Gender Construction in the Media: A Study of Two Indian Women Politicians

Abstract

This study seeks to examine the responses of the newspaper media towards two Indian women politicians and the processes of gender construction in political communication Under a system of universal adult suffrage and the constitutional assurance of social, political and economic equality, Indian women were given rights that were the envy of women in more advanced nation states. Political parties that should play a crucial role in training and encouraging women to enter the public arena are hostile, generally closing the gates of the upper echelons of party structures to aspiring or deserving women How are such women viewed by society and how do the media present them? It is within this background that this paper examines the portrayal of two women politicians, that is, Jayalalitha Jayaram and Sushma Swaraj in the Indian English language press in the pre-election period of January and February 1998. Jayalalitha appeared as a calculating, opportunistic, extremely corrupt, and arrogant leader, while Sushma Swaraj was identified with a clean image and one who fulfilled traditional norms and expectations of feminine identity The particular construction of this frame of ‘ideal/good woman’ and ‘bad woman’ needs to be explored within the discourses of India's colonial and nationalist past, wherein women were perceived as representatives of the ‘private’ and their feminine virtues were perceived to be the essence of the nation.