Arab Women and the Media in Changing Landscapes Elena Maestri · Annemarie Profanter Editors Arab Women and the Media in Changing Landscapes Foreword by Lubna Ahmed Al-Kazi Editors Elena Maestri Annemarie Profanter Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (UCSC) Bolzano, Italy Milan, Italy ISBN 978-3-319-62793-9 ISBN 978-3-319-62794-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-62794-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017947719 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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Cover illustration: Dangubic Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland FOREWORD This book takes on the ambitious task of discussing the media from tra- ditional to modern modes of communication. It discusses Arab media in public spaces, such as television, which has moved beyond national boundaries and has risen to transcultural broadcasting through satel- lites and the role of women in this changing landscape. Furthermore, social media like Twitter and blogs have gained momentum in recent years and attracted youth and activists from across the Arab World. This has opened new avenues of virtual space that has given them freedom of expression away from the shackles of the State in the public space. This book encompasses the MENA Region and sheds light on how use of the media and cultural change are evolving simultaneously in these societies. The 1990s saw a proliferation of satellite channels across the Arab world. This development went beyond national borders to transcultural levels of broadcasting. The rise in women’s education and an increase in women’s awareness of their roles in society began to gain momentum across the region. At the Arab Women’s summit held in 2002, Queen Rania of Jordan created an advisory council called the Arab Women’s Media campaign to remind these satellite channel owners to work on removing earlier ‘misconceptions’ about Arab Women. Though the satel- lite stations were privately owned in these countries, the government still had an upper hand in monitoring programs (Sakr 2001). As McLaughlin (2002) warned, political ideological powers in Arab societies often con- strained or sabotaged dialogue among women. Furthermore, commercial v vi FOREWORD considerations also led to trivializing women’s images by often featur- ing women news anchors in low cut attire. However, at the dawn of the new century, women in the media have objected to such exploitation and instead have advocated for being recognized for their professional skills. In a survey of eight Arab countries in August 2004, viewers named Khadija bin Qenna of Al-Jazeera and Muntaha AlRamhi of AlArabiya among the fve most preferred television anchors (Taglar 2005). This book shows that media is no longer restricted to traditional television, radio, and printed press. In fact, media has undergone major changes in the last two decades due to digital technology. The new media is interac- tive, involves people and instantly crosses borders in virtual space. The catalyst that changed the mediascape was the Internet, frst introduced in Tunisia in 1991 and later in Kuwait in 1992. Saudi Arabia was the last of the oil rich Arab Gulf States to connect to the internet, but it is the larg- est and fastest growing country with internet users (Abdulla 2007). As some of the contributors in this book show, the internet is chang- ing the landscape of media and women are actively participating in this empowering evolution. Mellor states that this new technology is “reshaping the Pan Arab public sphere by linking Arabs throughout the World into one online community” (Mellor et al. 2011). Without any borders or boundaries blocking the fow of information, news spreads within seconds from Cairo to Saudi Arabia and people can engage in dis- cussion and debate issues that were previously taboo like human rights, women’s rights, state corruption, and sexual harassment. In this book, Hosni describes how Egyptian women have used cyber- space to actively campaign for democracy and use blogs to involve oth- ers. Bernardi details how HarassMap was created to protect women and protest against their sexual harassment. According to Paul and Zlutnik (2012), Facebook has been used to schedule protests, Twitter to coor- dinate and, YouTube to tell the world. “When the political becomes per- sonal, the level of engagement goes up and the breadth and width of participation increases expeditiously” (Abdulla 2007). This book addresses commonalities and differences among women in the Arab Region. While women in Saudi Arabia were seen as politically active on Twitter, the Emirati women were passive participants. Egypt and Syria, two Arab countries that have witnessed political turmoil, saw women actively involved in the revolution, and yet were marginalized by their states. It interestingly gives deep insight into the changing land- scapes of Arab societies and the role of women in the media. FOREWORD vii In Chap. 2 of this book, “Arab Television Channels: The Image of Women between Local and Global Trends”, Barbara De Poli focuses on women’s clothing, style, and looks in Arab television. She states that the female body and its clothing are regulated by political and commer- cial agency. The wearer is either portrayed as belonging to a political group or displayed for commercial gains. De Poli presents her mate- rial, which was gained through the qualitative observation of women’s images on two platforms: Nilesat (Arab Satellite that has nearly 200 dif- ferent channels) and Hotbird (European satellite that also hosts 50 free- air Arab channels). The analysis studied different levels of broadcasting from newscasts, talk shows, fction, religious programs, and music vid- eos to sexual commerce. She found that the ownership of the station, the change in political leadership, and public demand have a big infu- ence on women’s image. While government censorship of national televi- sion can control women’s dress codes, on private channels, their bodies become tools of entertainment and are trivialized. Her astute observa- tions describe changes in the Arab mediascape by giving examples of women journalists who have asserted their professionalism and refused to be superfcial media tools. In Chap. 3, Rafah Al Talei narrates her own experience as a journalist in Oman and that of other Omani women within the economic, educa- tional, and social context of a country that is modernizing on one level but is still immersed in traditional and cultural beliefs when it comes to the matter of women in the workplace. In “Women and Media in Oman” the author interviewed women journalists to gain a better under- standing of the obstacles they faced, how the public viewed them, and how these pressures made some of them exit from careers in the media. She found that women journalists were perceived negatively, and there- fore family members rarely encouraged their daughters to pursue careers on television. Women in working in the public eye are still not consid- ered acceptable in the Omani tradition. Al Talei also asked women if they felt their issues were being dis- cussed in the media. The majority responded that Omani media did not refect the current needs of women and tended to limit their coverage to parenting, beauty, etc. instead of laws and current developments on women’s status. Women tended to use social media tools like blogs and Twitter to have their voices heard and to discuss topics that were taboo in the public media, but they encountered hurdles, where their accounts could be hacked and closed down. viii FOREWORD The United Arab Emirates has undergone rapid change, but the cul- tural transformation is not uniform in all the Emirates. The author of Chap. 4, Xenia Gleissner, studied Abu Dhabi and Dubai and interviewed reporters and presenters to see the differences in their roles and experi- ences. Government control of the media posed challenges for these pro- fessionals. She conducted her study between 2009 and 2010 and had used focus groups from scriptwriters and production managers to activ- ists and presenters. “Women as Representations of Class and Modernity: Gendered Public visibility on Abu Dhabi TV” explores how visibility and absence reinstate the social class of women in Abu Dhabi. While women of the Royal family are mentioned in the press but do not appear on the screen in Abu Dhabi, the case is different in Dubai. Public visibility is perceived as a class distinction where invisibility is favored. Furthermore, although public visibility of women on television is seen as part of their nation-building project, national women are usu- ally dressed in the traditional attire or the abaya and hijab to reinforce their Bedouin identity.