Arabic Mass Media and Women Gender Stereotype: Stability versus Change “The Dream of Women Empowerment”

Abstract

Mass media play a significant role in broadcasting information that can manipulate people’s attitude and opinions. Media continue on presenting men as hard, tough, independent, sexually aggressive, unafraid, violent, totally in control of all emotions, thus creating a muscular world. So, although equality between male and female is an issue lots of people have tried to achieve, yet media reflect cultural stereotypes that depart markedly from reality. Hence, the purpose of this study is to explore the role of morning daily programs on woman empowerment that are broadcasted by satellite national television services in the Arabic world (Algeria and Tunisia representing West region, Egypt and Lebanon representing Middle region and Saudi Arabia and Bahrain representing Gulf region). Based on liberation theory and elimination of gender oppression, a quantitative and qualitative content analysis study was conducted to examine whether (1) media system make reality (reflects male and female balanced reality) or mirror reality (reflects male high satiates reality)? (2) socio-cultural factors that affect the role of media system in empowering women such as historical context (Past Colonial intellectual dominance-women movement). The findings showed that media system mirror reality more than make reality as males are represented in the media almost double the number as females (65% vs. 35%), and that still some fields are restricted to men, especially political fields (male 11% vs. 2% for female, sports 5% for male vs. 2% for female) and vice versa for educational fields (23% female vs. 14% for male). It seemed through the study that historical context had a great effect on women empowerment, as the highest representation of men in media was seen in the countries that were previously controlled by Britain (e.g., Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain), whereas the highest representation of women in media were of the countries that were previously controlled by France (e.g., Lebanon, Algeria and Tunisia). Also, land size seemed to affect this empowerment as the most percent of presentation of male was proved to be in the big countries compared to the smallest countries (74% vs. 54%), where female were most presented in small countries compared to big ones (45% vs. 26%).