Status of Women 1999 Abstracts
Commission on the Status of Women
Craft Traditions as Conveyors of Bias in Coverage of the Second Wave of Feminism • Patricia Bradley, Temple University • The author examines ten metropolitan papers in their coverage of two major events in August 1970 connected to the second wave of feminism, the passage by the U.S. House of Representative of the Equal Rights Amendment on August 10 and the national recognition on August 26 of the 50th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment. In both events, the author sought to determine the role of craft traditions in the selection of news angles.
Displaced Persons: Race, Sex And New Discourses Of Orientalism In U.S. Women’s Magazines • Meenakshi Gigi Durham, Texas at Austin • The popularity of nose-rings, mehndi, and bindis in U.S. fashion is the latest appropriation of Asian culture for Western amusement. This paper employs a critical analysis of magazine images of white women adorned in the symbols of Indian femininity to explore the new media discourses of Orientalism. The analysis reveals that such representation preserves power hierarchies by locating the white female as sexual object, and the Indian female as the disembodied fetish that supports white female sexuality.
“Virtual Feminists”? Women-based “Communities” On The Internet: A Pilot Study • Kathleen L. Endres, Akron • This pilot study looks at five woman-based listservs to determine what functions these groups serve, what exchanges they evoke, whether gendered interpersonal communication styles exist, and what types of communities they foster. Among the findings are: women-based listservs often do evolve into virtual communities-but not all do; gender-based communication styles are not necessarily transferred to on-line women-based communities; and the mobilizing potential of these groups has not been developed.
Gender and Cultural Hegemony in Reality-Based Television Programming: The World According to A Wedding Story • Erika Engstrom, Nevada • A Wedding Story, which airs on The Learning Channel, depicts the real-life weddings of ordinary American couples. In this exploratory content analysis of 50 episodes, the author investigates how televised weddings perpetuate a cultural hegemony that promotes traditional gender roles, rituals, and consumerism. Future research suggestions into the media portrayal of weddings include examining gender-related aspects of the production process, and analyzing contradictory media messages that both promote and challenge society’s expectations regarding women.
Liberal Feminist Theory and Women’s Images in Mass Media: Cycles of Favor and Furor • Sandra L. Ginsburg, Akron • Liberal feminist theory gained favor in the early 1970s during the second wave of feminism. Increased interest in research concerning women’s equality reflected this popularity. The popularity of liberal feminist theory waned by the 1980s under criticism within the feminist research community. This literature review illustrates the evolution of liberal feminist theory in mass media research of women’s images, and discusses the advances and future of liberal feminist theory in media research of the 1990s.
Getting a Sense of Humor: On Sex Scandal and Women Joking in Journalism • Kim Golombisky, South Florida • This essay hopes to initiate a discussion in mass communications scholarship on the subject of women’s humor. The author reviews theories of women’s humor before examining several female newspaper columnists’ use of humor during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in 1998-99. The author suggests that women can make sex jokes without vicitimizing women or bashing men and that the social uses of humor are not as trivial as their absence in the journalism literature would indicate.
The Women’s Suffrage Movement Through the Eyes of Lift Magazine Cartoons • J. Robyn Goodman, Texas at Austin • This article explored how cartoons in the humor magazine Life reflect suffragist and antisuffragist ideologies during the women’s suffrage movement and why certain suffragist and/or antisuffragist ideologies were reflected and others ignored. Finally, it looked at what the implications of the cartoons may be. In investigating these questions, this study incorporated the theoretical framework of cultural studies and used ideological criticism as its methodology. The analysis revealed that more than 80 percent of the cartoons reflected antisuffragist ideologies.
The Right Stuff – or the Wrong Stuff? The Struggle Over News Media Portrayal of Female Combat Aviators • Christopher Hanson, North Carolina • This study analyzes media coverage of a controversy over the first group of women to qualify as U.S. Navy combat aviators – from two standpoints. First is the effort of the conservative Center for Military Readiness to frame the story from its anti-feminist perspective, and its considerable success in doing so. Second is the way in which Dateline and 60 Minutes covered the controversy in the face of CMR’s spin campaign.
The Case of President Clinton and the Feminists: Discourses of Feminism in the News • Dustin Harp, Wisconsin-Madison • Feminism is best understood as a complicated political movement, full of the complexities present in everyday life Using textual analysis, this research examines media discourses in news texts joining constructions of feminism to President Clinton and his extra-marital relationships. The study finds mainstream newspapers and magazines present feminism in a monolithic fashion-represented by white women. The texts offer a simplistic construction that envisions women as feminist or not and presents feminists as hypocrites for supporting Clinton.
Minds in the Mills: The Encouragement of Girls’ Expression as an Unintended Consequence of Economic Policies • Louise W. Hermanson and Kristen Kitchen, South Alabama • ABSTRACT NOT AVAILABLE.
Symbolic Devaluation of Women in New York Times Photograph Cutlines • John Mark King, East Tennessee State University • ABSTRACT NOT AVAILABLE.
Reporting the Birth and Death of Feminism: Three Decades of Mixed Messages in Time Magazine • Carolyn Kitch, Northwestern University • This paper offers a rhetorical analysis of Time magazine’s coverage of the second wave of the American women’s movement, not just of feminism’s “birth” and “death,” but everything in between A close examination of 35 cover stories (1969-1998) reveals that the magazine’s ambivalence, expressed through a mix of contradictory messages packaged as recurring “lessons,” was in place from the start-and that its treatment of feminism has been more complicated than the backlash theory suggests.
The Strategist: Positioning Women as “Outsiders Within” the Public Relations Profession • Julie Ward O’Neil • A review of women’s twenty-year presence in the public relations profession suggests that social and cultural factors may be situating women within “a ghetto within a ghetto.” Through a feminist rhetorical analysis of a leading public relations trade journal, this study seeks to connect the journal’s messages with women’s relegated position in the public relations profession. Although women constitute more than half of the public relations workforce, this study argues that the journal emphasizes the masculine values of individualism, competition, and objectivity.
Are Women Getting a Bad Rap? A Photo Analysis of Age, Ethnicity and Overall Favorability • Shelly Rodgers, Missouri-Columbia • This study examines the portrayal of females in photographs of f/me since the 1970s. Age, ethnicity, favorability and five “characterization” frames were coded. Findings suggest that white adult females were characterized more favorably in terms of social status, physical strength, tenderness, attractiveness and independence. Implications suggest that if the news industry is to improve its credibility with the public, there must be a higher level of accountability to portray all females in an accurate and equally favorable manner.
Setting a Revolutionary Agenda for Women’s Rights • Rodger Streitmatter, American University • The Revolution was a women’s rights newspaper founded in New York City in 1868 by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan Brownell Anthony. Although the weekly survived only a few years, this paper argues that The Revolution created an agenda that is, in many ways, still being followed today-more than a century later. More specifically, this paper identifies and documents what the 19th century radical weekly had to say about job discrimination, equal pay for equal work, sexual harassment, inadequate political representation, domestic violence, and abortion.
“We Got Next”: Images of Women in TV Commercials During the Inaugural WNBA Season • Stanley T. Wearden and Pamela J. Creedon, Kent State University • One of the biggest changes in mediated sport for women in the United States is the Women’s National Basketball Association. The WNBA began its first season in 1997 with more television coverage than ever before in the history of women’s sports. This study focused on commercials in WNBA television coverage using the assumption that if television coverage could approach the sport in a non-stereotypical way it held the potential for dramatically shifting the landscape of gender-role socialization.
Portrayal Of Women Using Computers In Television Commercials: A Content Analysis • Candace White and Kadesha Washington, Tennessee-Knoxville and Katherine N. Kinnick, Kennesaw State University • This content analysis examines the representation of male and female characters shown using computers in prime-time television commercials. An analysis of one week’s commercials drawn from network and cable programming reveals both positive and negative portrayals of female computer users. While women are shown as computer users almost as frequently as men, they are significantly more likely to be depicted as clerical workers and less likely to be portrayed as business professionals.
Print friendly
