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Breaking the Wheel of Finance, Gendered Narratives by Media Outlets in the Aftermath of the Financial Crisis

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Breaking the Wheel of Finance, Gendered Narratives by Media Outlets in the Aftermath of the Financial Crisis Breaking the Wheel of Finance, Gendered Narratives by Media Outlets in the Aftermath of the Financial Crisis A thesis completed under the supervision of Dr. Lindsay. O. Black, submitted to the Faculty of Humanities in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of International Relations at the University of Leiden © Isa Davids, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 2020 Abstract In response to the financial crisis on Wall Street in 2008, the financial world in which the patriarchy still ruled was held accountable by the media. As a result, new outlets such as Time ​ Magazine and The New York Times began portraying women as the perfect fit for the role of ​ ​ ​ regulator. This paper analyzes to what extent the gendered narrative has been constructed by the media and how. Based on critical discourse analysis theory, this research proves that through the use of metaphors, the media actively helps to shape a dichotomized climate in which women are always depicted as ‘the other’. Analyzing the narrative describing two women (Sheila Bair and Elizabeth Warren), this study reveals that they were projected to gender rhetoric, hereby focussing on four metaphorical themes. This study has implications for the theory of Critical Discourse Analysis and studies on gender framing. Key words: gender framing, media discourse, global financial crisis Acknowledgements I am indebted to my supervisor, Dr. Lindsay O. Black, for his continued guidance and a generous supply of ideas, together with an unwavering amount of patience. To my parents, who have facilitated my dream to live and work in New York City, which has been the inspirational birthplace of this research. To the person who advertently and inadvertently inspired me to keep moving forward, no matter what happens. Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank my sister Emily for her endless support throughout what has been a rocky year; without her tireless motivational voice I would not have been able to finish this project. List of contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………. ii Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………... iv List of contents…………………………………………………………………….. v Chapter 1: Introduction……………………………………………………………. 5 1.1 Research questions and research objectives………………………….... 7 1.2 Overview of the thesis………………………………………………….. 7 Chapter 2: Literature Review……………………………………………………….. 8 Chapter 3: Methodology……………………………………………………………. 14 3.1 Research design…………………………………………………………. 14 3.2 Justification……………………………………………………………… 16 3.3 Cases ……………………………………………………………………. 19 Chapter 4: Analysis………………………………………………………………….. 20 4.1 Findings…………………………………………………………………. 20 4.2 The Body ……………………………………………………………….. 23 4.3 Manichaeism…………………………………………………………….. 26 4.4 Revolution ………………………………………………………………. 30 4.5 Fables……………………………………………………………………. 33 Chapter 5: Conclusion………………………………………………………………. 37 Cited works…………………………………………………………………………. 40 Appendices………………………………………………………………………….. 44 Introduction 'There is a parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount that tells the story of two men. The first built his house on a pile of sand, and it was destroyed as soon as the storm hit… We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand. We must build our house upon a rock.' - Barack ​ ​ Obama1 In May, 2010, in the midst of the financial crisis, Time Magazine published an article referring to ​ ​ Sheila Bair and Elizabeth Warren as the ‘New sheriffs of Wall Street’.2 Former president Barack Obama had just recently appointed these women as financial regulators to navigate the damage 3 control in the aftermath of the crash on Wall Street in 2007. This article marked a shift in the depiction of the role of women before and after the global financial crisis (GFC). The media started portraying women as an alternative to the patriarchal world of finance that was being held responsible for the crash. This consequently led to the perception among news outlets that women would fit perfectly into the role of regulators. Bair and Warren would soon become 4 media icons, as these women were claimed to be the ‘estrogen injection Wall Street needed.’ The world of finance seemed susceptible to this phenomenon, as the institution of finance is traditionally associated with male characteristics.5 The New York Times referred to the imbedded ​ ​ ​ ​ 6 masculinity within the sector as ‘cowboy investment’ . This is not surprising considering that up 1 Barack Obama, Remarks at Georgetown University (2009) This speech has sometimes been referred to as the ‘Sermon on the Mount Speech’ by the media 2 Michael Shererer, “The New Sherrifs of Wall Street,” Time Magazine (2010) ​ ​ ​ ​ 3 Elizabeth Warren has recently dropped out of the race for the U.S.presidency 2020.While this episode is extremely interesting, in this paper I have explicitly decided not to incorporate her campaign trial for two reasons: First, I feel inclined to build on the fact that in IR research, analyzing an event too soon after its occurrence will lead to an incomplete overview. This brings me to the second point, we still do not know how the presidential race will unfold. There is a chance that she may be elected vice-president, which would alter the current reality and would spark further research. We also need to keep in mind that at the time of the financial crisis, Elizabeth Warren was relatively unknown, which is why her sudden celebrity in the media was all the more surprising.Therefore, without dwelling on her later political career, this shall be the main focus of this study. 4 William Cohan, “Does Wall Street need an estrogen injection,” The New York Times (2010) ​ ​ ​ 5 Libby Assassi, The Gendering of Global Finance, Palgrave Macmillan (2009) 69 ​ ​ 6 David Kocieniewski, “New Jersey Governor’s Brother: Asset and a Risk,” The New York Times (2010) ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ 5 7 until 1967, no woman had ever purchased a seat on the New York Stock exchange. Historically, Wall Street had always been a boys’ club. In response to the financial crisis, a public sentiment of disdain of the gambling mentality of men in finance arose globally, as headlines such as 'The Death of Macho' appeared.8 Therefore, like a zero-sum game, this encouraged advocacy for an increased role of women in the financial sector. Within academic discourse concerning gender in economics, pundits similarly argued gender played a considerable role within the emergence of the crisis, asking 9 themselves ‘what would have happened if the Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters?’ This question was subsequently even dealt with at the World Economic Forum in 2009. The answer was largely sought in the field of neuropsychology, in order to determine whether biological 10 factors such as testosterone were contributing causes of the crash. These researches became wildly popular among scholars, but also within business organizations.11 The main argument was formed that generally it was in the nature of women to be less risk-averse; this idea was to be taken into consideration when dealing with organizational sciences and business perspective. Nonetheless, in the field of International Relations, the role of gender was largely neglected, because the world of finance has traditionally been approached from more conventional IR perspectives, primarily used to centralize the future of global capitalism and policy implications in the aftermath of the crisis. Within Feminist theory, the role of gender framing was underscored, yet its scholarship remained incomplete. This is not surprising, as Feminist theory in relation to the field of international relations was not even twenty years old when the crisis emerged.12 In 2008, the relationship between Feminist and IR-Theory could still, 13 at most be described as flirtatious. 7 Sheri Caplan, Petticoats and Pinstripes: Portraits of Women in Wall Street's History: Portraits of Women ​ ​ ​ in Wall Street's History, ABC-CLIO (2013) 135 ​ 8 Reihan Salam, “The Death of Macho”, Foreign Policy (2009) ​ ​ 9 Elisabeth Prügl, ''If Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters…': gender and myth in the aftermath of ​ the financial crisis,' International Political Sociology 6.1 (2012) 29 ​ ​ 10 Ibidem. ​ 11 Isabel Metz, “Changes in psychological contracts during the global financial crisis: the manager's ​ perspective,” The International Journal of Human Resource Management 23.20 (2012): 4359-4379. ​ ​ 12 Ann Tickner, Feminism and International Relations: Conversations about the Past, Present, Routledge ​ ​ (2011) 5 13 Christine Sylvester, Feminist theory and international relations in a postmodern era, Cambridge ​ ​ ​ University Press (1994) 10 6 1.1 Research questions and Objective Contributing to existing IR and Feminist theory, this research explores to what extent the media ​ exploited a gendered narrative with regard to the women who were active on Wall Street after the crash in 2007, and how these narratives relate to Sheila Bair and Elizabeth Warren. The value of this study lies in the fact that not IR scholars, nor Feminist scholars have analyzed two women in finance on micro-level before, in relation to media discourse. I will hereby outline the problematic way in which media outlets inadvertently bolster the patriarchal model that has been the status quo on Wall Street since its rise. Four major metaphorical themes will be analyzed: The body, Manichaeism, Revolution, and fables. Through the use of critical discourse analysis, a ​ ​ method used to deconstruct power relations manifested through text, this paper reveals the ​ oversimplification regarding gender in relation to
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