Gender related information

1. ANALYZING GENDER
STEREOTYPING IN
BOLLYWOOD MOVIES

2. MEET OUR TEAM
MANSI
A015116719053
KHYATI
A015116720121
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3. ABSTRACT
The presence of gender stereotypes in many aspects of society is
a well-known phenomenon. In this paper, we focus on studying
such stereotypes and bias in Hindi movie industry (Bollywood). We
analyze movie plots and posters for all movies. . The gender bias
is detected by semantic modeling of plots at inter-sentence and
intra-sentence level. Different features like occupation, introduction
of cast in text, associated actions and descriptions are captured to
show the pervasiveness of gender bias and stereotype in movies.
We derive a semantic graph and compute centrality of each
character and observe similar bias there. We also show that such
bias is not applicable for movie posters where females get equal
importance even though their character has little or no impact on
the movie plot. Furthermore, we explore the movie trailers to
estimate on-screen time for males and females and also study the
portrayal of emotions by gender in them.
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4. INTRODUCTION
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o Movies are a reflection of society. They mirror (with creative
liberties) the problems, issues, thinking & perception of
contemporary society. Therefore, we believe movies could act as
the proxy to understand how prevalent gender bias and
stereotypes are in any society. In this paper, we leverage NLP
and image understanding techniques to quantitatively study this
bias.
o Women are not inclined to buy a product when women are
portrayed in stereotypical images or as sexual objects, therefore,
the marketers can design campaigns with women depicted in a
positive light i.e., showcasing women as confident, decision
makers, etc. Men are also inclined to buy the product when they
find women in confident roles, carrying the burden with men
equally. However, she can be portrayed in an alluring outfit to
add glamor to the advertisement, hence increasing the
willingness to buy for men. To move towards a society with equal
status for both genders, portraying women in a similar fashion as
men would enhance equality in society.

5. Occupations and Gender Stereotypes- How are males
portrayed in their jobs vs females? How are these levels
different? How does it correlate to gender bias and
stereotype?
Appearance and Description- How are males and females
described on the basis of their appearance? How do the
descriptions differ in both of them? How does that indicate
gender stereotyping?
Centrality of Male and Female Characters- What is the role
of males and females in movie plots? How does the amount of
male being central or female being central differ? How does it
present a male or female bias?
Mentions (Image vs Plot)- How many males and females are
the faces of the promotional posters? How does this correlate
to them being mentioned in the plot? What results are
conveyed on the combined analysis?
ANALYSIS TASK

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Dialogues- How do the number of dialogues differ between a male cast
and a female cast in official movie script?
Singers- Does the same bias occur in movie songs? How does the
distribution of singers with gender vary over a period for different movies?
Female-centric Movies- Are the movie stories and portrayal of females
evolving? Have we seen female-centric movies in the recent past?
Screen Time- Which gender, if any, has a greater screen time in movie
trailers?
Emotions of Males and Females- Which emotions are most commonly
displayed by males and females in a movie trailer? Does this correspond
with the gender stereotypes which exist
in society?

7. TASK & APPROACH
The tasks we perform on the movie data extracted from Wikipedia and the
scripts. Further, we define the approach we adopt to perform individual tasks
and then study the inferences. At a broad level, we divide our analysis in four
groups. These can be categorized as follows
a) At intra-sentence level - We perform this analysis at a sentence level
where each sentence is analyzed independently. We do not consider context
in this analysis.
b) At inter-sentence level - We perform this analysis at a multi-sentence level
where we carry context from a sentence to another and then analyze the
complete information.
c) Image and Plot Mentions - We perform this analysis by correlating
presence of genders in movie posters and in plot mentions.
d) At Video level - We perform this analysis by doing gender and emotion
detection on the frames for each video. We define different tasks
corresponding to each level of analysis.

8. REVIEW OF LITERATURE
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o Vahabi (2020) - Despite ample evidence demonstrating the protective effect of physical activity, the uptake of regular
physical activity among South Asian (SA) women remains relatively low. The purpose of this study was to explore the
feasibility and health impacts of implementing a culture- and gender-specific physical activity among SA immigrant women
residing in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in Ontario, Canada.
o Subhi (2020) - This study examines the depiction of reward and punishment in the context of central female characters
(CFCs) adherence to prescriptive gender norms in Bollywood films. One hundred top-grossing movies from 2003–4 to
2013–14 were content analyzed for the depiction of reward and punishment toward the CFCs. Irrespective of the year of
release, all movies that included a CFC depicted that character following some form of prescriptive gender norms. CFCs in
old as well as new movies were rewarded when they 19 adhered to gender norms and punished when they violated
gender norms. Instances of punishment were higher in old movies than in new movies; violation of prescriptive gender
norms was not related to punishment in new movies, and new movies also lacked identifiable female protagonists on
average compared with old movies. Findings are explained in context of Hindi mainstream cinema’s role in promoting
benevolent sexism.
o Amalo (2020) - This study examined the relationship between exposure to Bollywood movies and job-seeking behavior of
South Asian females. Using survey data collected from 132 female participants, we explored the effects of exposure to
Bollywood movies on job search self-efficacy, enjoyment and job-seeking behavior of South Asian females living in the
United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, India, and Pakistan. We also applied a structural equation model to
examine the role of enjoyment and job search self-efficacy in mediating the relationship between frequency of exposure to
Bollywood movies and job-seeking behavior. Results indicated that exposure to Bollywood movies was positively related to
enjoyment and job-seeking behavior of the female viewers of Bollywood movies. We also found a significant relationship
between job search self-efficacy and job-seeking behavior. Our study offers a significant insight into the role of
entertainment narratives in influencing the behavior of South Asian female audiences that hitherto remained a neglected
group in media effects research.

9. o Pardhu (2021), A study of Bombay Cinema, or the so-called Bollywood, will no longer be complete without looking
at the consumption of Bollywood movies because this cinema is now global in a specifically diasporic sense. This
paper is an attempt to unveil the nature of engagement between Bollywood movies and second-generation Indian
diaspora. This study is based on the coming of age of the second generation of the Indian-American diaspora and
their engagement with twenty-first century Bollywood movies. A group of young Indian Americans were interviewed
over the telephone to find out the ways in which second-generation consume movies in comparison to that of the
first-generation migrants. This article shows how their readings of Bollywood movies converge on themes of
nostalgia, nation, and feminism, along with how their situational identities play out to resolve their sometimes
contradictory cultural expectations.
o Neha (2022), Due to their long-standing marginalization in mainstream social and cultural settings, the hijra
community continuously strives for recognition. Bollywood film Laxmi 2020 has added to the prejudice and
misconceptions surrounding hijras by perpetuating biases and stereotypes and using them as a source of comic
relief and mockery. This article examines the portrayal of hijras in the Bollywood movie Laxmi (Lawrence, 2020)
based on two dimensions. The first is gender identity, as examined through the performative theory of gender
rather than essentialist formulations. Second, Baudrillard’s (1983) formulation of postmodern hyperrealism is
applied to analyze the exaggerations and mutilations of common concepts. Considering the positive and negative
portrayals of hijra characters in Bollywood movies, we attempt a comparative study to comprehend the evolution
of hijra representation diaphanously. However, in Laxmi, a substantial gap is recognized between reality and
fiction, as the movie fails to demonstrate the real-life experiences of the hijras while paving the way to the
narrative of the unreal ghost.
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10. o While our analysis points towards the presence of gender bias
in Hindi movies, it is gratifying to see that the same analysis
was able to discover the slow but steady change in gender
stereotypes.
o We would also like to point out that the goal of this study is not
to criticize one particular domain. Gender bias is pervasive in
all walks of life including but not limited to the Entertainment
Industry, Technology Companies, Manufacturing Factories &
Academia.
o In many cases, the bias is so deep rooted that it has become
the norm. We truly believe that the majority of people
displaying gender bias do it unconsciously.
o We hope that ours and more such studies will help people
realize when such biases start to influence everyday activities,
communications & writings in an unconscious manner, and
take corrective actions to rectify the same
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DISCUSSION

11. RECOMMANDATIONS
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 To reduce the differences created by
gender stereotypes, it is necessary
for advertisers to improve the status
of women’s role portrayal. If the
advertisers took a decision to endorse
women in all the categories of the
product rather than limiting them to
cosmetic, household, or cleaning
products, the status of women will
improve.
 Advertisers should also be careful
when using certain role portrayals of
women as it may generate more
negative appeal than others,
especially depicting women as
subservient and weak.
 Removing Gender Bias from plots:
The question we are trying to answer
is ”If one interchanges all males and
females, is the plot/story still possible
or plausible?”. For example, consider
a line in the plot ”She gave birth to
twins”, of course changing this 32
from she to he leads to impossibility.
Similarly, there could be possible
scenarios but may be implausible like
the gangster example in the previous
paragraph. Solving these problems
would require development of novel
text algorithms, ontology construction,
fact (possibility) checkers and
implausibility checkers. We believe it
presents a challenging research
agenda while drawing attention to an
important societal problem
 Removing Occupation
Hierarchy: It is common in
movies, novels & pictorial
depictions to show man as
boss, doctor, pilot and
women as secretary, nurse
and stewardess. In this work,
we presented occupation
detection. We are extending
this to understand hierarchy
and then evaluate if changing
genders makes sense or not.
For example, while
interchanging ({male, doctor},
{female, nurse}) to ({male,
nurse}, {female, doctor})
makes sense but
interchanging {male,
gangster} to {female,
gangster} may be a bit
unrealistic.

12. o A similar trend has been exhibited for centrality where females
were less central in the plot vs their male counterparts.
o Also, while predicting gender using context word vectors, with
very small training data, a very high accuracy is observed in
gender prediction for test data reflecting a substantial amount of
bias present in the data.
o While the existence of gender bias and stereotypes is
experienced by viewers of Hindi movies, to 33 the best of our
knowledge this is the first study to use computational tools to
quantify and trend such biases.
o The considerable differences very much exist between males and
females when considering the role portrayal of women and
willingness to buy the product being advertised. The differences
are attributed to the varied orientation of the mindset of both
the genders.
o Although women are placed in higher roles and positions in
advertisements now, stereotypical portrayal is still common.
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CONCLUSION

13. THANK YOU