Women in Politics and Media: Perspectives from Nations in Transition

349 Pages·2014·1.817 MB·English

by  Maria Raicheva-Stover, Elza Ibroscheva

Women in Politics and Media

Women in Politics and Media
Perspectives from Nations in Transition
Maria Raicheva-Stover and Elza Ibroscheva
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2014
© Maria Raicheva-Stover, Elza Ibroscheva, and Contributors, 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Women in politics and media : perspectives from nations in transition / [edited by] Maria
Raicheva-Stover and Elza Ibroscheva.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-62892-087-1 (hardback)
1. Women--Political activity--Developing countries. 2. Mass media and women--Developing
countries. 3. Women--Political activity--Developing countries--Case studies. 4. Mass media
and women--Developing countries--Case studies. I. Raicheva-Stover, Maria. II. Ibroscheva,
Elza, 1974-
HQ1236.5.D44W668 2014
305.409172’4--dc23
2014014705
ISBN: 978-1-6289-2106-9
Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk, NR21 8NN
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Notes on Contributors viii
1 Introduction 1
Part One: Framing the Message: Mediated Representations and
Journalistic Practices
2 The Portrayal of Women Politicians in Israeli Popular Women’s
Magazines Einat Lachover 15
3 Ambiga Sreenevasan and Malaysian Counter-Publics Mary Griffiths
and Sara Chinnasamy 31
4 The Girls of Parliament: A Historical Analysis of the Press Coverage
of Female Politicians in Bulgaria Elza Ibroscheva and Maria
Raicheva-Stover 47
5 Zambian Women MPs: An Examination of Coverage by the Post
and Zambia Daily Mail Twange Kasoma 65
6 Media Visibility of Tunisian Women Politicians in Traditional and
New Media: Obstacles to Visibility and Media Coverage Strategies
Maryam Ben Salem and Atidel Mejbri 81
7 Understanding the Gender Dynamics of Current Affairs Talk Shows
in the Pakistani Television Industry Munira Cheema 97
8 Between Two Democratic Ideals: Gendering in the Russian Culture
of Political Journalism Liudmila Voronova 115
vi Contents
9 Becoming Less Gendered: A Comparison of (Inter)National Press
Coverage of First Female Government Heads Who Win Again at the
Polls Tania Cantrell Rosas-Moreno and Ingrid Bachmann 131
Part Two: Managing the Message: Self-representations
10 “Cameroon’s Female Obama”: Deconstructing the Kah Walla
Phenomenon in the Context of the 2011 Presidential Elections in
Cameroon Teke Ngomba 149
11 The Mother of Brazil: Gender Roles, Campaign Strategy, and the
Election of Brazil’s First Female President Pedro G. dos Santos and
Farida Jalalzai 167
12 The Visual Framing of Romanian Women Politicians in Personal
Campaign Blogs during the 2012 Romanian Parliamentary Elections
Camelia Cmeciu and Monica Pătruț 181
13 Gender, Politics, and the Albanian Media: A Women
Parliamentarians’ Account Sonila Danaj and Jonila Godole 199
Part Three: Navigating the Public Space: Class and Beauty
14 Michelle Bachelet, President of Chile: A Moving Portrait
Claudia Bucciferro 217
15 Virgin Venuses: Beauty and Purity for “Public” Women in Venezuela
Elizabeth Gackstetter Nichols 233
16 Ultra-Feminine Women of Power: Beauty and the State in Argentina
Elizabeth Gackstetter Nichols 249
17 Yulia Tymoshenko’s Two Bodies Tatiana Zhurzhenko 265
Concluding Remarks 284
References 286
Index 325
Acknowledgments
This volume emerged with the support, help and encouragement of a large
number of people. We owe special gratitude to Washburn University, and specif-
ically to Dr. Kathy Menzie, chair of the Mass Media department, and the College
of Arts and Sciences, for the financial support, release time, and invigorating
opportunities to teach innovative courses, and Southern Illinois University
Edwardsville for providing the research opportunities that made much of our
scholarship possible.
We also would like to thank all the scholars and researchers from all parts
of the world who responded so enthusiastically to the initial book call. Space
limitations did not allow us to publish all the manuscripts, and specifically the
section with testimonies from political women from Turkey, Belarus, Bulgaria,
and India. Above all, we would like to express our appreciation to the 20 contrib-
utors to this volume who patiently worked with us over the last 15 months to
bring this project to fruition. This project is over, but we are fortunate to be
left with a global network of connections which, we hope, will set in motion
future collaborations. Our sincere gratitude goes to Bloomsbury Publishing
for making this book happen and to the anonymous contributors who offered
astute advice. We thank all the women in our lives—mothers, friends, mentors,
and role models—for leaving an indelible mark on us. Lastly, this project would
not have been possible without the unending encouragement and unconditional
love of our respective families—Mike and Addison Stover, who’ve always been
my biggest champions, and Sami, Adam, and Marc Moussawi, who are the
greatest inspiration one might hope for. We dedicate this book to them.
Maria Raicheva-Stover and Elza Ibroscheva
February 2014
Notes on Contributors
Ingrid Bachmann received her doctoral degree in Journalism from the
University of Texas at Austin in 2011. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor
in the School of Communications at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
A former reporter and blogger, her research interests include news narratives,
gender, political communication, and content creation, with emphasis in cross-
national comparisons. A constant theme that runs through her research is how
news media shape and reinforce several identities and meanings within the
public sphere. Her recent research has been published in Feminist Media Studies,
Howard Journal of Communication, International Journal of Communication,
Journalism Studies, and Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, among
others.
Maryam Ben Salem is a doctor in political science and a university teacher.
She works as a researcher at the Center of Arab Women for Training and
Research—CAWTAR—on the theme of political participation of women. Her
research themes focus on political activism, religious commitment, cyber
activism, and media visibility of women politicians. She is a member of several
scientific associations: Observatoire Tunisien de la Transition Démocratique,
the association Mediterranean College for Scientific Research, and the Tunisian
Association for Political Studies.
Claudia Bucciferro is assistant professor in the Department of Communication
Studies at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. She has a Ph.D. in
communication from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Master’s
degree in linguistics from the University of Concepción, Chile, where she also
completed her undergraduate studies in communication and journalism. Her
research focuses on topics in international/intercultural communication, cultural
studies, gender, and media studies. Her work has appeared in the Handbook
of Gender, Sex, and Media, the Journal of Mass Communication, the Journal of
Global Mass Communication, and the Journal of American Culture. She is the
author of FOR-GET: Identity, Media, and Democracy in Chile (University Press
of America), and editor of The Twilight Saga: Exploring the Global Phenomenon
Notes on Contributors ix
(Scarecrow Press). She is currently working on another book that will focus on
popular culture, gender, media, and transnational information flows.
Tania Cantrell Rosas-Moreno received her doctoral degree in Journalism
from the University of Texas at Austin in 2009. Currently, she is an Assistant
Professor in Loyola University Maryland’s Department of Communication. A
former public relations practitioner, her research interests include (interna-
tional) news narratives, political communication and diversity, with emphasis in
cross-national comparisons. A question that underlies her research is, “How do
news stories affect citizens’ daily lives?” She has published in Journalism Studies,
Howard Journal of Communication, and International Journal of Communication,
among others. Her book on Brazilian media, which compares social, political,
and cultural themes found in news stories, and a concurrent telenovela, is forth-
coming from Lexington Books.
Munira Cheema is a Ph.D. student (final year) at the School of Film, Media
and Music at the University of Sussex, U.K., where she is also working as an
Associate Tutor. For her doctoral thesis, she is looking at the production and
reception of gender-based content in Pakistani television. Munira holds Master’s
Degrees in International Relations (University of Karachi) and in International
Communications (University of Leeds). Previously, she has worked as a Research
Assistant for the Project of Ford Foundation at the Department of International
Relations at the University of Karachi. She has also worked as a feature writer for
a weekly publication (Star) in Pakistan. Prior to starting the doctoral program,
Munira worked as a visiting faculty for the course of Gender Studies at the
Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Institute (SZABIST) in Karachi. Her research
interests include politics/representation of gender in South Asia, gendered
citizenship and religion, and evolution of mediated public sphere in Pakistan.
Sara Chinnasamy, University of Technology MARA, Malaysia. She has
been a senior lecturer in broadcast journalism in the Faculty of Media and
Communication Studies, University of Technology MARA, Malaysia, since
2006, after working as a broadcast journalist for the public broadcaster, Radio
Television Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur from 1999–2005. There, her role focused on
parliamentary reporting, political assignments, and related analyses. In 2014,
she completed her Ph.D. in media and politics at the University of Adelaide,
Australia.