16 Days Of Activism: How Mass Media And Pop Culture Contribute To Violence Against Women

As we observe the 16 Days of Activism 2024, it’s important to look at the role that mass media, social media, and pop culture play in gender-based violence. How does media influence violence against women and what should be done to change things?

Society doesn’t live in a vacuum. A lot of who we are is influenced by what we consume. The music, movies, radio and TV shows, online content and books make up a significant part of our personalities. As a result, it’s safe to conclude that the media and pop culture we consume heavily influence how we treat women and girls. A collective effort is needed by the government and the general public to reduce instances of violence against women. One major step is using media and pop culture to prevent gender-based violence.

How media influences the treatment of women

A common misconception people have about movies and TV shows is that just because they’re fiction, they don’t influence reality. However, media influences human interaction from something as banal as fashion trends to more serious effects. In addition, if mass media continually shares a specific message, it creates a confirmation bias for the people consuming it. For example, if you watch multiple TV shows that say jeans are the best clothes to wear for working outdoors, you find that people slowly pivot into wearing denim.

Currently, there is a growing trend on TikTok that states sleeping with your face wrapped helps reduce wrinkles. There is no scientific backing for this but it’s directly influencing the purchasing and beauty routine habits of young women.

When it comes to how men treat women, things get a lot more sinister. If men already think that women should be subjugated, they seek media that agrees with this information to confirm their biases. In addition, if they had no bias before, constantly consuming such content normalises the mistreatment of women. In a corner of the internet called the “manosphere”, young men are radicalised by self-proclaimed men’s rights activists. These men teach boys that the only way to be a man is to mistreat women so that they can “know their place”.

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When that happens, these young men will then listen to a radio broadcast where the presenter talks about a man who beat up his wife and it’s treated like a salacious scandal. The presenter then calls for external opinions and they don’t screen them beforehand. Men calling in to say that they’d do the same aren’t called out or silenced or even berated for promoting violence against women.

Sometimes it’s a bit more sinister. A movie or TV show will make an abuser or stalker attractive and this makes men aspire to be like this and women admire this. When they end up in real-life situations with such men, there’s no romantic dramatic conclusion to a tumultuous passion. A woman can easily end up becoming a statistic. A woman is killed every 11 minutes by an intimate partner, UN Women found.

Media can’t not depict intimate partner violence. However, when they show this violence, writers, editors, and other creators need to ensure they handle it responsibly. You don’t want to produce a show or movie that makes it look OK to be violent towards women and girls. You don’t want to normalise gender-based abuse.

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How can the media do better?

No one consumes the same media similarly. What one person takes away from a book is not what their neighbour will. However, that doesn’t mean that creators don’t have a responsibility to ensure that they tackle sensitive issues with the gravity they deserve. When musicians create songs dehumanizing women, as a listener you have to ask yourself whether you constantly need that in your mind, if that musician’s entire discography is reducing a woman to a sexual object or a servant or someone to be vilified, simply for being a woman, they deserve to get called out.

Movies and TV shows can also stop using sexual assault as a plot device without giving them the seriousness they deserve. Gender-based violence shouldn’t be used as a blip that a woman goes through like it’s a daily routine. It should be treated with sensitivity. One way to ensure that it doesn’t normalise or sensationalise assault is to consult with survivors and people who work in gender violence recovery.

Radio presenters can also apply more sensitivity when talking about intimate partner violence. When talking about issues to do with gender-based violence and femicide, it’s important to cut off people who only contribute misogyny to the discourse. They should also continue to reiterate how serious femicide is and what measures are needed to combat it. Such as changing men’s attitudes towards women, advocating for women’s equality, and pushing for better legislation for women’s safety.

Social media platforms need to take better measures to reduce the rhetoric of violence against women from some creators. Investing in more moderators per region, paying them properly, and having them work shorter shifts to reduce fatigue can help them flag such content faster and remove it. Creators who advocate for the mistreatment of women should be de-platformed to ensure their harmful rhetoric doesn’t reach more people. Their hate speech towards women shouldn’t be conflated with free speech.

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Pop culture, language, and women

A lot of the current pop culture lexicon can easily lead to violence against women. Pop culture makes misogyny a norm rather than an anomaly. In July 2024, Paris hosted the Summer Olympics. Female athletes complained about how revealing some outfits were for some events. France banned its female Muslim players from wearing hijabs. French authorities barely faced any pushback from the larger sporting governing bodies for such retraction of the bodily autonomy of women. Even after the International Olympic Committee allowed Muslim athletes to wear hijabs, French Muslim athletes couldn’t.

Women’s participation in events shouldn’t be a course for debate for authorities when men’s participation isn’t. When women are reduced to a set of rules and their value is only calculated by how they can measure up to the male gaze and patriarchal values, it easily normalises misogyny.

If you look at the language used to police behaviour, a lot of the popular words that depict being cowardly, soft, or weak are female-associated pejoratives of female genitalia. While those that show aggression and bravery are associated with male genitalia. Men get insulted when they’re compared to women. If they show an interest in something that isn’t traditionally masculine, they’re told they are being womanly or even in Swahili, “ana umama” (acting like a woman) if he shows an affinity for female-coded interests. And yet they shouldn’t be gendered at all.

The repeated display of these habits makes it easy to look down on women. It’s what makes people say that women were “asking for it” if they dressed provocatively. It’s what enables men to think they can harm women for rejecting them. Women are demonised for putting themselves first when they choose to be child-free. Because it paints women as beings that exist for the entertainment and function of men. Why Don’t We Believe Women Who Say That They Want To Be Child-Free?

The Objectification Of Women In The Media

Media and women

They’re also not taken seriously unless there’s a spectacle. According to Ms Magazine, national media coverage only broadcasts women’s issues when there’s something to gawk at. Kenyan media is also complicit in this dehumanisation of women with the language used when publishing the stories of victims of gender-based violence. In this tweet by Dr Njoki Ngumi, she highlights how the media is complicit in the dehumanisation of GBV victims. Using passive voice removes the responsibility from perpetrators and makes the violence look like something that just happened to victims. Active voice shows who is responsible for the violence and who is subjected to it. Women Who Deserve To Die: How Media Reports Femicide

Aside from what everyone has said, why is @NationAfrica holding brief for murderers with framing like “what started as a small domestic quarrel”?

Years of gender writers and editors – and yet.

When justice lands, may it also SWIFTLY find all these enablers of abuse and harm. pic.twitter.com/VqBy75qjxq

— Dr. Njoki Ngumi (@njokingumi) November 14, 2024

Media often plays a role in creating apologism for gender-based violence. They present victims as people who brought themselves to such a situation. As though a pedestrian who gets hit by a car crossing a road should never have put the car in that position. There needs to be a collective, deliberate, and far-reaching effort to fix the language used when reporting gender-based violence. The media can’t be complicit in victim-blaming and repeating misogynist rhetoric. Such steps cause a gradual increase in the safety of women.

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