Why Fixing the Media System Should Be on the Feminist Agenda

By Jennifer L. Pozner, Women in Media & News. Posted January 11, 2007.

This essay was adapted for Reclaim the Media and NOW's NW Organizing Project from an essay in BitchFest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine.

Ask a feminist to identify what the most important issues are facing women, and she might mention reproductive freedom, violence against women and children, the disproportionate burdens women bear in light of the growing gap between rich and poor in America or the many ways in which war specifically impacts women. Chances are she wouldn't immediately point to the media. But she should.

Without accurate, non-biased, diverse news coverage and challenging, creative cultural expression it is virtually impossible to significantly impact public opinion of women's and human rights issues or to create lasting social change. Indeed, corporate media are key to why our fast-moving culture is so slow to change, stereotypes are so stubborn and the power structure is so entrenched. Pop culture images help us determine what to buy, what to wear, whom to date, how we feel about our bodies, how we see ourselves and how we relate to racial, sexual, socio-economic and religious "others."

Journalism directly links and affects every individual issue on the socio-political continuum in a national debate over the pressing matters of the day, from rape to racism, hate crimes to war crimes, corporate welfare to workplace gender discrimination. By determining who has a voice in this debate and who is silenced, which issues are discussed and how they're framed, media have the power to maintain the status quo or challenge the dominant order.

And how have media used this power where women are concerned? With a vengeance.

Let's start with female politicians. Ever since the midterm Democratic upset, media have been exclaiming over Democratic Representative Nancy Pelosi's new position as the first female Speaker of the House, a position which puts her only two steps away from the presidency -- but few outlets have noted that in 2006, we still lag behind many other developed countries in electing women to the highest political offices.

Ever wonder why American women are still stuck with only token representation in the House, the Senate and the Supreme Court, or why the closest a woman has come to the Oval Office was Geena Davis on a short-lived ABC drama? In part, it's because women audacious enough to seek political office are routinely dogged by double-standard-laced news coverage that focuses on their looks, fashion sense, familial relationships and other feminizing details that have nothing to do with their ability to lead -- as noted in a previous TomPaine.com commentary, "Commander In Chic."

From headlines speculating about whether or not New York Senator Hillary Clinton "had millions of dollars of work done" to make her look less "hideous" to the New York Times likening Pelosi to a nagging grandmother, this sort of coverage implies that women should be taken less seriously and are less electable than their male counterparts. (Of course, their male counterparts aren't helping to dispel such stereotypes, as when Dubya said, in his first post-election press conference, that his "first act of bipartisan outreach" he "shared with [Pelosi] the names of some Republican interior decorators who can help her pick out the new drapes in her new office.")

Even the most powerful women in America suffer this media indignity: When Condoleezza Rice wore black leather boots last year, the Washington Post described the Secretary of State as a "dominatrix"; on the day she was chosen as America's first African-American female national security adviser, a front page New York Times story reported that "her dress size is between a 6 and an 8," and she has "a girlish laugh" and "can be utterly captivating -- without ever appearing confessional or vulnerable."

Media content matters, and not just to women at the highest echelons of power. In fact, the more vulnerable women are, the more hostile media coverage becomes. Young, low-income mothers of color have been derided for decades by a bigoted and misogynistic press as "promiscuous," "lazy moochers" and "brood mares" supposedly popping out babies for welfare checks. A Newsweek editor once even insisted that "every threat to the fabric of this country from poverty to crime to homelessness is connected to out-of-wedlock teen pregnancy." The end result of this scapegoating? Punitive welfare reform that decimated the social safety net for poor women and children.

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Jennifer L. Pozner is the executive director of Women In Media & News, a women's media analysis, education and advocacy group. She lectures on women, media, politics and pop culture at colleges across the country and can be contacted at info@wimnonline.org.

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