Pathways
Women and Media in Bangladesh
2011 - 2014
Lead Researchers: Firdous Azim , Samia Afroz Rahim , Aanmona Priyadarshani , Neelam Hussain
This project explored how Bangladeshi women engage with television and the meanings, choices and subjectivities they derive from it. Researchers examined changing representations of women and female sexuality and explored how women in different sites and classes engage with television and attach meaning to the images that are represented on screen. They enquired whether and where there are possibilities of empowerment that open up through women's engagement, pleasure, and learning from the media.
Resources For This Project
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Case Study Of Workshop On Media, Gender And Representation – Bangladesh
This case study presents the events and outcomes of a workshop on Media, Gender and Representation which was organised by the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Research Programme Consortium (RPC), based at the BRAC Development Institute of BRAC University in Dhaka from 11th to 15th November, 2007. The purpose of the workshop was to equip researchers, practitioners, journalists and students to develop a conceptual framework to analyse media as well as equip them with practical tools to decipher its many meanings. …
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Media In The Eyes Of Women: New Possibilities?
This report in Bangla focuses on research which explored how Bangladeshi women engage with television and the meanings, choices and subjectivities they derive from it. The researchers examined the changing representations of women and female sexuality and explored how women in different sites and classes engaged with television and attached meaning to the images represented on screen. …
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Pahari Media O Nari
This report in Bangla focuses on a project which interviewed members of the Chittagong Hill Tracts communities to examine their views on mainstream media and how it was failing in portraying their everyday lives. …
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Watching Women Watching TV: Lessons From The Field
This is a presentation given by Samia Rahim at the Cultural Crossroads Conference held in Hong Kong on 20 June 2010 on research conducted into how women in Bangladesh interacted with television and the media. The research countered dominant discourse which devalues women's relationship with television and in using a wide range of methodologies across a range of research locations uncovered that women do not only use television to accumulate new knowledge, but also strategies, tactics and ways to handle various situations. …
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Women Watching TV: New Spaces, New Choices
Short article which illuminates one woman's demand for more empowered representations of women on Bangladeshi TV. …
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Women Watching TV Research Report
The research on Media and Women has sought to explore how women in urban and peri‐urban areas in Bangladesh engage with television and attach meaning to images and representations. The research explored the politics of viewing rather than politics of representation; to take that which for long been objectified and turn it into subject. The report outlines the dominant narratives seen by women on television in Bangladesh and describes how women negotiate with other members to watch their preferred programmes on television. The processes of reception and interpretation of women in relation to media narratives has been explored to reveal how television is creating avenues for negotiation and participation, opening up new spaces for women. …
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Women Watching TV: Surfing Between Fantasy And Reality (Report)
Television in Bangladesh has captured imaginations across economic, socio-cultural and political boundaries. The paper, presented to 'Pathways: What are we Learning?' Analysis Conference, Cairo, 20-24 January 2009, outlines how women in urban areas engage with television and attach meaning to images and representations that may or may not have been addressed to them. The authors’ aim is to trace how the producers of media envision their desired subjects and the multiple ways in which women receive these images and narratives - at times drawing parallels with their own lives, at other times rejecting their messages, and still often being captivated by illusory worlds that have little resemblance to their own. It is this crossing between reality and fantasy that the television offers that the paper will seek to elaborate. …
