Women's Responsibilities,Freedoms, and Pleasures

In the building of the Swedish welfare state, men and women have been seen as equal in their roles as parents, breadwinners, and citizens. This conception is not confirmed by the images produced by advertising. The article presents an analysis of alcohol-related advertisements published in Swedish women's magazines from the 1960s to the 2000s. The advertisements are approached as representations of gendered performances in which gender is made visible “here and now” by placing women in particular subject positions that are related to private or public spheres and associated with specific kinds of gender norms reflecting women's shifting responsibilities, freedoms, and pleasures. The article asks what kind of drinking-related subject positions have been portrayed as desirable in women's magazine advertisements over the past few decades and how those positions have changed as we move closer to the present day. The analysis reveals both continuity and variability in alcohol-related subject positions in Swedish women's magazine advertisements. It shows how women's responsibilities, freedoms, and pleasures have expanded from the traditional domain of the private sphere to multiple new areas as Sweden has developed from a modern welfare state to a late-modern competition state. However, this does not mean that the traditional gender norms have disintegrated and been replaced by equal gender norms. Rather, it seems that traditional gender norms continue to be reproduced in alcohol-related advertising.     

The First Ladies and the Arab Spring: A textual analysis of the media coverage of the female counterparts of authoritarian oppression in the Middle East

In textually analyzing the media coverage of the First Ladies of the Arab Spring, this paper argues that the media's approach to understanding the role of women in the structures of political power in the Middle East is often either too simplistic or too driven by a desire to exoticize the East, making it even harder to visualize and imagine the face of real female political empowerment in the region. While demonizing and condemning the greed of Leila Ben-Ali and Suzanne Mubarak in the immediate aftermath of the protests, prior to the Arab Spring, the Western media also glorified the presidential wives and royalty, such as Asma Al-Assad and Queen Rania, as symbolizing reform and openness to change, and in doing so, revealed an Oriental gaze that dichotomizes the gendered nature of politics and effectively denies the possibility of examining the complexities of women's political engagement in the Middle East.     

Playmates and Polygamists

This paper explores the feminine reclamation of polygamy seen in female-oriented American television shows Big Love, The Girls Next Door, and Sister Wives in terms of their commentary on contemporary gender roles in neoliberal society. Reception discourses suggest these programs respond to feminine frustrations with the burdens of work and domesticity and the isolation associated with hyper-individualist late capitalist society. Using textual strategies associated with feminine media forms and contemporary feminine culture, such as the investment in the female group, the female gaze at the female body, and the reclamation of feminine history, these shows demonstrate femininity's capacity to critique as well as support mainstream society. Still, femininity's tendency to merge escapism and cultural critique, seen in all three shows, points to the difficulty of considering it progressive or regressive, instead suggesting that it should be considered as a different conceptual and social space, as a varied set of structures, practices, reading protocols, and an ethics of self that patriarchal cultures cannot easily co-opt.     

Uncovered and disrespected. A qualitative study of Jordanian women’s experience of privacy in birth

BackgroundPrivacy is related to a person’s sense of self and the need to be respected and it is a key factor that contributes to women’s satisfaction with their birth experiences.AimTo examine the meaning of privacy for Jordanian women during labour and birth.MethodA qualitative interpretive design was used. Data were collected through face-to-face semi-structured interviews with 27 Jordanian women. Of these women, 20 were living in Jordan while seven were living in Australia (with birthing experience in both Jordan and Australia). Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data.ResultsThe phrase ‘there is no privacy’ captured women’s experience of birth in Jordanian public hospitals and in some private hospital settings. Women in public hospitals in Jordan had to share a room during their labour with no screening. This experience meant that they were, “lying there for everyone to see”, “not even covered by a sheet” and with doctors and others coming in and out of their room. This experience contrasted with birth experienced in Australia.ConclusionsThis study explicates the meaning of privacy to Jordanian women and demonstrates the impact of the lack of privacy during labour and birth. Seeking a birth in a private hospital in Jordan was one of the strategies that women used to gain privacy, although this was not always achieved. Some strategies were identified to facilitate privacy, such as being covered by a sheet; however, even simple practices are difficult to change in a patriarchal, medically dominated maternity system.     

Economic Development,Gender Inequality,and Demographic Outcomes: Evidence from India

This article examines the determinants of fertility, child mortality, and female disadvantage in child survival in India, using a district‐level panel data set linking 1981 and 1991 censuses. The results question the dominant view that variables directly related to women's agency (specifically, the female literacy rate and the female labor force participation rate) have played the crucial roles here. Instead, variables reflecting the general level of development and modernization are shown to have had the greatest effect in reducing fertility and child mortality during the period of the study. Both economic development and women's agency are seen to have had significant effects in reducing the female disadvantage in child survival. The results suggest, however, that with continued economic development, the two women's agency variables lose their significance in influencing this disadvantage. The policy implications of these findings are considered.     

Performing Gender on YouTube

The contemporary online environment is often touted as a democratic space, open to perspectives that might regularly be excluded from professionally-controlled media platforms. However, females are underrepresented on YouTube, a popular video-sharing internet social media platform. This underrepresentation of women suggests that gender matters on YouTube. In order to contribute to research on gender dynamics on YouTube, this study focuses on the most-subscribed female YouTuber, Jenna Mourey. The first part investigates the degree to which Mourey's YouTube reception could be understood as misogynistic and hostile. To this end, comments on Mourey's top-ten videos were compared to viewer comments on the top-ten videos of a male counterpart: Ryan Higa. The second part of the study focuses on the content and style of Mourey's video oeuvre in order to contribute to research on YouTubers who successfully negotiate a hostile environment. Mourey's tendency to perform gender extremes—both masculine and feminine roles—is an ongoing feature of her videos, allowing her to simultaneously critique and benefit from traditional gender roles. This two-part study of gender on YouTube thus both supports research describing harsh responses to women on video-sharing sites and offers one YouTube performer's strategy for achieving success in this environment.     

Feminist Discourse and the Hegemonic Role of Mass Media

There has been a notable cultural trend in which feminist concerns are conveyed through many popular culture texts in South Korea since the early 1990s. Many different social groups and organizations have been engaged in the formation of feminist discourse in popular culture, among them the mainstream media. To broadly address the role of media in incorporating feminist discourse within the dominant ideology in specific socio-economic contexts, the research sought to identify the ways in which feminist discourse was generated and/or assimilated into the dominant ideology in newspaper content about the messages in the two television dramas Lovers (1996) and The Woman Next Door (2003) and other socio-cultural phenomena surrounding the dramas. Newspaper content became more favorable to the sexually liberated female characters and acknowledged changing gender roles as a current socio-cultural trend. However, it never questioned the nuclear family system itself—which occupies the hegemonic realm in patriarchal capitalist society.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Research has found negative stereotyping and differential treatment both of women and of the elderly in everyday interactions and in mass media representations. An underresearched cateeorv is middle-aged women. This research included a content L a analysis of 12 issues of a Canadian English-language women's magazine and a comparison of the results with selected characteristics of women 40 to 59 years of age as reported by Statistics Canada. The investigation found that younger middle-aged women (under 50 years) are included, but are underrepresented when compared to the population and to the magazine's readers. Middle-aged women are absent from the covers and the fashion and beauty sections; they are underrepresented in the advertisements, overrepresented in the fiction, portrayed positively but realistically in the editorials, and are shown as winners in a world of challenges in articles on health, family, work, and public life. In general the middle-aged women are white, middle class, heterosexual, well-educated, and employed. Messages about women's aging as portrayed in Chatelaine are interpreted especially in the light on feminist theory.     

Culture,Cohort, and Cosmetic Surgery

ABSTRACT

This paper theorizes a parallel between idealized images of women in the media and the mainstreaming of cosmetic surgery as commonplace in our culture. The paper tracks images of women in film, television, and advertising from 1940 to the present and uses them as guides to understanding and interpreting appraisals contemporary women make of their bodies. Data are presented from 24 women, ages 29 to 75, who participated in a pilot study examining social, psychological, and developmental factors that precipitated cosmetic surgery. Women's self-evaluations were consistent with media depictions of women during subjects' adolescent and early-adult years. Age, or more specifically, cohort membership, determined assessments of body-image. The fact that body-satisfaction decreased proportionately with age in the women sampled is credited to the progressive license taken by the media in depicting female nudity, graphic sex, and violence against women.     

Sexy women sports fans: femininity,sexuality, and the global sport spectacle

In recent years the relationship between women and sport fandom has undergone significant shifts. The rapidly changing sphere of global sport is seen to offer women newly visible roles in the global sport economy as fans, broadcasters, celebrity athletes, and media personalities. In light of calls for greater inclusivity and diversity in sport, this paper examines the emergence of new forms of “sexually empowered” female fandom, which situate women as active participants in the sporting spectacle. Whereas sexy women who followed men’s sport or male athletes were once derided as “groupies,” thus socially marginalised and excluded from identification with sport fan communities, I argue that the sexy sport fan has emerged in the context of post-feminism as a visible and necessary type of feminine fan identity to meet the needs of the global sport economy. This study extends feminist sport media analysis beyond its focus on how female athletes are represented whilst also contributing new insights to sport fan research by analysing how female supporters are constructed through mediated accounts in terms of gender, sexuality, and nation.     

Hearts of Steel

This article looks at the way Arab male and female journalists in pan-Arab media negotiate their journalistic ethics with the aim of boosting their professional image while adding credibility to their news. Drawing on several examples of these male and female journalists, I seek to show how women adopt an un-emotional style when reporting news of pain and suffering, while male journalists emotionally engage with this type of news. The analysis draws on extensive interviews with male and female Arab journalists in pan-Arab media which are scattered inside and outside the Arab region. The discussion is informed by the current debate around detachment versus attachment in news reporting as well as the feminist media debate about the distinction between feminine and masculine values in mediating suffering.     

Creating a Monster

The United States Democratic primary campaign of 2007–8 witnessed widespread misogynistic and anti-feminist portrayals of Senator Hillary Clinton across all types of media. In particular, Clinton was regularly depicted as monstrous and/or cyborgian, collapsing the boundaries between male and female, human and animal, and organism and machine. Such portrayals indicate a gender crisis in contemporary American culture which intensifies when women attempt to enter positions of power in the public arena. Research has shown that television, radio and print media coverage of American political candidates has consistently relied on gender stereotypes that undermine the campaigns of women politicians. However, portrayals of female candidates in online media remain largely unexplored. This paper discusses the implications of online media for women's political campaigns and for the democratic process itself. Through an analysis of digital imagery, I argue that simulations of Clinton circulating on the Internet during the primaries sought to produce a political reality in which Clinton's bid for the White House could be rendered improper and unnatural. In so doing, I suggest the continuing potential of online media to produce detrimental representations of female politicians.     

A Maternal Heart: Angelina Jolie,choices of maternity,and hegemonic femininity in People magazine

In the last decade practices of celebrity transnational adoption have garnered a significant amount of media attention. Through an analysis of transnational adoption as a site of morality where ideals of femininity are enacted and embodied, this paper brings together celebrity studies, theories of maternity, and literature on adoption in pursuit of studying hegemonic femininity as a social phenomenon spread by media discourses. Focusing on Angelina Jolie as an epistemic individual, this paper draws on concepts of female moral authority, global motherhood, and successful femininity to explore the ways transnational adoption adheres to norms of femininity and norms of racial hierarchy in an era of autonomy and choice. In a critical discourse analysis of articles covering Jolie’s transnational adoptions from People magazine, narratives of choice, individualism, and mobility emerge. Such narratives contribute to Jolie's hegemonic position as a globe-trotting, mobile figure of successful femininity made possible by her position in gendered, raced, and classed hierarchies. Jolie's presence in the mediascape continues to signal boundaries of femininity through choices enabled and constrained by historical ideals of motherhood, global dynamics of transnational adoption, and expectations of female moral authority.     

Visibility and denial: accounts of sexual violence in race- and gender-specific magazines

Prior research on media representations of race, gender, and sexual violence has established that media emphasize women’s role in preventing their own victimization and omit Black women as victims. This study uses feminist intersectionality to build on prior research by investigating not only how social groups are portrayed, but whether and how the intended audience matters for media representations. Specifically, who are the portrayed victims of sexual violence, and how is fear of sexual violence communicated to different audiences? Content analysis of articles in race- and gender-specific magazines shows two key mechanisms of representation through which racism and sexism work together: visibility and denial. Results show that White women are hypervisible as victims while Black women as victims are relatively invisible compared to Black men’s persecution and Black children’s victimization; men’s magazines deny the importance of sexual violence as a problem, focusing on false accusations and convictions. These narratives go largely unchallenged regardless of the source’s intended audience, demonstrating that portrayals of sexual violence are both gendered and racialized across multiple media sources.     

Pop,Porn, and Rebellious Speech

In Excitable Speech, Judith Butler contends that rebellious speech constitutes a “risk taken in response to being put at risk, a repetition in language that forces change.” With this in mind, this article examines the politics of employing and altering the language and imagery of “porn” in texts and multi-media performances of (post-)feminist (pop-)artists. The discussions about Elfriede Jelinek's novel Lust in the early 1990s exemplify the difficulties associated with transforming the language of pornography into rebellious feminist speech. The text received extensive media attention, but most critics felt ambivalent about Jelinek's attempt to create artificial, repetitious, pornographic speech and questioned the text's ability to foster any kind of “change.” At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the multi-media performances of Charlotte Roche and Reyhan Sahin aka Lady Bitch Ray again triggered discussions about feminism, pornography, body politics, and sexual expression. Their provocative pop-performances use multiple media outlets, TV, music, and electronic media. They are commercially successful and mainstream media understand them as challenging social conventions. This essay critically examines the politics of Jelinek's, Roche's, and Sahin's texts and performances and contextualizes the politics of their rebellious speech within discussions about social roles, gender, and sexuality.     

Mediating Women Workers in Fair Trade and Sweatfree Production

In this paper, I analyse young women's video remixes of the teen drama Gossip Girl. With its emphasis on glamour, style, and status and its interpellation of young female viewers as the ideal consumers within neoliberal regimes, Gossip Girl bears many of the marks of post-feminist media. Drawing on an archive of videos posted to YouTube during the programme's first two seasons, I show how young video makers re-imagine the programme's post-feminist aesthetics. Gossip Girl fan videos frequently seek to create emotional intensity through repetition of close-ups on the female face. They also use innovative digital editing techniques to alter television's realist aesthetic and portray split, fragmented, or contradictory subjects. This focus on the face and amplification of affect cuts out the source text's emphasis on the teenage body as a vehicle for product placement, and challenges the neoliberal privileging of economic success and independence. At the same time, the videos also contain their own limitations, reproducing the young female body as a site of spectacle.     

Media Capital or Media Deficit?

This paper will focus primarily on how women in leadership roles are represented in the media using a feminist critical discourse approach (FCDA). There is a tendency amongst some feminist media analysts to homogenise all media as sexist, but contradictory tendencies are evident, especially with the rise of new media platforms. On the one hand, the news value of “unexpectedness” affords women in prominent leadership roles relatively high media capital. On the other hand, even ostensibly positive coverage can help to reinforce the limited and limiting perceptions of women that circulate in the mediatised public sphere. For instance, the hybridised gendered interactional and rhetorical styles favoured by many women in public sphere roles have led to them being evaluated as inauthentic by mainstream media institutions. This paper will investigate these contradictory tendencies through a focus on case study evidence of dominant media constructions of British, Irish, and US female political leaders. The paper will conclude by considering briefly the use of Twitter, blogs, and other new media platforms by high profile women in politics in order to bypass the persistent interpretative control exercised by some mainstream media institutions.     

Absent Non-Fathers: Gendered representations of voluntary childlessness in Swedish newspapers

This article applies a media frame analysis in order to highlight representations of voluntary childlessness in Swedish newspapers. The analysis identifies how childfree couples are framed as carefree, fulfilled and content. Childfree women on the other hand are framed as struggling with problems, stereotypes and doubts. Childfree men are absent and implicitly framed as unconcerned and unaffected. Even in the only newspaper article that draws attention to men and voluntary childlessness the voice of the childfree man is absent. Instead of a childfree man a father of six is interviewed and presented as an exception. To explain these different frames this article argues that gender stereotypes, maternalism, pronatalism and heteronormativity influence who is constructed as newsworthy when news media report on voluntary childlessness. While the feminine identity and women's social role is conflated with motherhood, the link between fatherhood and masculinity is weaker. Because men's parenthood roles are indistinct so are men's roles as non-parents. As a result a father to a daughter in a previous relationship can be represented as part of a carefree and childfree couple. Consequently, childfree women are more newsworthy than childfree men, and a father of six is more newsworthy than a non-father.     

“留守”对西部农村妇女社会性别观念的影响

本文根据较大规模问卷抽样调查的结果,分析比较西部农村留守妇女与非留守妇女的社会性别观念。结果发现,留守妇女自身能力意识和事业价值观要强于非留守妇女,而非留守妇女在忠贞观、生育观方面要比留守妇女更加传统保守。回归分析结果表明,在对农村妇女自身特征如文化程度、年龄、家庭年收入等变量进行控制之后,留守对农村妇女的社会性别观念仍然有独立影响,这种影响主要表现在留守促进了农村妇女事业能力观、婚育贞节观以及总体社会性别观念从传统到现代的转变。     

Health satisfaction: A detailed test of the multiple discrepancies theory model

The present study employs calculated gaps to test the MDT model in the domain of health satisfaction. The results appear to contradict Multiple Discrepancies Theory in its present format, although it is possible that this is a result of the use of calculated rather than perceived gaps. The present findings specifically highlight the important influence of perceived current health status on health satisfaction ratings. It is argued that the basic principle of MDT (that perceived discrepancies between one's own current state of affairs and various relevant comparison levels, have an important influence in determining satisfaction) is not in doubt, but that the precise nature and point of influence of these perceived discrepancies in the formulation of satisfaction ratings may not be accurately portrayed by the current MDT model.