News Coverage of a Women’s Hunger Strike Against ‘Chauvinist Violence’
- Submitting institution
-
Canterbury Christ Church University
- Unit of assessment
- 34 - Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management
- Output identifier
- U34.056
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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10.1007/978-3-319-65030-2
- Book title
- Representing Communities: Discourse and Contexts
- Publisher
- Palgrave Macmillan
- ISBN
- 9783319650296
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This chapter contributes to the edited collection Representing Communities: Discourse and Contexts, which examines the pervading reproduction of hegemonic discourses about various social groups, considering their immediate micro-contexts as well as the capitalist, patriarchal and postcolonial macro-context in which they are embedded. Sanz Sabido’s chapter analyses the news coverage of a women’s hunger strike against Spanish legislation on ‘chauvinist violence’, a term that – unlike ‘domestic violence’– refers specifically to the violence perpetrated by men against women. This violence does not respond to any pathologies, but is rooted in the patriarchal dynamics of gender inequality. Chauvinist violence is defined as a public health matter and previous media coverage of this issue is discussed in the Spanish context. Based on a discourse analysis of all the articles (n=87) found about the hunger strike in six Spanish national newspapers, the chapter examines the ways in which the women’s three main objectives were discussed: gaining visibility; recognising that chauvinist violence is a consequence of the patriarchal system and should therefore be treated as a state matter; and effecting a number of changes to the Law, with a particular focus on the children who are affected by this violence. The level of attention given to the women’s demands was uneven. While their claims were often acknowledged, discussions about what needs to change were inadequate. The visibility given to the protest was not always effective, particularly when articles detached the roots of the violence from the deeper social inequalities that underpin it. Particularly evident was the continued invisibility of the children, despite the women’s efforts to counteract this problem. The chapter concludes that a proper analysis of the failures of the patriarchal system was missing in the sample, which meaning that practices that contribute to the perpetuation of these inequalities are still in place.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
