Crime and Gender: Violence against Women in the Ukrainian Press in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

This scientific research deals with the actual problem, that is the study of the language of criminal chronicles in the Western Ukrainian media discourse in the 1920-1930s. Object of analysis is news reports on gender violence in popular Western Ukrainian newspapers of the interwar twenty years. The chosen methodology is feminist discourse-analysis which allows us to identify the media representations of gender identity and to find out what ideological discourse has had symbolic hegemony, which gender regime was supported by language. It turns out that the language of criminal news fixes symbolic mechanisms for establishing power regimes. The texts of criminal news show gender stereotypes and prejudices against women, which traditionally functioned and articulated in public discourse. Gender violence was explained (and justified) by personal, religious and social reasons. The problem of domestic violence attracted journalists from the 1920s and 1930s. Victim women who dared to challenge patriarchal customs were appraised extremely subjectively, biasedly, often – in a negative way. Publications about sexual crimes (rape, sexual harassment) were rare, since this topic was banned in the Western Ukrainian public discourse of the 1920s-1930s. In Western Ukrainian popular magazines, the language of criminal news construed a gendered society, deleting power for men and exposing a woman to objectification. Journalists used certain linguistic strategies to support the dominant gender regime: author's intentionality, peculiar journalistic formulation and focus of information, the specifics of structuring material and hidden meanings of the text.