Women Exclusion from Mainstream News: A Legacy since 18th Century - Essay Sample

Introduction

Women exclusion from mainstream and critical news is an issue that surfaced in the 18th century in the U.S.A. and Europe. The pioneering women protestors called for consideration by news media to assist them in propagating their ideas and activities to the broad public. However, the male-dominated news outlets largely ignored the women activists' effort. Women that defile their traditional roles as housewives and mothers risked getting labelled as either having inappropriate behavior, misfits or getting termed as insane. Modern-day women also face similar misfortunes as those suffered by the 18th-century activists such as lacking representation or misrepresentation in the media. As such, this essay will explore the intersectionality between media representation and women's reproductive rights. The first section of the report will focus on reproductive rights, while the second section will focus on media representation. The paper will conclude by focusing on why the representation of women issues by the media and explaining how productive health rights are a contemporary feminist issue.

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Reproductive Rights

Reproductive rights refer to people's right to choose whether they will bear children or exercise reproductive care (Temmerman et al., 2014). Reproductive rights extensively cover rights held by individuals to plan about their household, end a pregnancy, utilize birth-control measures in their sex life, learning about reproductive-health studies in schools and obtaining reproductive health services. Reproductive health activities across the globe have been faced by numerous controversies entailing moral or ethical issues, and religious undertones that hinder access to reproductive rights. Some barriers to reproductive health include religious undertones on birth control, abortion laws, and family planning. As such, reproductive rights issues often get emotionally and politically charged, owing to changes arising from new technologies and regulations.

Reproductive rights matter since obtaining all-inclusive sexual and reproductive health services gets classified as a fundamental human right (Sen & Govender, 2015). However, reproductive rights issues cannot get disregarded since there is a diminished global status for women and girls' sexual and reproductive health. Over 214 million women across the globe cannot access reproductive rights such as contraception; it results in over 800 women dying daily from preventable pregnancy-related complications.

Numerous women and girls across the globe, particularly from poverty-stricken regions, lack access to reproductive health information and amenities. Primary barriers to accessing reproductive rights entail discrimination, shaming, punitive legislation, and outdated customs or backgrounds (Keygnaert et al., 2014). Progress towards attaining adequate and efficient reproductive health services remains slow despite a realization of their transformative effects on individual women and also in communities and economies. All women have a fundamental right to access an all-inclusive sexuality training, have a say over their body, and access wellbeing services they might require irrespective of their income levels, culture, or ethnical backgrounds (Keygnaert et al., 2014).

Media Representation

Media representation refers to the different ways through which the media portrays particular issues, ideas, groups, communities, experiences, and ideologies. People should not focus on how the media mirrors reality but on its representation or creation of reality. Media outlets have grown from traditional media to online media. It has resulted in the tremendous influence that plays a critical part in showcasing different issues affecting women rights. Hoverer, it is unfortunate that modern media outlets are still perpetuating gender inequality by miss representing issues regarding women such as reproductive rights. The media has an essential role in steering communities towards achieving gender equality by creating gender-sensitive and gender transformative content (Brooks et al., 2006). The media should discourage negative gender-based stereotypes and educate women about reproduction health.

Media and Reproductive Rights

Majority of media outlets tend to display the struggle for reproductive rights as a women fight advocating abortion. Most media outlets tend to politicize women's reproductive rights. While reproductive health debates range on, millions of women keep suffering from getting denied access to reproductive rights. However, online media outlets such as blogs are offering to represent women plight’s and create awareness about their lack of reproduction health amenities (Eager, 2017). Different blogs have reported on how some pharmacies deny women emergency contraceptives since they cannot show proof of age. The blogs also reported on women struggling to pay for birth control because their employers will not cover for their reproductive rights in their health insurance covers (Eager, 2017).

Minority Women Representation by the Media

Women are discriminated against and termed as a minority group when compared to men. It gets evidenced by the low representation of women agendas in media outlets. As compared to previous years, there has been stagnation and not a decline in the representation of women agendas in the journalism field (Gershon, 2012). The low representation of women in the media gets attributed to numerous challenges such as lack of reproductive health amenities and their plights getting under-represented by the media (Gershon, 2012).

In conclusion, reproductive rights refer to people's right to choose whether to bear children, plans about their household, ending a pregnancy, utilizing birth-control measures in their sex life or learning about reproductive-health services. Media representation refers to the ways through which particular issues, ideas, groups, communities, experiences, and ideologies are portrayed by the media. Intersectionality between media representation and reproductive rights arises from politicizing reproductive rights. Fighting for women's reproductive rights does not only entail the legalization of abortion. When the media portrays a failed struggle against the implementation of policies on reproductive rights, they portray all women as losers. Women's reproductive rights are essential and should not get perceived as political battles. Politicizing women reproductive rights has adverse effects on millions of women across the globe.

Women's rights movements have heightened various issues that affect women’s lives across the globe. It includes deprived employment opportunities, reproductive health issues such as abortion and contraceptive use, among other issues. The media has been deployed as a tool to oppress women by failing to promote reproductive health. It has resulted in increased inequality levels between men and women. On the other hand, the intersectionality between media and reproductive rights represents lived experiences offering an insight into struggles faced in attaining reproductive rights. It is a contemporary issue representing how reproductive health continues to affect millions of women that lack access or are denied their fundamental reproductive health right. The media gets tasked with essential roles to direct communities towards achieving gender equality. The media should create gender-sensitive and gender transformative content. The media should discourage negative gender-based stereotypes and create programs that educate women about reproduction health.

References

Brooks, D. E., & Hébert, L. P. (2006). Gender, race, and media representation. Handbookof gender and communication, 16, 297-317.

https://sk.sagepub.com/reference/hdbk_gendercomm/n16.xml

Eager, P. W. (2017). Global population policy: From population control to reproductive rights. Taylor & Francis.

https://www.routledge.com/Global-Population-Policy-From-Population-Control-to-Reproductive-Rights/Eager/p/book/9781138276451

Gershon, S. (2012). When race, gender, and the media intersect: Campaign news coverage of minority congresswomen. Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, 33(2), 105-125. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1554477x.2012.667743

Keygnaert, I., Guieu, A., Ooms, G., Vettenburg, N., Temmerman, M., & Roelens, K. (2014). Sexual and reproductive health of migrants: Does the EU care?. Health policy, 114(2-3), 215-225.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168851013002881

Ross, L., GutiZrrez, E., Gerber, M., & Silliman, J. (2016). Undivided Rights: Women of colour organizing for reproductive justice. Haymarket Books.

https://www.amazon.com/Undivided-Rights-Organizing-Reproductive-Justice/dp/1608466175

Sen, G., & Govender, V. (2015). Sexual and reproductive health and rights in changing healthsystems. Global public health, 10(2), 228-242.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17441692.2014.986161?af=R

Temmerman, M., Khosla, R., & Say, L. (2014). Sexual and reproductive health and rights: a global development, health, and human rights priority. The Lancet, 384(9941), e30-e31. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)61190-9/fulltext?rss=yes&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter