Home⇛PCS Review⇛vol. 17 no. 1 (2025)

The Female Gaze and the Middle-Aged Filipino Women’s Reception of Empowered/Disempowered Women in Korean Television Series

Maria Rhodora S. Salazar

Discipline: media studies

 

Abstract:

In the 1990s, the Korean wave that is also called ‘Hallyu’ started to become recognized as a major cultural phenomenon in Asia, resulting in an incredible rise in foreign demand for various Korean products. Hallyu first rolled out in China and Japan, and later to countries in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines. The present study which delves into ‘Hallyu’—particularly K-dramas—is a feminist reading of the middle-aged women’s reception on how empowered female characters are portrayed in K-dramas, in relation to the Western values and ideologies. Moreover, this study aims to explore how middle-aged Filipino women gaze at the characterization of empowered/disempowered women in K-dramas in relation to their own lives. This study employs mixed method approach using an online survey (N=34) and seventeen semi-structured interviews for data collection. Textual analysis of the data is anchored in Hall’s encoding-decoding theory, dual-systems theory, and the female gaze concept. The results reveal that the middle-aged Filipino women perceive the interaction of power and oppression brought about by the influence of Western values and ideologies of patriarchy and capitalism depicted in male villains’ aggressive and violent behavior, the male dominance over women, and the perennial characterization of heroes as heirs to the family-owned companies. Through the concept of the female gaze, the middle-aged Filipino women’s dominant readings of the characterization of empowered/disempowered women in the K-dramas uncover values of self-confidence; courage; independence and financial freedom; competence; hard work in overcoming challenges in life, solving problems, and achieving one’s goals; leadership and authority; and perseverance and determination.



References:

  1. American Psychological Association. (2022). Gender Stereotype. APA Dictionary of Psychology. 
  2. Balita, C. (2022). Breakdown of video consumers in Philippines, 2020, by age group and platform. Statista.
  3. Bandura, A. (2001). Social Cognitive Theory of Mass Communication. Media Psychology, 3(3), pp. 265-299. https://doi.org/10.1207/S1532785XMEP0303_03
  4. Bellas, A. (2019). Outlander’s tactile caress: A multisensory romance. Continuum: Journal of Media and Culture, 33(5), pp. 507-524. https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2019.1641584
  5. Benshoff, H. (2015). Film and Television Analysis: An Introduction to Methods, Theories, and Approaches. Routledge.
  6. Brech, A. (2020). The female gaze: Bridgerton’s director Julie Anne Robinson explains why she trailblazed a new type of sex scene for the Netflix period drama. Stylist. https://www.stylist.co.uk/entertainment/tv/bridgerton-netflix-sex-scenes-female-gaze/475498
  7. Chua, B.H. & Iwabuchi, K. (Eds.) (2008). East Asian Pop Culture: Analyzing the Korean Wave. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
  8. Cohen, P. (2010). What Have Clothes Got to Do With It? Romantic Comedy and the Female Gaze. Southwest Review, 95(12), pp. 78-88. https://www.jstor.org/stable/i40137429
  9. Coles, H. (2023). Desire in Bridgerton: Defining the Female Gaze. Honors College Theses. 844. https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/honors-theses/844
  10. Cooper, B. (2000). Chick Flicks as Feminist Texts: The Appropriation of the Male Gaze in Thelma and Louise. Women’s Studies in Communication, 23(3), pp. 277-306. https://people.southwestern.edu/~bednarb/road-movies/articles/cooper.pdf
  11. Correa, M. (2012). Strong Women in the Eyes of Filipinas: A Reception Study of Korean TV Dramas. Chulalongkorn University.
  12. Dickinson, R. & Linne, O. (1998). Approaches to Audiences: A Reader. Arnold, Oxford University Press.
  13. Di Piano, T.; Gerino, E.; Marino, E.; Brustia, P. and Rolle, L. (2014). Gender and media representation. Rom. J. Exp. Appl. Psychol. 5, pp. 8-20. https://iris.unito.it/bitstream/2318/150820/1/2014_RJEAP_GENDER%20AND%20MEDIA%20REPRESENTATION.pdf
  14. Dirse, Z. (2013). Gender in cinematography: female gaze (eye) behind the camera. Journal of Research in Gender Studies, 3(1), pp. 15-29. 
  15. Eagly, A. H. and Wood, W. (2012). Social Role Theory. In Handbook of Theories of Social Psychology. Sage Publications Ltd. CA: Thousand Oaks, pp. 458-478 
  16. Eco, U. (1965). Towards a Semiotic Inquiry into the Television Message. Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 3, pp. 103-121.
  17. Elson, M. (2022). The Female Gaze: The Theory behind the Tiktok Trend. That’s What She Said Magazine. https://twssmagazine.com/2022/06/09/the-female-gaze-the-theory-behind-the-tiktok-trend/
  18. Erickson, E. (Ed.) (1963). Youth: Fidelity and diversity. In Youth: Change and Challenge (pp. 1-23). NY: Basic Books.
  19. Espiritu, B. (2011). Transnational audience reception as a theater of struggle: young Filipino women’s reception of Korean television dramas. Asian Journal of Communication, 21(4), pp. 355-372.
  20. Fredrickson, B. and Roberts, T. (1997). Objectification Theory: Toward Understanding Women’s Lived Experiences and Mental Health Risks. Psychol. Women Q. 21, pp. 173-206. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1997.tb00108.x
  21. Ganguly, S. (2022). Analyzing the Success of the Female Gaze in K-dramas. Feminism in India.
  22. Gerbner, G. (1998). Cultivation Analysis: An Overview. Mass Communication Soc. 1, pp. 175-194. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.1998.9677855
  23. Gestos, M., Smith-Merry, J. and Campbell, A. (2018). Representation of Women in Video Games: A Systematic Review of Literature in Consideration of Adult Female Wellbeing. Cyberpsych. Behav. Soc. Netw. 21, pp. 535-541. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2017.0376
  24. Ghaznavi, J., Grasso, K. and Taylor, L. (2017). Increasingly Violent but Still Sexy: A Decade of Central Female Characters in Top-Grossing Hollywood Film Promotional Material. Int. J. Commun. 11, pp. 23-47. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/4673
  25. Graff, K., Murnen, S. and Krause, A. (2013). Low-cut Shirts and High-Heeled Shoes: Increased Sexualization across Time in Magazine Depictions of Girls. Sex Roles. 69, pp. 571-582. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-013-0321-0
  26. Hall, S. (1973). Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse. Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. University of Birmingham.
  27. Hall, S. (1980). Encoding/Decoding.  In S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe, & P. Willis (Eds.), Culture, Media, Language (pp. 128-138). London, UK: Hutchinson University Library.
  28. Hall, S. (1993). Encoding, Decoding. In During, S. (Ed.), The Cultural Studies Reader, pp. 507-517.
  29. Han, H. (2004). Women’s Life during the Choson Dynasty. International Journal of Korean History, 6(1), pp. 113-160. https://ijkh.khistory.org/journal/view.php?number=342
  30. Hartmann, H. I. (1979). The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a more Progressive Union. Capital & Class, 3(2), pp. 1-33. https://doi.org/10.1177/030981687900800102 
  31. Hentges, B. and Case, K. (2013). Gender Representations on Disney Channel, Cartoon Network, and Nickelodeon Broadcasts in the United States. J. Child. Media. 7, pp. 319-333. https://doi.org/10.1080/17482798.2012.729150
  32. Hong, E. (2014). The Birth of Korean Cool (pp. 1-154). London: Simon & Schuster.
  33. Hovater, R. and Farris, D. (2020). Back That Sexism Up: An Analysis of the Representation of Women’s Bodies in Music Videos. In Gender, Sexuality and Race in the Digital Age (pp. 75-97). 
  34. Igno, J. & Cenidoza, M. (2016). Beyond the “Fad”: Understanding Hallyu in the Philippines. International Journal of Social Science and Humanity, 6(9), pp. 723-727. https://doi.org/10.18178/ijssh.2016.6.9.740
  35. Jin, D. & Yoon, T. (2017). The Korean Wave: Retrospect and Prospect. International Journal of Communication, 11, pp. 2241-2249. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/6296/2047 
  36. Ju, H. (2014). Transformations of the Korean Media Industry by the Korean Wave: The Perspective of Globalisation. In Y. Kuwahara (Ed.), The Korean Wave: Korean Popular Culture in Global Context(pp. 35-37). New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
  37. Keller, A. and Gibson, K. (2014). Appreciating the Male Gaze in The Hunger Games: The Rhetoric of a Resistant Female Vantage Point. Texas Speech Communication Journal, 38(1), pp. 21-30. 
  38. Kim, B. (2015). Past, Present and Future of Hallyu (Korean Wave). American International Journal of Contemporary Research, 5(5), pp. 154-160. https://www.aijcrnet.com/journals/Vol_5_No_5_October_2015/19.pdf
  39. Kim, Y. (2007). The Rising East Asian Wave. In D.K. Thussu (Ed.), Media on the Move: Global Flow and Contra-Flow (pp.131-152). London: Routledge.
  40. Kim S. (2009). Interpreting Transnational Cultural Practices: Social Discourses on a Korean Drama in Japan, Hong Kong, and China. Cultural Studies, 23, pp. 736-755. 
  41. Kim, Y. (2010). The Change of Women’s Social Status in Korea: Progress and Reaction.
  42. Kugelman, M. (2006). Where They Stand: The Status of Women in South Korea. Wilson Center.
  43. Kuwahara, Y. (2014). The Korean Wave: Korean Culture in Global Context. Palgrave MacMillan.
  44. Kwon, S. & Kim, J. (2013). The cultural industry policies of the Korean government and the Korean Wave. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 20(4), 422–439. https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2013.829052
  45. Labor, J. (2020). Mobile Sexuality: Presentations of Young Adults in Dating Apps. Plaridel Journal of Communication, Media, and Society, 17(1), pp. 259-290. https://doi.org/10.52518/2020.17.1-09labor
  46. Labor, J. & Alcazaren, H. K. G. (2021). Queered online pandemic relationships: Mobile expressions of intimacies, care, and emotion work. Plaridel Journal of Communication, Media, and Society, 18(2), pp. 1-26. https://doi.org/10.52518/2021.18.2-02labalc
  47. Lasswell, H. (1927). Propaganda technique in the world war. Martino Fine Books.
  48. Lee, H. (2022, July 14). Korea ranks near bottom of annual gender equality index. The Korea Times. https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/society/20220714/korea-ranks-near-bottom-of-annual-gender-equality-index
  49. Lee, S. J. (2011). The Korean Wave: The Seoul of Asia. The Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications, 2(1), pp. 85-93. https://eloncdn.blob.core.windows.net/eu3/sites/153/2017/06/09SueJin.pdf
  50. Le Marinel, Z. (2024). Gaze of the Grapefruit Satellite. 2025 USU Creative Awards.
  51. Lewis, E. (2020). Ratings Analysis: How Nielsen Breaks Down the Demos for Soaps, Game Shows and Talk Shows. Soap Opera Network.
  52. Lichter, S.; Lichter, L. and Rothman, S. (1986). From Lucy to Lacey: TV’s dream girls. Public Opinion, pp. 16-19.
  53. Lott, B. (1989). Sexist discrimination as distancing behavior. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 13, pp. 341-358. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1987.tb00773
  54. Malone, A. (2018). The female gaze: Essential movies made by women. Mango.
  55. McDade-Montez, E.; Wallander, J. and Cameron, L. (2017). Sexualization in U.S. Latina and White Girls’ Preferred Children’s Television Programs. Sex Roles, 77, pp. 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1007/S11199-016-0692-0
  56. Mills, K. (1988). A place in the news: From the women’s pages to the front page. Dodd, Mead.
  57. Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Screen, 16(3), pp. 6-18. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/16.3.6
  58. Okutsu, O. (2018). Philippines tops WEF’s gender equality ranking in Asia. Nikkei Asia. https://asia.nikkei.com/economy/philippines-tops-wef-s-gender-equality-ranking-in-asia
  59. Palley, M. L. (1990). Women’s Status in South Korea: Tradition and Change. Asian Survey, 30(12), pp. 1136–1153. https://doi.org/10.2307/2644990
  60. Petersen, J. and Hyde, J. (2013). Peer sexual harassment and disordered eating in early adolescence. Dev. Psychol., 49, pp. 184-195. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028247
  61. Phillips, J. (2001). Catherine Breillat’s Romance: Hard Core and the Female Gaze. Studies in French Cinema, 1(3), pp. 133-201. https://doi.org/10.1386/sfci.1.3.133
  62. Reshi, A. and Sudha, T. (2022). Women Empowerment: A Literature Review. International Journal of Economic, Business, Accounting, Agriculture Management and Sharia Administration, 2(6).  
  63. Ribeiro, S., (2020). "Comparing Binge-Watching Motivations in South Korea and the United States: Westernization of South Korean Entertainment Media". Theses and Dissertations. 8899. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/8899 
  64. Rousseau, A. and Eggermont, S. (2018). Television and Preadolescents’ Objectified Dating Script: Consequences for Self- and Interpersonal Objectification. Mass Communication & Society, 21, pp. 71-93. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2017.1341533
  65. Ryoo, W. (2009). Globalization, or the logic of cultural hybridization: the case of the Korean Wave. Asian Journal of Communication, 19(2), pp. 137-151. https://doi.org/10.1080/01292980902826427
  66. Shah, M. (2020). Negotiation: Women’s Voices. Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal, 20(2), pp. 167-188. https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/drlj/vol20/iss2/2/
  67. Shim, D. (2006). Hybridity and the rise of Korean popular culture in Asia. Media, Culture & Society, 28(1), pp. 25-44. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443706059278
  68. Simpson, R. (2015). Film Theory 101—Laura Mulvey: The Male Gaze Theory. Film Inquiry.
  69. Solnit, R. (2017, March 8). Silence and powerlessness go hand in hand – women’s voices must be heard. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/08/silence-powerlessness-womens-voices-rebecca-solnit 
  70. Statista Research Department. (2024). TV drama and film viewership ratings South Korea 2023, by age and gender.
  71. Tartaglia, S. and Rollero, C. (2015). Gender Stereotyping in Newspaper Advertisements: A Cross-Cultural Study. J. Cross-Cult. Psychol. 46, pp. 1103-1109. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022115597068
  72. Thussu, D. (2006). International communication: Continuity and change. Arnold.
  73. United Nations. (1948) Universal Declaration of Human Rights
  74. UN Population Fund. (2024). Unlocking Gender Equality in the Philippines.
  75. UN Women. (2020). Visualizing the Data: Women’s Representation in Society
  76. Walby, S. (1990). Theorizing Patriarchy. Basil Blackwell Ltd.
  77. Watson, S. (2019). The Unheard Female Voice. The ASHA Leader Archive, 24(2), pp. 44-53.
  78. Wood, J. (1994). Gendered Media: The Influence of Media on Views of Gender. In Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender and Culture. Wadsworth Publishing
  79. Wu, Q. (2014). Arcade Street-spectacularization-loiter: Benjamin’s critique of fetishism. Henan Social Science, 04, pp. 24-36
  80. Xu, S. (2023). The Development and Rationality of Western Feminist Movement. International Journal of Scientific Engineering and Science, 7(8), pp. 35-38. https://ijses.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/50-IJSES-V7N8.pdf
  81. Yang, Jonghoe. (2012). The Korean Wave (Hallyu) in East Asia: A Comparison of Chinese, Japanese, and Taiwanese Audiences Who Watch Korean TV Dramas. Journal of Asian Sociology, 41(1), pp. 103-147. https://doi.org/10.21588/DNS.2012.41.1.005
  82. Young, I. (1997). Beyond the Unhappy Marriage: A Critique of the Dual Systems Theory. In R. Hennessy & C. Ingraham (Eds.), Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women’s Lives 44-69. Routledge.
  83. Zurbriggen, E., Collins, R., Lamb, S., Roberts, R., & Tolman, D. (2007). Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls. American Psychological Association.

Tools


Copyright © 2026  KITE Digital Educational Solutions |  Exclusively distributed by CE-Logic