Emma Aston from the Christian Socialist Movement comments on female sterotypes and the lack of female representation in the media workplace

Emma Aston

Drama, drama, drama. Whether it's the latest celebrity affair, a cute pet cheetah, or a gory crime case, the newspapers well and truly know what catches the public eye. Publishing naked pictures of Prince Harry is "IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST", the papers screech: the next week calling for "LE RAT" who took photos of Royal wife Kate to "FACE JAIL". The infotainment format has taken over in our most popular newspapers and news websites, which has had dire consequences on women's popular representation. This populist, sound-bite culture prizes looks over intelligence and image over ideas: but, we Christians are in a great place to see through it.

Against all we're taught at school, the primary conclusion we can't help but to draw from reflection on the media is that looks are everything. If you want to be successful, you must be thin and, it is advised, tanned, with manicured nails and a sophisticated haircut. "But I'm not a size four!" I hear most women cry, while bombarded with images of models. The media trend is to feature women whose bodies are hugely sexualised and un-representative of the average, however much of a negative effect this has on women's body image.

Female celebrities in 'compromising' positions and not looking their best, or images and pictures that mock and belittle women in power are the two most common negative ways that women are portrayed. Coverage of the Labour leadership election in 2007 had the Independent reporting on the cost of candidates' handbags. This is made worse by the fact that women are totally under-represented in hard news (political and economic stories) to begin with anyway. Semi-naked women (+ a soundbite article) often claim to show women in a more positive light, but it's a light that's totally tainted by a male stereotype. It presents women as purely sexual objects, who only have the right to an opinion because of how they look.

Female representation in the media is made worse by the fact that women aren't the ones writing the articles. A Guardian study has shown that it is normal for men to write significantly more than double the number of articles that women write in print media. Furthermore, opinion and comment pieces are written by men three or four times more than women. As these types of article shape attitudes, the Guardian explains that it is a very important measure of women's voices in society. Worryingly, there are three times as many men employed by news companies in the UK, who occupy in 60-70% of the middle to top positions within the company, according to a report by the IWMF. Without women's presence in the media workplace, spreading their opinion across the public sphere, this trend of mis-representing women will continue: UNESCO estimates that at the current rate that it's going, the media will take 75 years to achieve gender equality.

Populist approaches in print media couldn't contrast more strongly with Biblical teachings on gender. In Galatians, we are told that "There is neither ... male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus". Women are respected as more than a body, but a creation of God: "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness". Jesus went beyond gender stereotypes and customs, and called women to follow Him as a reaction against sexual differentiation. Though Christianity emerged in the midst of patriarchal societies, Jesus tells us to turn against this and treat each other as equals. Though the history of the church is less than enlightened, this doesn't mean that we can't be radically different: admitting that women are portrayed wrongly in the media and using the teachings of Jesus to guide us towards what is right.

I was surprised and heartened when meeting the others on my MSc programme. Many of the men enrolled on the feminist political theory course wanting to learn about on-going and important debates within feminism, a sharp contrast to the majority of men that I know who dismiss feminists as hairy, angry women that don't wear bras. The lecturer said when explaining the course that, "it would not be a debate between whether gender equality is right or wrong, as hopefully we can assume that everyone here believes that women and men are equal. That's a pretty foundational belief, I hope". But the more I look into the print media (and the media as a whole), the more I think that hoping isn't enough: the public sphere is dominated by the opposite belief.

We have made great strides in gender equality, but are still very far from illustrating women as more than glamorous sex kittens, sainted mothers, devious witches, hard-faced corporates or political climbers, images that UNESCO says are most common. As Christians, we should be leading the call for women to be represented as more than this: we are all children of Christ and need the papers to stop saying otherwise. We must reinforce the fact that women aren't sexual objects (Page 3 isn't empowerment, though this is a whole other related debate), or a public joke, but actual living, breathing and thinking human beings. They aren't second-class citizens or inferior to men in any way, that's just a story that the media tells, thinking that it will sell more papers.