World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies

Barcelona, July 19th - 24th 2010

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COMMUNICATION, COOPERATION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT IN THE MEDITERRANEAN REGION - 3/5: Media and Gender representation in the Mediterranean Region (080) - NOT_DEFINED activity_field_Panel
 

· NOT_DEFINED date: TUE 20, 9.00-11.00 am

· NOT_DEFINED institution: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain)

· NOT_DEFINED organizer: Teresa Velázquez

· NOT_DEFINED language: English/Français

· NOT_DEFINED description: The relationship between gender and communication would be developed in this Panel.
The treatment of Gender made by the region’s media (press, radio and television).

Chair: Montserrat Minobis, Xarxa Internacional de Dones Periodistes i Comunicadores

Discussant: Montserrat Puig, Associació Dones Periodistes de Catalunya

Paper presenter: Natalia Fernández, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Media images and discourses: violence against women in the last 25 years
About 25 years ago it was impossible to find any reference to battered women in the news narratives, and when a news item was dealing with a woman killed by her husband or ex husband, the crime was always justified. It was legitimized by male jealousy or by woman’s behaviour. The private and the public were perfectly delimited and there were no interferences between each other. In the meantime, the preferred crime in media discourses was rape; especially those acts of rape committed by unknown men in some isolated places. We were still far from those years when, thanks to the war in the ex Yugoslavia, rape stories started to be dealt as sexual crimes and not as sexual performances. After 1989, cases like sexual harassment at workplace began to be commonly mentioned in the media. In 1994 the treatment of others’ pain was like a spectacle, a fact that, on one hand, develops social sensibility towards those crimes against women and, on the other, transforms gender violence into the center of gravity of reality-shows and consumer products.

Paper presenter: Mary Luz Barbeito and Anna Fajula, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Gender Role Stereotyping in radio advertisements: A spanish case
With this paper we try to achieve a contribution that focuses on the analysis of a representative sample of advertising insertions broadcasted in prime-time on major Spanish radio broadcasters and see if the broadcast radio commercials transmit and perpetuate certain stereotypes about women. This work is approached from two complementary perspectives: that of women as protagonists of advertising and that of women as audience of this message. In the first case, it is a question of analyzing the female voice actors of spots to identify the roles they play in different advertising styles-fiction and determine if we can speak of certain sectors where women prevail as prescribing voices. In the second case, we focus on women as target advertising. From the construction of the advertising speech a profile is defined as a specific advertising target market of this message. In the case of radio advertising, ¿can we talk about the use of stereotypes in this definition of women as a target audience? ¿ Are we using stereotypes that might be called sexist?

Paper presenter: Elisabet García Altadill, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Gender representation in the European Television
This communication responds to the representation of genre in four European public televisions (TVE1, France 2, RAI 1 and BBC1) referred to the space granted to this topic in general, and especially, to the representation of Muslim woman in these televisions, as a its treatment. The interpretation of the results obtained from quantitative and qualitative analyses applied to the sample, and conducted from pre-established categories, presents us the value of hierarchy that the studied Media apply to this issue. In this contribution we try to prove these hypotheses.

Paper presenter: Sahar Talaat, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Women´s image in the Arab media: Changes and challenges
The actual development of the Arab communication systems and their permanent attempts to create a different media sphere, project a dynamic process since two decades to improve social, economic, educational, cultural, technological, etc…. aspects in the region. The Arabic media institutions contribute in creating the "Knowledge Society" where there are possibilities to realize changes in the conventional Arab mentality and paving a free way for several problematic issues such as gender. The stereotype of the Arab women image in the regional media was characterized during years in four aspects, such as the woman as object, superficial, traditional house wife and the women as a body. However now, these aspects are modified slightly because of her participation in her community, either on local, national, or regional level. The gender programs on televisions, radios, press and Internet introduce other perspectives that lead to equality to get her rights, her social needs, her education, her professional life, etc. This research is highlighting on the concepts introduced by the Arab women communicators and journalists in different regional media to determine the women's development situation and discuss the following topics: Discrimination or/and exclusion; Oppression / freedom; Religion; Violence / abuses; Integration in political life; Integration in socio-economic life and Health and family.

Paper presenter: Aimée Vega Montiel, The access and participation of Women in the media industries
Research on media ownership and its implications in the production routines and contents, shows a deprivation as well as a discrimination relationship of women from the media industry. This is why, regional conferences in Bangkok (1994), Quito (1994) and Toronto (1995), as well as the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995), aim explicitly at the need to increase the participation of women in the property, production and decision on contents. This is why, the objective of this paper is to provide, from a Feminist perspective, an overview of the relationship of women with media industries: as owners, as media workers and as producers, including their participation in alternative media. By answering the question ‘What is the access of women to media in terms of property, production and participation in taking decision processes?’ preliminary results of this research show that women are almost non-existent in the media property. The final purpose of this paper is to contribute to the development of feminist scholarship in Communication Studies. At the same time, it is a political response to women’s liberation movements to clame for an equal world.