Women "saleable commodities" for media

Guwahati, Jul 21 (UNI) Women, in modern day media, are being represented as "saleable commodities".

This was stated in a workshop, held yesterday as a joint venture by the Women's Studies Research Centre (WSRC), Gauhati University, Institute of Development Studies Kolkata (IDSK) and Rosa Luxembourg Stiftung (RLS), Berlin.

Representatives from Lucknow University, Utkal University and Jadavpur University also participated in it.

The research, which started in 2004, was aimed at depicting and analyzing the representation of women in the various forms of media.

The main findings stated that women were being portrayed by the media as "saleable commodities" and "objects to be showcased, devoured and derived pleasure from, basically serving an ornamental purpose".

It was found that explicit and obscene photographs of women were regularly carried in the media. Beauty parlour ads, erotic photographs of sportswomen and of sports that employed skimpy clothes, like tennis, swimming and beach volleyball, featured almost daily in the newspapers.

Another aspect that was discussed was the depiction of women as shopaholics, wasting their husbands' money in shopping malls. Even articles on health issues basically dealt with Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) and only sensationalized the idea of women being at fault.

In the audio-visual media, women were being represented as saviours of the institution of marriage and their prime duty was to serve their husbands, in particular, and their family, in general, while being decked up in lavish clothing, jewellery and observing all the traditional and religious rituals.

The discussion held after the presentation dealt with censorship of the media, adherence to media ethics, and want of liberalization in the modern day market-driven economy of a media group.

The sources in the print media were four newspapers -- The Assam Tribune, Amar Asom, a Boro weekly and a Meghalaya weekly -- and two magazines -- Priyo Sakhi and Women's Era. ZEE TV, NE TV, Guwahati Doordarshan and Prag Channel formed the audio-visual source. The audio-visual criteria included serials, film-based stage shows, and music videos.

The Centre also conducted interviews with eminent media personalities and people from certain social activist groups.

Debabani Chakraborty and Sakira Shaheen of the WSRC led the discussion on the findings. And a host of eminent persons, including filmmaker Manju Bora, journalists Samudragupta Kashyap and Ajit Patowary and Samita Sen from Calcutta University.

UNI XC-SG SJC DB1740