named for this course, so feminist approaches are learned as ideas rather than as particular writers' work.
The Close Study Products for 2027 and 2028 exams are His Dark Materials ('The City of Magpies') and Doctor Who ('An Unearthly Child'); the Daily Mirror and The Times; Marcus Rashford's and Kim Kardashian's online presence; Lara Croft Go, with Blackpink The Game for 2027 exams and Lego Fortnite for 2028 exams; the Galaxy, Represent and OMO adverts; the Tatler and Heat covers; Black Widow and I, Daniel Blake; the Arctic Monkeys and Blackpink videos; and Radio 1's launch and Kiss Breakfast. Kim Kardashian: Hollywood was set only for 2025, so past questions on it are practice only.
