Discursive Construction Of Gender Research Articles

Veiled references: Constructions of gender in the Bush administration discourse on the attacks on Afghanistan post-9/11

Understanding the ways in which the discursive construction of gender allowed for the US-led attacks on Afghanistan to be considered a legitimate response to the attacks of 9/11 is vital to the study of international relations and for the reclaiming of a feminist politics of the attacks. Through the identification and exploration of various representations of identity in the period after 9/11 and before the attacks on Afghanistan, I will illustrate the centrality of narratives of gender to the production of a recognizable and legitimate narrative of war. I focus on the identities of ‘the nation’, ‘the enemy’ and ‘the intervention’, with each exploring not only the ways in which they are created and perpetuated, but also the ways in which they make certain responses, actions and attitudes permissible and censor others. In conclusion, I draw attention to the economic concerns of the USA that were marginalized within the discursive construction of identity post-9/11, and the ways in which the tensions created by this marginalization can be used as a critical tool to begin to unpick gendered constructions that were represented as seamless at the time.

Chinese Women in the Official Chinese Press: Discursive Constructions of Gender in Service to the State

Theories of gender and the nation posit that women are prescribed certain roles according to the needs of the state at a particular historical moment and that such roles are frequently articulated in media discourses. In China, the government has a long-standing tradition of using the state-run media to convey a national vision and mould its citizens. Hence, the mediated representation of Chinese women has ebbed and flowed according to radical shifts in government policy and ideology. In recent decades, massive economic and social changes have necessitated a quest for legitimacy on the part of the government through a vast reorganization of the country’s ideological environment, including the official construction of gender. This paper discusses three discursive representations of women currently articulated in state-run Chinese newspapers –worker, housewife, and consumer – and examines how the government press emphasizes the equality of Chinese women while simultaneously positioning them as inferior to men.

The discursive construction of gender in physical education in Sweden, 1945-2003: is meeting the learner's needs tantamount to meeting the market's needs?

This study focuses on the subject of PE in state texts and how the PE teacher and gender are constructed. The study is based on discourse analysis of state reports and curricula. Three teacher positions are identified: the body, the character and the lifestyle constructor. At the beginning of the studied period the state explicitly designed the PE teacher as the constructor of girls and boys as separate species. Today the teacher should construct gender neutral subjects. In the 1990s the 'meeting the needs of the learner' discourse came to the forefront, meaning that the teachers should base their work on the students' needs and interests. Does this mean that teaching will become market-led and, if so, does it mean that teaching will reproduce rather than challenge media gender stereotypes?

Guada-narco-lupe, Maquilarañas and the Discursive Construction of Gender and Difference on the US–Mexico Border in Mexican Media Re-presentations

This article explores the ways in which Mexican media works to construct gender and difference in relation to the US–Mexico border. Through a discourse analysis of one Mexican newspaper, I argue that discursive violence, ‘narratives of eviction’ and silences are implicated in the construction of women as weak, sexualized objects, and Mexicans as raced, backward ‘others’. In so doing, I elaborate several discursive moments, specifically, ‘woman as anonymous, replaceable body’; ‘woman as victim of the border city’; ‘Guada-narco-lupe’; ‘woman as dependent appendage’; and ‘othered Mexican’; to illustrate that the production of knowledge about gendered subjects is a political and discursive practice embedded in national ideologies. Mexican media representations present a rich palette for thinking about constructions of gender and difference along a raced, sexed border. An investigation of the unequal and essentialist elements present in specific newspaper articles offers a fresh perspective on the socio-spatial aspects of particular discursive strategies and their role in underpinning dominant textual images. Guada-narco-lupe, Maquilarañas y la construccíon Discursiva de Género y Diferencia en la frontera entre los Estados Unidos y México através de representaciones en la media Mexicana. A través de un análisis de tres artículos este ensayo investiga las maneras en que la prensa mexicana funciona para construir la diferencia y el género en relación a la frontera México-Estados Unidos. Yo discuto que la violencia discursiva, las narrativas de evicción, tanto que los silencios están involucrados en la construcción de mujeres como objetos sexualizados y débiles, y la construcción de Mexicanos como ‘racializados’, atrasados, y diferenciados a través del método de análisis de discurso de un periódico mexicano. Para llevar a cabo este análisis, yo elaboro varios momentos discursivos, específicamente, ‘la mujer como cuerpo reemplazable y anónima’; ‘la mujer como victima de la ciudad fronteriza’; ‘Guada-narco-lupe’; ‘la mujer como apéndice dependiente’; y‘el mexicano diferenciado’, para ilustrar que la producción de conocimiento sobre los sujetos géneros es una practica política tanto que discursiva arraigado en las ideologías nacionales. Las representaciones de los medios mexicanos presentan una pallete amplia par reflexionar sobre las construcciones de diferencia y géneros por la frontera norte, la cuál es a frontera ‘racializada’, y sexualizada'. La investigación de los elementos desiguales y esencialcitas colocados en varios artículos de la prensa mexicana provee una nueva perspectiva sobre los aspectos socio-espaciales de estrategias discursivas específicas y el papel que juegan estos aspectos en sostener imágenes dominantes textuales.