Commission on the Status of Women 2018 Abstracts
The Women’s Convention: Reclaiming a Movement • Katie Blevins • “On January 21, 2017 an estimated 500,000 people joined the Women’s March on Washington D.C. Over 5 million people participated in over 550 other marches worldwide. It was the largest single-day protest in U.S. history and was organized almost entirely on social media. In the aftermath of this display of activism, people, pundits, and journalists speculated: “where will the movement go from here?” After all, the movement lacked clear leadership, money, and other noteworthy resources. Nine months later, in October, 2017, the Women’s March founders held a Women’s Convention in Detroit. The conference shared many themes with the Women’s March- addressing policies and politicians who impact women, both negatively and positively. Although this convention was also planned and promoted using social media, it signifies a shift in what kinds of activities the current Women’s Movement is capable of. Underpinning this study of the Women’s Convention is the attempt to understand social media’s role in fostering and maintaining feminist activism through sustained social movements. This paper examines two months of posts on the main Facebook page for the Women’s Movement leading up to the Women’s Convention (August 27-October 27, 2017). This study uses resource mobilization theory to explore: 1) the types of resources utilized by the Women’s Movement in organizing the Women’s Convention, 2) if theories like resource mobilization are a relevant theory for explaining how social movements use social media, 3) the special role social media takes in mobilizing and reducing the economic burdens of resource gathering.”
Women Journalists Face Danger and Death While Doing their Jobs • Carolyn Byerly, Howard University; Jasmin Goodman, Howard University • The goal in this paper is to begin to bring a more systematic examination of the violence that women journalists encounter in their reporting, as well as to the consequences of that violence. These journalists may experience threats, brutality and death while doing the work of news reporting. This paper presents a summary of what has been learned to date from an ongoing global study into both well-known and lesser-known cases of violence against women journalists. The goals of the research are to catalog and describe the kind of violence women are experiencing, as well as to explore what is (or not) happening in bringing the perpetrators to justice. The work is presented within a feminist analytical framework that seeks to tease out the gender relations that exist within the journalism profession and within governmental processes of individual nations, with respect to the problem. To the extent possible, we also try to show the structural causes of violence against women working in news reporting globally.
Women’s Responses to Online Harrassment • Kalyani Chadha, University of Maryland, College Park; Linda Steiner, University of Maryland; Jessica Vitak, University of Maryland; Zahra Ashktorab, University of Maryland • Given the ubiquity of social media platforms increasing attention is now being paid to the harassment of women when socializing through online platforms. Using data from in-depth interviews with 23 women university students who had been harassed/cyberbullied, this study explores how women respond to negative experiences online. We find that women deploy various defensive strategies while navigating online spaces, from normalizing harassment, and taking it for granted, to withdrawal and self-censorship.
What happens when they can find you?: Doxxing, privacy, and feminist theory • Stine Eckert; Jade Metzger, Wayne State University • In this study we expand definitions of doxxing, a phenomenon of abuse enmeshing online and offline spaces by exposing personal information. We applied feminist theory and conceptions of doxxing to 15 in-depth interviews with women and men who were doxxed. We asked about their experiences with doxxing; their tactics to handle the situation; and the consequences of the harassment to their online behavior. We found gendered aspects in content and suspected intent of doxxing; harassment following the doxxing; and long-lasting impacts of changed online behavior, sense of privacy and safety. Police, law, and social media operators only helped in few cases to pursue doxxers and/or remove unwanted personal information while targets experienced uncertainty, loss of control, and fear. We argue that a definition of doxxing must account for the ubiquitous nature of information already online and the desired and undesired specific contexts online leading to doxxing.
Hear Their Voices: A Qualitative Study of Women in Public Media • Laura Harbert, Ohio University • It isn’t news: women outnumber men in journalism school. But they do not climb the career ladder to top leadership positions, even in public media. A review of the literature showed that there has been little research on women in media leadership. No scholarly literature regarding women leaders in public media could be found. Schein’s theory of organizational culture was used as a frame through which to explore the underlying assumptions of public media’s culture. In-depth interviews were conducted with seven women holding leadership roles in public media. Nearly all of them spent the bulk of their careers in public media. While respondents felt there was an overall historical institutional inclusion of women in public media, they said gender discrimination remained a challenge. Respondents also expressed shock and dismay at the recent number of allegations of sexual harassment in public media. The conclusion pointed toward the need for gender parity and as well as skill diversity in public media.
Needle, not sword: How Nackey Scripps Loeb used editorials to build audiences and influence conservative presidential politics • Meg Heckman, Northeastern University • This project uses digital humanities techniques to reframe Nackey Scripps Loeb’s overlooked career as publisher of the Manchester (NH) Union Leader. An examination of her editorials related to the 1984 and 1992 presidential primaries shows she cultivated audiences to influence the conservative movement. This challenges conventional wisdom that she never emerged from the shadow of her late husband William Loeb’s infamous persona and begins to remedy Nackey Loeb’s symbolic annihilation from accounts of New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary.
Reaching a balance between crimes of passion & femicides: Influences on the Construction of News in Mexican journalists • Miriam Hernandez • Violence against women in Mexico has increased steadily in the last twenty five years (INEGI, 2017). For instance, in 2016 there were more than 8 female homicides per day in the country. Nuevo Leon – a northern state bordering the United States, with an educational mean above the nation and one of the main economic drivers of the country – has been one of the states with a significant escalation in violence against women (Espino, 2018; PGJ, 2018). Since many of these incidents are known through the news, the news media play a crucial part in shaping a society’s perception about what constitutes domestic violence, dating abuse, sexual violence, etc. Hence, investigating the mechanisms behind the construction of female fatalities news by Mexican journalists in this state is critical to understand how violence is presented and how to develop tools for reducing the pervasive problem of violence against women (VAW). Based on 20 interviews, findings demonstrate that journalists produce stories that adhere to the roles they see for themselves in society, as a detached observer or a social advocate. These roles have an impact on their notion of objectivity and the type of diverse sources they include in their stories. Implications for the Mexican context are considered.
Growing Old Gracefully? Gendered Depictions on Retirement Communities’ Websites • Anne Cooper; Hong Ji • The authors analyzed 407 senior citizen residents’ photos from 69 randomly selected, accredited U.S. Continuing Care Retiring Communities’ websites. Women were shown indoors more than men; and happier/ smiling more than men. While not invisible, the study found that CCRC websites somewhat underrepresented women. Marx et al (2011) found a CCRC female actual population of 68%, while the website “world” was only 62.7% female. Similarly, interactions underrepresented female friendships in the form of female-female dyads.
‘Boyfriending In’: Violence and Romance in News Narratives about Sex Trafficking • Anne Johnston, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Barbara Friedman, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • In this narrative analysis of 203 news stories about sex trafficking, we analyze how women trafficked by a boyfriend are described in the stories and the similarities between these and other narratives of gender-based violence. The women are frequently described as hapless, passive victims of the relationship with the boyfriend/trafficker and have little to no power or agency. Additionally, these stories are similar to other gendered violence coverage, namely a tendency to blame the victim.
Gendered Visa: Korean dependent visa women’s media use and home-making in U.S. • Claire Shinhea Lee • Temporary migrants with dependent visa status–mostly women who accompany their professional husbands to keep their family together–are made invisible in the skilled labor migration. Although these dependent visa holders often may be highly educated, middle-class women compared to working class immigrant women, the lives of these so-called trailing spouses are often extremely restricted and oppressed due to both visa policies and domestic gender relations. This study questions the legacy and usefulness on these gendered assumptions of U.S. immigration policies by looking at the case of 11 Korean dependent visa status women (F-2, H-4, and L-2) through qualitative in-depth interviews: how these women’s everyday lives were textually mediated by those regulations. Then, the research examines how these women use homeland and host country media in their everyday lives and what these experiences mean to them in the broader socio-cultural context. Lastly, the paper explores, in the midst of dependency and inequality, how these women perform agency and reflexivity and dream independency through home making and deciding their future trajectories.
Social Media Activism in Bangladesh: Understanding the #JusticeForTonu Movement from a Feminist Standpoint Theoretical Framework • Umana Anjalin; Catherine Luther • This study examines the social media activism that took place in Bangladesh following the rape and murder of a 19-year-old female college student named Shohagi Jahan Tonu. With feminist standpoint theory serving as its framework, a thematic analysis of the tweets that appeared following Tonu’s death using the hashtag #JusticeForTonu was conducted to identify the main themes related to social justice that were embedded in the tweets.
Developing a Trauma-Informed Approach to Public Relations Education • Stephanie Madden, Pennsylvania State University; Teri Del Rosso, Bridgewater State University • Through interviews with female-identified public relations educators, this study sought to understand their lived experiences with emotion and student trauma as part of their teaching and service obligations. Additionally, it explored how aspects of their own identity influence their feelings of willingness or ability to handle this often less visible aspect of our work. The goal of this study is to begin developing a trauma-informed approach to public relations education rooted in feminist pedagogy practices that better prepares educators for the emotional aspects of their various roles in academia and how to help students navigate emotional experiences.
Beyond Swiping Left: Exploring How Dating App Use Affects College Students’ Abilities to Refuse Unwanted Dating and Sexual Activities • Stacey Hust; Stephanie Gibbons; Jiayu Li, Washington State University; Nicole O’Donnell, Virginia Commonwealth University • Dating applications provide users with easy ways to virtually reject a romantic suitor. However, these applications also perpetuate a hook-up culture in which individuals may feel pressure to adhere to a date’s sexual requests out of obligation if a date is accepted. As men and women increasingly find romantic partners online, there is a need to explore how this context may affect individuals’ abilities to refuse unwanted dating and sexual advances. A survey was conducted with 117 college men and 230 college women. For men, norm perceptions predict intentions to refuse unwanted dating activities and self-efficacy predicts intentions to refuse unwanted sex. For women, trait instrumentality, norm perceptions, and self-efficacy predict refusing unwanted dating activities and unwanted sex. Dating application use was negatively associated with refusal intentions for men, whereas it was not a significant predictor for women.
Women Public Relations History Forgot to Discover: Community Building on and after the Oregon Trail • Donnalyn Pompper, University of Oregon; Tugce Ertem Eray, University of Oregon • Narrative analysis of diaries and reminiscences by pioneer women who traveled the Oregon Trail in the mid-to-late 1800s revealed their expanded roles performed along the 2,000+ -mile trek from the Missouri River to Willamette Valley. A new caretaking role was required of women in addition to and in conjunction with traditional female-gendered private sphere work of the 19th century (childbearing and raising, cooking, washing, cleaning). Once women settled in Oregon Territory/Country, their role evolved into one of charitable society project manager. Linking the two related roles of pioneer women are two themes: a) apothecary, medical, and emotional supporter, and b) civilizer. Both of these themes characterized community building functions that we frame as early public relations activities. This finding makes a substantive contribution to recorded public relations history in the U.S. which otherwise begins with the institutionalized achievements of White men in formal business organizations. Exclusion of women’s contributions heretofore has presented an exceptionally limited view of public relations history.
“A group that’s just women for women:” Feminist affordances of private Facebook groups for professionals • Urszula Pruchniewska, Temple University • Private Facebook groups for women professionals are becoming increasingly popular. In this study, interviews and focus groups with 26 women show how such groups provide affordances for creating 1) a women’s online version of the “old boys’ club,” empowering individual women in their careers, and 2) mediated consciousness-raising platforms, advancing collective change for women. These interactions between users and technology make private Facebook groups for professional women fundamentally, if not explicitly, digital feminist spaces.
A Woman at 300: Gendering news coverage in a historic mayoral election. • Shearon Roberts, Xavier University of Louisiana; Sheryl Kennedy Haydel, Dillard University • On November 18, 2017, New Orleans elected its first female mayor. A study of nine months of news coverage in four local news organizations showed that gender references were implicit as well as explicit in the treatment of female candidates in the race compared to male candidates in the race. The study examined traditional news articles, political analysis and election updates, editorials and columns in the city’s two mainstream newspapers and two of the city’s two African American newspapers. In 537 cases where the four leading candidates were named in news organization reports, the two leading female candidates were more often covered with regards to negative and personal campaign woes, while the leading male candidates were covered based on their prior experience in elections or policy-platforms. The news organizations differed in their coverage of the two leading female candidates as well. Mainstream news organizations more readily mentioned problems with the campaigns of the two leading female candidates, while African American news organizations focused on the two female candidates’ track records with residents and the community.
Framing Transgender Violence: Narratives within Mainstream News Coverage • Natalee Seely • Gender non-conforming individuals have been more visible in mainstream media, with the popularity of Netflix’s Orange is the New Black, starring Laverne Cox, who also hosts Glam Masters, a reality make-up competition show. Amazon’s Transparent, E! Network’s I am Cait (cancelled in 2016), and the much-talked about Vanity Fair cover of Caitlyn Jenner also made headlines in 2015. However, sobering statistics indicated that 2015 was a record-breaking year for reported homicides of transgender individuals. Portrayals of gender-nonconforming individuals in the news play an important part in how social issues, such as gendered violence and LBGTQ policies, are viewed and discussed by the public. This small-scale study examines news coverage of transgender homicides in 2015 using a mixed-method approach. Frames and other narrative devices are identified using content analysis, indicating that police narratives of the crimes dominated mainstream news coverage, and social context was discussed in less than half of the articles. A textual analysis revealed that news narratives often focus on suspects and their reasons for committing the violence.
Hashtag Feminism Around the World: A Comparative Analysis of #MeToo Tweets • Hyunjin Seo, University of Kansas; Hong Vu; Shola Aromona, University of Kansas; Yuchen Liu, University of Kansas; Fatemeh Shayesteh, University of Kansas • This study examined how women’s issues are discussed via social media in different countries by analyzing #MeToo tweets focusing on Brazil, Egypt, India, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Word co-occurrence analysis and content analysis of feminist themes and prominent topic areas demonstrated interesting similarities and differences between the countries. Scholarly and practical implications of this research is discussed in the context of growing hashtag activism in the area of advocating for women’s rights and increasing availability of online social networking around the world.
Women Newspaper Editors in Collegial Wilderness: But Digital Environment Turning This Around • Catherine Strong, Massey Univerity • The shortage of women editor-in-chief of daily newspapers has been called a crisis, but more vexing is that women editors remain only a short time in the position, thereby continuing the male domination of newspaper editorships. This study found that a more gender balance makes it easier for women leaders to operate, and that the news industry’s new digital and online challenges may turn out to be the solution to retain more women into daily newspaper leadership roles.
#SELFIES at the 2016 Rio Olympics: Comparing Self-Representations of Male and Female Athletes from the U.S. and China • Qingru Xu; Cory Armstrong; Panfeng Yu • “Social media provides athletes an efficient platform on which to build and maintain their online image. Applying the self-representation theory of Goffman (1959), this study explored the gendered differences between the self-portrayals of U.S. and Chinese athletes. Findings suggest that hegemonic gender norms still had a strong hold on Chinese athletes’ self-disclosure, whereas minimal gender differences emerged between male and female U.S. athletes. Results suggested that cultural background had a substantial impact on self-representation for all participants. Although athletes might claim agency and autonomy when presenting themselves on social media, the practice of self-portrayal should be examined within specific cultural contexts.
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