Gender, Media, and Political Economy

Abstract

Feminist political economy is concerned with the ways that capitalism naturalizes male bias in social institutions, such as the communications media. Those who engage in feminist political economy research of media seek to reveal how that bias occurs, how it is naturalized, and how it operates in marginalizing the voices of women and sexual minorities. This entry considers an analytical approach for examining gender relations within the media industries that enables social change. The discussion covers the fundamentals of political economy theory, as it is more generally understood, how it evolved, and how feminist media scholars have reinterpreted that theory to incorporate concerns about women's relationship to media in order to situate gender within the broader political economy analysis. The discussion will be primarily concerned with women, whose interests feminist scholars have been particularly concerned in addressing; also acknowledged, however, is information on sexual minorities who have also experienced marginalization by media industries controlled by a wealthy male‐dominant class. The entry ends with specific examples of how feminist scholars have employed political economy theory in research on media.