Gender roles in animation movies: An analysis of post-2000 Disney and Pixar movies

The aim of this study is to demonstrate to what degree the strong female representations in the animation movies, the target audiences of which are children, can go beyond the gender stereotypes, whether patriarchal gender roles are reproduced and whether these roles have undergone a positive change for women. The argument put forward in this study is that animated movies repeatedly reproduce male-female roles implicitly and that women are still positioned as carriers of patriarchal gender stereotypes, although they are represented by strong images, and therefore from very early ages, gender stereotypes are placed on children's minds. In this context, the concepts of gender and feminism have been first handled in order to examine the female representation in the animation movies. The relations between gender and children have been examined on media basis. Ideologies that are presented over female representations generally in cinema and specially in animation movies have been handled. The historical change and development of the animation cinema has been examined based on the sources in the literature. The study concluded that animated movies, which played an important role in children's identity construction, continued to be instruments that repeatedly reproduced the male dominant ideology to reflect gender stereotypes and maintain the continuity of the existing system. It has been found that the animated movies, which depict women as horse-riding, arrowing, adventurous characters, seem to have changed the representation of women on the surface, but have not been able to overcome the representation of the patriarchal ideology.