Minority Women and Western Media

Maha Bashri is associate professor of communication at the United Arab Emirates University. Sameera Ahmed is associate professor at the United Arab Emirates University.

In this concise narrative, editors Bashri and Ahmed offer an invaluable perspective on the diversity of women's voices and representations in Western mass media. The anthology comprises seven chapters that interrogate the legacies of colonialism using intersectional feminism to examine race, ethnicity, status, and ability. Each chapter frames the duality of women's position as outsider to media's framing of men as heroic, while the collection as a whole seeks to "disrupt the master narrative" by questioning false images and stereotypes to understand their pervasiveness across Western societies. Chapters 1 and 7 explore depictions of Muslim women in America and Great Britain within mainstream media outlets as a heterogenous group portrayed in static terms, which has prevented their inclusion and fostered "othering." Further chapters interrogate presentations of minority women's bodies from the perception of self and as "other," notably Leticia Anderson and Kathomi Gatwiri's "Getting Yassmined," which analyzes the process by which two women were "minoritized," or knocked down in status based on race. This accessible volume encourages valuable conversations on the interactions of race, gender, and the media. Highly recommended.

• ContentsList of FiguresList of TablesList of ContributorsAcknowledgmentsPrologue: Towards a New FreedomTHERESA CARILLIChapter 1: Inclusion, Exclusion, and Belonging: Media Representations of American Muslim Women (The Case of the New York Times 2007-2017) MAHA BASHRIChapter 2: Reinforcing or Reframing Dominant Views? A Discourse Analysis of Black South African Women’s Self-Representations of Natural Hair in the BlogosphereKHULEKANI MADLELAChapter 3: Drawing a Portrait of Refugee Representation in Turkish Newspapers: A Framing Analysis of Hürriyet and SabahBERIS ARTAN ÖZORAN and ILGAR SEDYIDOVChapter 4: On “Getting Yassmined”: How the Australian Media Polices the Bodies of Women of ColorLETICIA ANDERSON and KATHOMI GATWIRIChapter 5: Iranian Women and the Media: The Good, the Bad, and the UntoldZAHRA JAFARIChapter 6: Silencing and Victim Blaming of a Woman Who Stutters: A Televised Case Study SIGAL BARAK-BRANDES and DEBORA FREUDChapter 7: Women in British Muslim Media: New Voices and Emerging DiscoursesSAMEERA TAHIRA AHMEDEpilogue: Global Solidarity for New Media Realities and DiscoursesMAHA BASHRI and SAMEERA TAHIRA AHMED