Women in Politics and Media: Perspectives from Nations in Transition

Although women constitute half of the world's population, their participation in the political sphere remains problematic. While existing research on women politicians from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada sheds light on the challenges and opportunities they face, we still have a very limited understanding of women's political participation in emerging democracies. Women in Politics and Media: Perspectives From Nations in Transition is the first collection to de-Westernize the scholarship on women, politics and media by: 1) highlighting the latest research on countries and regions that have not been 'the usual suspects'; 2) featuring a diverse group of scholars, many of non-Western origin; 3) giving voice through personal interviews to politically active women, thus providing the reader with a rare insight into women’s agency in the political structures of emerging democracies. Each chapter examines the complex women, politics and media dynamic in a particular nation-state, taking into consideration the specific political, historic and social context. With 23 case studies and interviews from Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Russia and the former Soviet republics, this volume will be of interest to students, media scholars and policy makers from developed and emerging democracies.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors 1. Introduction Part One: Framing the message: mediated representations and journalistic practices 2. The Portrayal of Women Politicians in Israeli Popular Women’s Magazines, Einat Lachover, Sapir Academic College, Israel 3. Ambiga Sreenevasan and Malaysian Counter-Publics Mary Griffiths and Sara Chinnasamy, University of Adelaide, Australia 4. The Girls of Parliament: A Historical Analysis of the Press Coverage of Female Politicians in Bulgaria Elza Ibroscheva and Maria Raicheva-Stover 5. Zambian Women MPs: An Examination of Coverage by The Post and Zambia Daily Mail Twange Kasoma, Radford University, USA 6. Media Visibility of Tunisian Women Politicians in Traditional and New Media: Obstacles to Visibility and Media Coverage Strategies Maryam Ben Salem and Atidel Majbri, Center of Arab Women for Training and Research, Tunisia 7. Understanding the Gender Dynamics of Current-affairs-based Shows in Pakistani Television Industry Munira Cheema, University of Sussex, UK 8. Between Two Democratic Ideals: Gendering in the Russian Culture of Political Lournalism Liudmila Voronova, Södertörn University, Sweden 9. Becoming Less Gendered: A Comparison of (Inter)National Press Coverage of First Female Government Heads Who Win Again at the Polls Tania Cantrell Rosas-Moreno, Loyola University Maryland, USA, and Ingrid Bachmann, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile Part Two: Managing the message: self-representations 10. ‘Cameroon’s Female Obama’: Deconstructing the Kah Walla Phenomenon in the Context of the 2011 Presidential Elections in Cameroon Teke Ngomba, Public Spheres and Comparative Media Systems Analysis, Cameroon 11. The Mother of Brazil: Gender Roles, Campaign Strategy, and the Election of Brazil’s First Female President Pedro G. dos Santos, Luther College, USA and Farida Jalalzai, University of Missouri-St. Louis, USA 12. The Visual Framing of Romanian Women Politicians in Personal Campaign Blogs during the 2012 Romanian Parliamentary Elections Camelia Cmeciu, Danubius University of Gala?i, Romania, and Monica Patru?, Vasile Alecsandri University of Bacau, Romania 13. Gender, Politics and the Albanian Media: A Women Parliamentarians’ Account Sonila Danaj, University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and Jonila Godole, University of Tirana, Albania Part Three: Navigating the cultural space: race, class and beauty 14. Michelle Bachelet, President of Chile: A Moving Portrait Claudia Bucciferro, Gonzaga University, USA 15. Virgin Venuses: Beauty and Purity for ‘Public’ Women in Venezuela Elizabeth Gackstetter Nichols, Drury University, USA 16. Ultra-Feminine Women of Power: Beauty and the State in Argentina Elizabeth Gackstetter Nichols, Drury University, USA 17. Yulia Tymoshenko's Two Bodies Tatiana Zhurzhenko, Institute for Human Sciences, Austria Concluding remarks Index

About the Author :
Maria Raicheva-Stover is Professor of Mass Media at Washburn University, USA. Her research focuses on the study of media systems in Eastern Europe, various aspects of the gender problematic, and, most recently, the social impact of new communication technologies. Elza Ibroscheva is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Mass Communications, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, USA. Originally from Bulgaria, her research interests focus on media developments in Eastern Europe, include media stereotypes, international and political communication, gender representations and media and nationalism.

Review :
The editors, Maria Raicheva-Stover and Elza Ibroscheva, are to be congratulated on bringing together a collection of essays on the women/politics/media nexus which eschews the usual ‘Western’ suspects in favour of scholarly explorations of a wide range of under-researched regions including South East Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. This book will quickly become the must-have text for anyone interested in developing a more nuanced and richer understanding of how those relations work in different parts of the world, including the patterns of similarity and instances of difference made manifest by a comparative edition such as this one. Aided by the increasing prevalence of the Internet, democratization of knowledge and information, women are actively participating in the political, social, and economic sectors in the US and developing nations. This highly thought-provoking, multi-cultural, and multi-dimensional book sheds the needed light on the complex and impactful role of women in politics and media across the world. The editors are to be commended for their timely and superb contribution to the existing literature in women, media and politics. Women in Politics and Media: Perspectives from Nations in Transition is a timely and important book on the changing status of women in local, national and global politics and the central role that media play in shaping and framing them as 'gendered' political actors. Responding to calls for work on women politicians and media beyond an American orientation, editors Maria Raicheva-Stover and Elza Ibroscheva have assembled a superior collection of essays on gender, media and politics in emerging and transitioning democracies, many from scholars living and working in the Global South. This book should be of great value for anyone interested in media, representation, and political agency in non-Western countries in the era of 'globalization.'