Women Watching Soap Opera's: "I Stand Ironing with Sci-fi on, but when it Comes to Surgery in the Rose Garden, I Can't Help but Sit Still" - Audience's Gender-relatedness and Their Preferences
Abstract
This article explores how the Czech female and male audiences of television soap opera The Surgery in the Rose Garden construct their gender identities in relation to their interpretations of the show's characters. It takes the paradigm of interpretative sociology for its starting point and uses the methods of ethnographic approach to gender.
Its theoretical background comprises gender theories of audience of the "women's genres". The research was conducted from 2006 to 2011 targeting the male and female viewers of The Surgery in the Rose Garden in the city of Šumperk.
The methods used were in-depth interviews, group interviews and participant observation. The research also concerned part of the production of this soap opera, particularly its creative team.
The article shows how members of the audience work with gender categories and how they "do" and "display" gender in their own lives.