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Women’s Representativeness and Gender Representations in the Italian Media

Gender
Media
Representation
Women
Social Media
Marinella Belluati
Università degli Studi di Torino
Marinella Belluati
Università degli Studi di Torino

Abstract

Starting from the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, the interest towards gender and media has found a new vitality in the public debate and it represents a good signal for the defence of institutional pluralism and the improving of internal cohesion in the public space. In Europe, there are different institutional and cultural approaches, the European institutions have adopted these suggestions, and they are trying to promote best gender practices within the public and political dimensions, using formal recommendations. Unfortunately, though, there is a main obstacle, which is the persistence of a man-centred culture, difficult to get rid of, and, paradoxically, gender discourses are used against women. The main researches on gender and media are following two paths. On the one side, the gender studies are focused in the media representation and in the struggle against gender stereotypes (e.g. the “Global Media Monitoring Project”). On the other, it looks at the women representative opportunities and the disharmonies within media organisations (e.g. the “Gender-Sensitive Indicators for Media” project). In the communication field, old and new media are producing a cultural hybridization. The web seems to offer new opportunities to gender and a higher visibility of women leaders is changing gender representations. Starting from this idea, the aim of this paper is to analyse media gender representations and the women’s representativeness in the Italian public debate. From a prosumer perspective, the study will analyse some models of representation and self-representation of women in the media. Once identified the models, it will consider as traditional media to social media. The implication of this paper is to discuss how far gender opportunities in media strategies are actually changing.