Despite decades of women’s participation in politics, the gender identities of Canadian politicians continue to attract media and public attention and shape the way they are perceived and evaluated. Gendered Mediation takes an original approach to the study of gender and political communication by examining the implications of intersecting notions of gender, sexuality, race, age, and class deployed by politicians, journalists, and citizens in Canadian politics. Building upon the gendered mediation thesis, leading scholars argue that political communication and reporting still reinforces impressions of politics as a masculine domain. Their findings have profound implications for democracy not only in Canada but also for democratic political systems elsewhere.

"Female and male politicians tend to be treated differently by the media; these differences are both subtle and less subtle (Kahn, 1994; Sreberny-Mohammadi and Ross, 1996; Gidengil and Everitt, 1999, 2000, 2003b; Uscinski and Goren, 2011). With 'male' as the norm in politics, political reporting tends to be framed in a masculine narrative. As a result, the female's behaviour is misrepresented (Sreberny-Mohammadi and Ross, 1996). A subtle way in which reporters cover male and female politicians differently constitutes what Sreberny-Mohammadi and Ross (1996) refer to as gendered mediation. Focusing on the 2012 Alberta and 2013 British Columbia election leaders' debates, this thesis assesses the extent of gendered mediation in Canadian provincial politics. It uses Gidengil and Everitt's (1999 and 2000) coding scheme in its analysis of aggressive behaviour in the provincial leaders' debates. The results are compared with coverage to assess if female politicians' aggressive behaviour is exaggerated, and if the media continues to frame politics within a masculine narrative, emphasizing violence and conflict. This thesis uses content analysis of newspaper coverage to arrive at its conclusions about the state of gendered mediation in Canadian provincial politics. The findings suggest that that coverage of leaders' debates relies heavily on violent and conflictual imagery, and that the behaviour of female politicians is often misrepresented." --

This book investigates the practice of family mediation and some of the challenges that may hinder its effective use by marginalised groups in a society. Those challenges include gendered power disparity and family violence, especially towards women, and the discussion extends to how the challenges can be overcome through a practice of evaluative mediation to provide fair outcomes for women. Unlike other contemporary books on mediation, this book not only discusses different theories of power and equity in mediation, it also includes a number of verbatim quotes from different mediation sessions to demonstrate how those theories are operationalised in a real life context. While other contemporary texts on mediation focus on Western style facilitative mediation and its limitations in attaining fair justice for women enduring gendered power disparity and family violence, this text emphasises an evaluative mediation style that is embedded in Eastern social practices. Instead of focusing on gendered power disparity and family violence as limitations on the practice of facilitative mediation, this book details the practice of evaluative mediation which may provide fair justice to women despite the presence of gendered power disparity and family violence in a society.

Through an in-depth analysis of the multifaceted manifestations of gender and conflict, this book shows how cognition and behaviour, agency and victimization, are gendered beyond the popular stereotypes. Conflict not only reconfirms social hierarchies and power relations, but also motivates people to transgress cultural boundaries and redefine their self-images and identities. The contributions are a mix of classical ethnography, performance studies and embodiment studies, showing ’emotions and feelings’ often denied in scientific social research. Strong in their constructivist approach and unorthodox in theory, the articles touch upon the dynamic relation between the discourses, embodiments and symbolic practices that constitute the gendered world of conflict. The localities and research sites vary from institutional settings such as a school, rebel movements, public toilets and the military to more artistic domains of gendered conflicts such as prison theatre classes and the capoeira ring. At the same time, these conflicts and domains appropriate wider discourses and practices of a global nature, demonstrating the globalised and institutionalised nature of the nexus gender-conflict. A first set of chapters deals with ’breaking the gender taboos’ and renegotiating the stereotypical gender roles - masculinities or femininities - during conflict. A second set of chapters focuses more explicitly on the bodily experience of conflict either physically of symbolically, while the last set straddle body and narrative. The inductive quality of the work leads to unexpected insights and does give access to worlds that are new, and often surprising and unconventional.

The Handbook of Gender, Sex and Media offers original insights into the complex set of relations which exist between gender, sex, sexualities and the media, and in doing so, showcases new research at the forefront of media and communication practice and theory. Brings together a collection of new, cutting-edge research exploring a number of different facets of the broad relationship between gender and media Moves beyond associating gender with man/woman and instead considers the relationship between the construction of gender norms, biological sex and the mediation of sex and sexuality Offers genuinely new insights into the complicated and complex set of relations which exist between gender, sex, sexualities and the media Essay topics range from the continuing sexism of TV advertising to ways in which the internet is facilitating the (re)invention of our sexual selves.

Although women constitute half of the world's population, their participation in the political sphere remains problematic. While existing research on women politicians from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada sheds light on the challenges and opportunities they face, we still have a very limited understanding of women's political participation in emerging democracies. Women in Politics and Media: Perspectives From Nations in Transition is the first collection to de-Westernize the scholarship on women, politics and media by: 1) highlighting the latest research on countries and regions that have not been 'the usual suspects'; 2) featuring a diverse group of scholars, many of non-Western origin; 3) giving voice through personal interviews to politically active women, thus providing the reader with a rare insight into women's agency in the political structures of emerging democracies. Each chapter examines the complex women, politics and media dynamic in a particular nation-state, taking into consideration the specific political, historic and social context. With 23 case studies and interviews from Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Russia and the former Soviet republics, this volume will be of interest to students, media scholars and policy makers from developed and emerging democracies.