Media negative stretotype of women in South Africa

Media Representation of Women in Africa Research Paper

People have become extremely attached to the media system as a tool for individuals to communicate with each other. However, society has a set of guidelines, rules, and expectations on a person’s appearance, behaviors, and how they interact with others. These are expectations that every individual in society is trained to follow and obey. These factors are based on an individual’s gender, race, and social class, and can be detrimental to the success of women.  The media helps reinforce this process of socialization. With that said, there are many negative aspects to the media. The media has portrayed women negatively with regard to their body image, occupation, and gender roles through the interpretation of magazines and movies. Moreover, there have been many studies on the negative portrayals of women in the media and the relationship between media and women’s body image. The media's stories are shown through a camera lens; viewers only see stories from one angle. As a result, many minorities especially women in African countries such as South Africa Egypt and Nigeria are negatively represented in media: this paper is specifically focusing  on how most African women are unenthusiastically symbolized by  three main aspects consumerism abortion and the role of  traditional housewives that lack their own independence in African movies. 

Unfortunately, western media has negatively portrayed Africa as the Dark Continent for decades. As a result, western nations see Africa as a continent that needs to be civilized, because African people are seen as savages who lack reason, culture, and intelligence. Therefore, Africans needed to be enlightened through colonization. Despite the fact that, Africa has been presented as a continent with difficult obstacles  and having only a traditional world view, African nations have become more like the societies of the Western Hemisphere. Furthermore, since, colonialism traders, missionaries, and explorers have all played a role in perpetuating and disseminating certain images of Africa: these images have been negative. Moreover, western nations have an extremely negative view of African people as malnourished individuals and naked children in front of camera (class notes).  these represention of African news by western media convinces the audiences in United States, Europe and other parts of the world that the entire continent of Africa is hopeless, poverty and disease stricken. western media news outlets  fail to show positive images in Africa such as images of skyscrapers, well-developed road networks and other manifestations of modern development in most African countries are usually absent in the mindsets of western media audiences. 

The media has not only represented women negatively with regard to body image and consumption in the United States, but also countries worldwide such as South Africa especially through the interpretation of magazines. This is shown in a study by Tom Odhiambo, where he discusses how the culture of consumption plays a major role in socializing behaviors of black women in South Africa to the extent that consumption is essential to defining group identities of women. According to Sarah Nutshell, there has been emergent black youth and middle class in Johannesburg with their specific cultural and consumptive practices. She suggests that consumption and the presentation of the physical body in the manner of dressing, walking, talking and carriage are metaphors of what the contemporary South African society is ‘becoming’ (Nuttall 2004:431– 452) (as cited by Tom Odhiambo).  “Tom Odhiambo expands on Sarah Nutshells’ idea of consumption as being beyond just the individuality and the style of women in South Africa, but also about the society in contemporary South Africa.

As a result, Tom Odhiambo argues that the black female body is the subject of both manipulation and the intense gazes of  businesses and corporations who produce the commodities because they only see the physical bodies of female in South Africa  as both products themselves and place to advertise products. They do not see females as human beings. The author points out that this form of consumption is so ingrained in South African society that popular magazines such as Drum and True Love seem to have unquestionably accepted the role of purveyors of advertisements in which the black female body embodies both the value of the commodities that ‘it’ advertises, as well as offering itself as an object of consumption. Therefore the black female body is used to promote consumption, while it simultaneously becomes a consumable itself.  This is very contradictory considering South Africa is society that is explicitly engaged in social transformation and the eradication of various forms of discrimination and degradation; the use of the black female body to highlight unrestrained consumption through the use of sexual objection is problematic. The use of uncritical depictions and negative portrayals of black women in the popular media undermine societal efforts to realize social transformation. Therefore the notion of consumption is key to any kind of analysis that contemporary South Africa is subjected to as it highlights the various forces at play in a post-apartheid context ( Odhiambo 2008).

This study is important because it shows how far the effects of the negative portrayals of women in the media go with regard to consumption in South Africa and the world. It also points out the contradictory consequences of negative media portrayal in South Africa. In addition, the study shows how South Africa’s form of consumption leads to South African women having negative perceptions of their own body image because they view their bodies as sexual objects for consumption not something they have to take care of. This study proves two aspects that I have learned from my research: firstly in South Africa, there is no female perspective in subjects such as politics, economy, sport or agriculture, their voice is virtually unheard. Secondly however, women journalists are, given more exposure than men in reporting on subjects that have to do with the body, home and beauty. It is in television that they find the best professional opportunities, essentially as presenters, but they are only employed for a limited time, because in that part of the world it is uncommon to see women working beyond the age of 50 in any media (Odhiambo 2008). This study shows that representation of women working in the print media is also poor: only 22 % of the journalists who write news are women (Odhiambo 2008).  This brings me to the conclusion that not only the media need to stop the negative representations of South African women, but they cannot be used as sexual objects to sell products for consumption. South Africa needs to find a new role for women in the society because the black female body is used to promote consumption, while it simultaneously becomes a consumable itself. This is very contradictory considering South Africa is society that is explicitly engaged in social transformation and the eradication of various forms of discrimination and degradation; the use of the black female body to highlight unrestrained consumption through the use of sexual objectification is problematic. The use of uncritical depictions and negative portrayals of black women in the popular media undermine societal efforts to realize social transformation.

 The study by Margaret C. Flinn also discusses the negative portrayals of women in the media but this time with regard to North African films not the consumption of women as sexual objects. This study examines women in media in terms of using allegories to describe the women in Franco-North African film between the 1990s and 2000s. The author argues that these contemporary representations trap women between hyper- and disembodiment, with the narration of their subjectivity becoming predicated upon the social violence enacted upon their bodies. Allegory is shown to be a product of the film’s form and narrative, but also a result of its production and reception by people.

 The results of the study show that the women in this study were able to recognize the differences in response to the media messages in movies and in advertisement images. They were able to recognize the difference between advertisements that have unrealistic expectations for a woman’s mind and body, and the ones that celebrate women’s identity and strengths. This is a very important point because it shows that the results supported the hypothesis.  

 As soon as they have learned to walk children are socialized differently based on their gender. Boys learn to play with action figures like GI Joe army toys and play with Lego.  Society teaches boys to be strong, join the military, be good at math, build buildings, be engineers, and providers for women in society. On the other hand, young girls are trained by society and their parents to play with dolls, make up, easy bake ovens. Later on in school girls learn that parents only want their sons to do better in math, so as a result girls’ attention in math decreases because  they have internalized the message from their parents that girls are normally not supposed to do better in math. In addition, society teaches young girls to be nurturing, to cook, clean, do laundry so they can learn to be good mothers and take care of children, while the men are only the providers in society. These expectations of women are realistic/and unrealistic for many reasons. First of all,  it is very realistic for society to want and need caregivers, nannies, mothers to watch over, nurture, care for and raise children in society that reason is realistic. There are no rules, laws in society that segregates the care giving, and raising children is specifically the responsibility of only to women.

Gender, abortion and substantive representation in the South African newsprint media by Tracey Feltham-Kinga and ,Catriona Macleodb, shows how the transformation from dictatorship to a democracy has created new abortion legislation  in South Africa which has led to significant changes in the way that abortion is represented through South African newsprint media. Feltham-King’s study analyzed how both sides of the abortion debate have been represented in the South African newsprint media from 1978 to 2005. She asked the following questions in her study .What .is the gender of those called upon to comment on abortion in the newsprint media? From what position (pro-choice or pro-life) do these commentators contribute to the abortion debate?  Is there a relationship between the gender of the commentators and their alignment to the abortion debate? (-Kinga and Macleodb 2014).The Feltham-King study produced three main findings: Firstly her research shows that not only is there an equal number of male and female commentators, which many people use drawn on this fact in order to express their opinions on abortion, but there is also a equilibrium of pro-life and pro-choice positions expressed by these commentators (Kinga and ,Macleodb 2014).Secondly, she points out the fact that even though the media is acknowledging the fact that the bifurcation of positions into pro-life and pro-choice, it is enough to improve the negative representation of abortion in newsprint media.  This is because simply recognizing the fact that South African media newsprint has developed a system that divides the issue of abortion into many different pro-life and pro-choice positions without taking action is minimizing the complexity of the debate concerning abortion. In addition, Feltham-King found that the media tends to portray the abortion debate as a clash of the elite and working class of South Africa This organization of news media with a balance (gender and position) has existed both during the Apartheid era and after 1990,(-Kinga and Macleodb 2014).when transformation of democracy and abortion legislation rights had started. This proves that the media is just “speaking too loud” and the media does not care enough about the issue of abortion to take many actions in an effort to make more positive representations of women in South Africa: as a result, this means that nothing will change unless South African citizens become more aware of this problem, take a stand and actively try to change how their society views abortion because the media only reinforces what a society believes and creates. Therefore, the third finding was the fact there is statistically significant a relationship between the gender of reporter and their position on the abortion debate. In addition, of articles that only female commentator, 67.1% of the commentators took a pro-choice position, and only 21.5% took a pro-life position.  Of those articles which contained male-only commentators, 54.3 % of them took a pro-life position and 14.9% took a pro-choice position.(-Kinga and Macleodb 2014). This is important because it shows that there is a significant gender gap between men and women position on abortion and how they are giving a disproportionate negative biased representation of abortion in South African media. This is because more women are pro-choice and more men are pro-life. In order to have a more positive representation of not only abortion, but women in South African media and worldwide media the representation of women cannot be based on gender but on facts.  

 South Africa is not the only African country with negative representation of women in the media. Unfortunately Egyptian media also has negative depiction of women. This is study of Egyptian magazines named A critical cultural analysis: the portrayal of Egyptian women in the Los Angeles times by Stephanie Livingston. This study is a critical cultural analysis of the portrayal of Egyptian women by the Los Angeles Times. By analyzing recent news stories, the study aims to identify whether articles reporting the experiences of Egyptian women exhibit exclusion, stereotyping, assimilation this study takes a critical look at themes presented by the texts, such as oppression and the symbol of the veil, and explore how cultural values and ideologies exhibited by mass media shape the depiction of Egyptian women. A variety of news stories about Egyptian women appearing in the Los Angeles Times before, during, and after the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 will be compared.  The findings of Stephanie Livingston illustrate three things. Firstly the fact that mass media socializes Americans to accept certain myths and stereotypes that are based on deeply-rooted Western ideologies. Secondly how these ideologies shape mass media depiction of Middle Eastern women, resulting in portrayals that are not always accurate. Thirdly, she points out the fact if people can the difference between myths and reality in mass media depiction of Middle Eastern women, then and only perhaps we can better understand ways in which distortions may hinder the advancement of these women both in Egyptian and in global society.

Works Cited

Feltham  T. K. and , Macleodb C. (2015 , march Gender, abortion and substantive representation in the South African newsprint media by Tracey Feltham-Kinga and ,CatrionaMacleodb, from University of Fort Hare  journal of international women studies 60 1(1) 91-120 

Livingston, Stephanie  2015A critical cultural analysis: the portrayal of Egyptian women in the Los Angeles times by s December 4, 2015

Odhiambo, T. (2008, April). The Black Female Body as a ‘Consumer and a Consumable’ in Current Drum and True Love Magazines in South Africa1. African Studies, 67(1), 71-80. doi:10.1080/00020180801943131