Women and girls as subject of media’s attention, the situation on SSTV (Part 1)
The greatest challenges to having a women mayor of Juba city and other top government position in the, future, the situation in SSTV news part two (1-2)
By Lino Lual Lual
January 29, 2016 (SSB) — Representation of equality and gender roles in the media and TV news has to be guided to build up a cult followership among South Sudanese female and the world audiences, feature successful single career to gives room to a certain cultural anxiety about what these women represented socially and culturally. The freedom that these women enjoyed caused new anxieties and existential angst.
They have it all, they obsess with making wrong choices (bleaching their skins with cream) because they feel they might let the right man slip from under their nose (hence they must always be on the lookout), they believe that not catching a man at the right time might mean they have miss the chance of having a freedom world of today fearing loneliness and the stigma of remaining not loved.
The ambivalence of the gender role model embodied by contemporary popular culture heroines has been interpreted as the expression of a post-feminist era, characterized by the entanglement of feminist and anti-feminist ideals.
These female buddies are ideal and successful figures just because they provide a conservative and reassuring vision of gender identities and support the idea of female and male roles as being totally complementary and mutually necessary. Interestingly, it is up to the episodic female to embody the dangerous, threatening face of femininity that of the positive, normative female main behavior trying so hard to neutralize.
Women were in positions of leadership who are able to balance work and family responsibilities positive role models to be diffused by the media, endowing these female characters with reassuring and more traditional feminine features can be seen as a strategy to counteract the innovative and ‘subversive’ potential associated to their featuring in action roles and decision-making positions.
This is captured vividly in an advert for a famous brand of lingerie that shows a young female wearing only a black bra. Situated between the breasts is the following slogan. I can’t cook. Who cares? Making the point that her voluptuous body is far more important than any other feminine skills or attributes she may or may not possess. A similar confident and assertive tone is that of a woman in undergarments who says new hair, new look, new bra and if he doesn’t like it, new boyfriend.
This element is a by-product of the organizational goals and editorial policy of journalism style that have been developed from the mid-1980s on, when it was thought that the news should offer audiences opportunities to identify with events and personalities and that human-interest stories should be a major ingredient of the news, demanding also a more personal and intimate style of address.
While it is not the case that the anchor-women were recruited simply because they were women, it does seem that the change in editorial policy towards audience goals opened up a space in which feminine subjectivity may be quite functional.
In terms of attitudes and beliefs, frequent exposure to media images that girls and women affects how girls conceptualize femininity. Girls and young women who are more frequently consume or engage with mainstream media content offer stronger endorsement that depict women as objects. They also place appearance and physical attractiveness at the Centre of women’s value.
It appears that boys hold more pronounced gender occupations than do girls. Social care jobs childcare, teaching young children, nursing and elder cares are among those which few men enter. A major deterrent is the poor pay and quality of many female-dominated jobs (men who enter female-dominated social care jobs typically carve out particular more male niches of work which emphasis physical or technical effort).
The gender-based employment segregation is absolutely consistent with the gender imagery proposed by the media as seen previously, in media representations more women than men are endowed with maternal values (nurturing, caring of the others, self-abnegation) and values of the private sphere, the family and romance problems, marriage, parenthood and domesticity are shown to be more important to women than to men.
Also, even though the number of professional roles women are portrayed in has been increasing and diversifying over the years, TV series and advertising still tend to steer females into ‘pink collar’ classes and careers and to portray more men than women in prestigious jobs.
some of them feel judged primarily as women being subject to continual comment on their appearance and invitations of male colleagues others feel that their own feminine qualities such as compassion, kindness and humanity, are at odds with qualities expected of journalists, distrust and toughness feeling that they are expected to have good social skills and not a lot of interest in.
To be continued……………………………
The author is a master of strategic studies at center for Peace and Development studies University of Juba, He can be reached via Linolual69@yahoo.com
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