Sunday 11 September 2011

Roots of discrimination against women in media

Women often have been portrayed in media as “a considerate wife and a devoted mother”. It means that only reproductive role of women in the life is emphasized on media and their productive roles in the socio-economic, cultural and political parts are being neglected. “Women have been viewed as the weak whose voice and discourse power has been neglected in all the fields of mass media”.
 This discriminative image of women in media is rooted in the real life that women encounter to inequality in many aspects of life. In politics, they have little access to political positions in parliaments and they are not given permission to be involved in decision making process within the families and communities. In economics, not all women have ownership rights and their access to resources is narrowed by patriarchal structures in communities. On the other hand, they do not have appropriate circumstances in workplaces and have many challenges with their employers. In social life, women are not able to confront with male dominant customs and traditions. They have to obey their fathers and brothers before marriage and their husbands after marriage. In many countries man is bread winner and superior to woman even though women play a main role in family economics. Unfortunately, a large number of women in the world are suffering from various types of discrimination and mass media not only are neglecting women productive roles but also enforce male dominant structures.

Sunday 4 September 2011

Women and media


When I searched the exact meaning of the word “media”, I found that it is a means to send messages to people with an aim of increasing information or as a way of communication. Then many questions came to my mind. Message of what? Message of who? To whom? What kind of a message? Where are the messages? Who should send messages and how? Then after a while I came back to the reality and looked at the impact of media on the society and again asked myself if it is really an instrument that everybody has an access to it to send her message? A laud voice answered me from my inside: “Of course NOT”! Do you think media have helped women to send their messages to the society? Media have always been destroying women’s image about their body; it reduced their role on the life only as good cookers, the best care-givers to children and the elderly, persons that only think about polishing of their nails and their make-up…! As Xiao-hui and Min (2010) say in their article about media and women: “In the contemporary information-globalized society, with the explosion of the mass media, the status of women as the subjects in mass media, has been improving increasingly. Under the surface of the more discourse power women have got during transmission, conceal the weakness and marginalization of discourse power for women, the media subjects, especially in decision-making or hard news. Actually, the truth of gender inequality has been hidden under the apparent prosperity”.

I am going to focus on media and women.