Alarming portrayals
How does Egyptian television portray violence against women?
Lina Mahmoud investigates
On 8 May the New Woman Research Centre (NWRC) and the Media House (MH), an independent video production company, held a meeting entitled "Together We Can Confront Violence Against Women" to release the results of a media monitoring project conducted by both organisations during Ramadan 2002.
The project is the first of its scale to study the way the Egyptian media portrays violence against women. "The project comes at a time when there is a general political trend that recognises the importance of women as an integral part of society. Efforts are being made to combat things that impede women from participating effectively in society," said Nawla Darwish of the NWRC.
The MH, the NWRC and a group of participants including professors of mass communication conducted a study of 18 television dramas shown on Egyptian national television during Ramadan 2002. Among the serials watched were Asa'd Ragul fi Al-Alam (The Happiest Man in the World), Al-Atar wa Al-Saba'a Banat (The Herbalist and His Seven Daughters), Qassem Amin, Ayna Qalbi (Where is My Heart?), Amira fi Abdeen (A Princess in Abdeen), together with six films shown on the two main Egyptian channels, Channel One and Channel Two. Among these films were Al Hafid (the Grandson), Al Zawga 13 (Wife Number 13).
The group counted the number of cases of violence shown on the programmes. The study was conducted during the month of Ramadan because it is the month with the highest television viewer rates. According to Darwish, "Audiovisual media has a great influence in shaping the collective consciousness of Egyptians. The extremely high illiteracy rates in Egypt, among women in particular, give media an uncontested role in dictating people's behaviour and ideas."
The study concluded that 67 per cent of the characters presented on television last Ramadan were men and only 33 per cent were women. "In reality, the number of women in society is almost equal to the number of men. Why do they represent only a third of the characters on TV?" said Darwish.
The report of the findings of the study shows that all of the programmes reviewed last Ramadan included scenes of violence against women. "The problem is that those who perpetuate the violence are the heroes of the episodes, are those who are closest to the hearts of the audience and hence have the largest impact on them," said the report.
The report also addressed the ways viewers react to violence. Just as disturbing as the portrayals of violence against women is the lack of public outrage to them. In many cases, observers responded with either indifference or approval, making such aggression seem commonplace or justifiable.
The majority of the women portrayed in the television episodes were housewives, followed by a large number of students. Unemployed individuals comprised 5.1 per cent of the characters. The report argued that this is not an accurate representation and that the actual unemployment rate for women is much higher. The report also noted that 31 per cent of the characters are middle class, 23.4 per cent upper class and only 15.9 per cent are part of the lower class. For some characters, the social class was not identified. The focus on the upper and middle classes makes the drama unrealistic. Many of the soap operas featured educated characters, particularly university graduates, ignoring the fact that half of the Egyptian population is illiterate.
Beating was the most prevalent mode of physical violence against women in the dramas, accounting for 42 per cent of all physical aggression. Other forms of violence included killing (13.1 per cent) and forms of sexual abuse. Incidents of verbal and sexual harassment were found in many of the shows and withholding sex from wives was portrayed as a form of punishment.
In all of the cases of violence against women, 41.9 per cent of the "heroines" displayed active resistance whereas 31.1 per cent accepted the abuse. This resistance was usually verbal in form, although one woman reacted by killing herself and another became physically paralysed. Further, 67.3 per cent of the men who acted violently against women displayed no remorse. Thirty per cent felt guilty and shameful.
Most of the women in the programmes played negative roles. The few women who were portrayed positively were shown as naïve or harmless wives, lovers and mothers.
Darwish expressed her uneasiness at the results of the report. "In 12 serials, there were 500 violent episodes. This means there are one or two scenes of violence in each part of a serial. This is too much. Moreover, not a single series was free of violence against women."
After the completion of the report, a documentary was filmed in which people were questioned about their reactions to violence in television dramas. "Women deserve to be beaten," responded one viewer. "A husband should beat his wife if she does something wrong," said another. One woman said that "men are so cruel to women. They should be merciful." A young man commented that beating a woman makes her "more stubborn".
The meeting convened by the NWRC and MH posed several important questions. What is required of the media? Should the media portray violence against women? Should television programmes condemn violence against women or reflect it as it is? Most everyone seemed to agree, however, that television should stop stereotyping women negatively and avoid showing violence against women in a positive light.
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LAST week, Cairo hosted the first Arab Regional Consultation on Violence Against Women. The conference -- organised by the Alliance for Arab Women (ALW) -- was held on 12 and 13 May and was attended by delegations from 16 Arab countries and more than 20 representatives of Egyptian NGOs.
The conference is an extension of an initiative taken by Radhika Coomaraswamy, UN special rapporteur on violence against women, a position created in 1994 by the UN Commission on Human Rights. Its mandate is to monitor the implementation and enforcement of human rights standards in an extension of the Vienna Declaration, which asserts that violence against women is a violation of human rights.
In many Arab countries women's issues have received more attention in recent years. Despite this progress, presentations made during the conference suggested that the region has a long way to go before it can claim to meet international standards with regards to the treatment of women. In a background document distributed at the conference, the organisers said, "One can say that the progress achieved concerning women's issues in the Arab region is unstable due to social conflicts and cultural debates. There is a huge absence of information, field studies and official statistics on violence against women."
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