Daily Times

The purpose of this column is to shed light on how electronic media presents two Ideologies rural and urban women in their entertainment programs. This will make it easier to understand the traditional gender concepts and ideas of society. This issue is further explained theoretically.

In the sociological context, gender ideologies refer to the attitude, behavior, roles, rights, and responsibilities of men and women in society. These attributes are sometimes in specific domains such as legal, political, familial or social domain.

In Pakistani society, the role of women is influenced by traditional and cultural values. A woman is responsible for washing clothes and utensils, cooking and serving food to family members or trying to make her husband happy. A woman does all the household chores even she is sick. The elder generation believes that in society the women can be supposed to forgo their own comfort and keep on doing household chores without getting tired.  On the other hand, men in traditional sexism are the leader of their houses by provided that financial support and holding the only household’s decisions. The patriarchal system prevails and seems to be in hegemonic position, women work degraded when it compares with men and there is a belief that they are less competent than men.

In modern sexism, it tends to be expressed sympathy in the response to ongoing discrimination, shows and provides favor towards women on the bases of women’s demand and resentment. Modern sexism sometimes stated as kind sexism, it expresses positive traits of women such as nurturing abilities and delicacy. In modern sexism the tendency is to place the women in equivalent but necessarily in different kind of roles. Admired her as wife and mother is as important as the male’s job of the provider. Women raise their voices for their own rights in modern society and they are well-known from their rights.

In the twentieth century, there had been various attempts to bring social change and legal reforms to recover women’s lives in the subcontinent. There are major factors that changed the gender ideology concept entirely.

Research Methodology

Content Analysis of media is the name of deconstruction oriented towards either qualitative or quantitative research methods. I identified the popular TV channel two entertainment programs. One is reality show Desi Kuriyan season 6 (2016). It has 16 episodes and the duration of the program was 40 minutes. The second one is Drama Shehzadi (2010), it has 20 episodes and the duration of the serial was 40 minutes. I made 4 intervals of 10 minutes in each episode for coding. In coding, there are three steps first one is generating the themes, the second one grouping the themes and the last one is constructing the themes. In the last step I extracted the most repetitive sociological themes; these are Authority, Stigmatization, Objectification, Modernity, Role performance. In the findings, I discuss these sociologically.

Social Values of Gendered Ideology

Social authority depicts that, it is the tool to control the masses in society particularly women’s freedom. It shows that women have not right to argue with authority, like the power of Reality Show Makers. It depicts that the existing social system lost its actual purpose to run the society due to various loopholes in the system. Women who are repressed in not even opposed the supremacy of male they have in false consciousness. It depicts, Male expressed its concern authorized to exercise their power. Reality program celebrities depict as spent their life in the public sphere they are not bound to restrict themselves at home, it is considered normal for them to play a significant active role. Gender ideological roles fixed by society but the media tried to change it.

Labeling of Women in Diverse Lenses

In electronic media, if women working in their shows they are good, confident, empowered and strong these words considered as good labeling. On the other hand, those who are actually living in a village, not so much empowered as urban celebrities. They also close to their traditional values. The media labeled them as timid and weak. They work in fields or they have their own fields, they earned yearly. They can do whatever they want to do. To label them weak or independent on men is not true. The media doesn’t really recognize rural women’s abilities. Their portrayal is in contradictory situations.

Stereotypical Representation of Women in Rural and Urban Settings

The exploitation of women increases the demand for women’s electronic media. Media also shows determent against women’s rights. The objectification in media is the most criticized part of today but it is not a recent phenomenon. They objectify women’s acts closely and it sensitizes the male, through this the sexual harassment cases have emerged, where they blackmailing the women. Objectification implies that women cannot use their intelligence, sense of humor, nature, emotions, spirit or soul. They set the criteria for women.

New Women Construction under the Pattern of Modernization

According to Dr. Imran Sabir (QAU) research (2015); Primarily, Education is considered as having the biggest influence on the self-consciousness of women and it brings the awareness of their rights; we can link here the educational status of women with their appearance, maintenance of smart figure and adopt changing trends. Educated women in our society are already becoming modern with the help of mass media. Modernization pattern brings as they tend to so many changes in the cognitive process. Those women who are traditional or live in rural areas confined themselves or just take interest to home and families.

The Pakistani sociologist plays their role in the image of Pakistani women in comparison to the western woman. Throughout Pakistani society change in technological development, these changes classify standards of women from the new ideology of Modernization. Working women are better than non-working women for their contribution to national income.

Contradictory Approaches towards the Contemporary Role of Women in Rural and Urban Settings

In entertainment program celebrities belonged to urban cities and by profession, they are actresses or models, when they come in rural village their dressing, makeup, body language each and everything shows that they came for an adventurous show, they were doing an adventurous show for the sake of winning Desi Kuriyan title, in reality, they not going to do inside and outside village type household chores in urban life. They divert their role from urban to rural women. In some of the episodes they said that ‘‘modern girls can adopt village culture’’ so this adoption is for little time, they just said for the winning title. These celebrities did not leave their actual place for village life. Media admired the village women’s hard work and their participation in their economic capital but they didn’t admire the women when they compare rural women with urban setting women.

Conclusion

Women are contributing in a considerable manner and they deserve to be more acknowledged. Through media the world has changed, women contribute to national income but media won’t honor the women in their program. Electronic media is more concerned with the usage of women. Although media construct new women through education or awareness a shameless depiction of women is not according to cultural or societal context. Media portrayal a gender ideological issue, sometimes it is depicted stereotypical image. On one side it depicts women victims on the other way women as a liberal who is participating in jobs, working with men shoulder to shoulder and playing an active role. Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) introducing various kinds of capital. According to him, capital is the belongings that give ability to the individual to do something or certain things such as power on others. Some people collect more capital than others; it is not possible for everyone because it shows the fundamental inequality that exits between individuals. Bourdieu saw the individual fight for the capital, in which all are trying to increase their individual standard. Capital is an authority over others. It became seemingly that gender is ethnically and socially constructed through media. It is recommended that PEMRA should analyze the content of media in accordance with indigenous gender values. Every woman is living according to their setting; media should compare the women adequately with same-gender ideological women.

The writer is an M.Phil. Scholar at Department of Sociology, Quaid-e-Azam University, and above column is from her M.Sc. Thesis entitled “Portrayal of Gender ideologies in Media: Particular Context through Diverse Lenses”