Islamophobia and sexism: Muslim women in the … VIII 2/Navarro-FM.pdf · Islamophobia and Sexism: Muslim Women ... Medio. In terms of the English media, ... since it is based on

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ISSN: 1540-5699. © Copyright by Ahead Publishing House (imprint: Okcir Press) and authors. All Rights Reserved.

HUMAN ARCHITECTURE

Journal of the Sociology of Self-

A Publication of OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics)

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NTRODUCTION

By claiming to champion objectivityand report “real” news, the informativediscourse of the mass media conceals theirimportant role as “builders of realities

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”and, consequently, their key role in the pro-

cesses of imagination—and social construc-tion—of the communities to which they

PhD in Audiovisual Communication and Master Thesis in Contemporaries Societies of Maghreb, Laura Navarrois presently a researcher of the project Mediamigraterra (University Paris 8) focused on media and migrations inthe Euro-Mediterranean space, as well as lecturer in the master Intercultural Mediation and Citizen Participation(University of Valencia, Spain). She has worked before in the EU Marie Curie excellence team Minoritymedia, spe-cialized on media created by ethnic minorities in Europe. Some of her publications are the book Contra el Islam(2008), about dominant representations of Islam and Arab world in the Spanish media, and the articles “Racismoy medios de comunicación: representaciones del inmigrante magrebí en el cine español” (in Revista Estudios Cul-turales Iberoamericanos, 2009), “Los medios de comunicación nacidos de las nuevas migraciones en España” (in IIIAnuario de la Comunicación del Inmigrante 08/09) and “Cultural diversity in the media and its impact on shapingperceptions in Spain” (in Anna Lindh Report 2010 on Euromed Intercultural Trends, 2010). She works in other inter-national research projects, such as Nouvelles circulations migratoires (directed from Paris 8 in partnership with theuniversities of Tunisia, Alger, Meknes and Florence), and collaborates with different organisations, such as theSpanish Community Media Network and the Association of Intercultural Mediators of Valencia.

Islamophobia and Sexism: Muslim Women

in the Western Mass Media

Laura Navarro

University Paris 8, France––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

[email protected]

Abstract: This paper reflects on the role of mass media in the social reproduction of one form ofracism: Islamophobia. Firstly, the article focus on the dominant representations of “Muslimwomen” in the western media in general and in Spanish media in particular, in order tohighlight the specific characteristics of the image of the female Muslim “other” and, likewise, inorder to analyse— from a gender perspective—the symbolic mechanisms legitimising certainIslamophobic thoughts and practices. To this end, the author gathers the results of manyresearches which prove how dominant representations transmitted in the hegemonic mediadiscourse in Spain reinforce today many stereotypes about Muslim women in general andmigrant Muslim women particularly. In the second part, the article looks specifically at thetreatment of l’affaire du voile (“the veil affair”) by the French media. Through the analysis of theorigin and social implications of this law and its media treatment, the author tries todemonstrate how the defence of “women’s rights” was instrumentalised in the public debateand how claims identifying the racist aspects of the law were ignored by the majority of mediaand politicians, in spite of the fact that this law affected mainly the Muslim community—thusfuelling division and discrimination. In short, these issues reflect specially on the mechanicsbehind the “interlinking” of sexism and racism, from a material standpoint and, above all, from adiscursive and symbolic point of view.

1

For a more in-depth examination of thetheoretical perspective according to which the

mass media

participate in the construction andreproduction of social images of reality, seePatrick Champagne (1993).

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belong (either national

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or transnational

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).This article analyses knowledge of theseprocesses, the discursive strategies thatreveal ethnic differences and, in particular,the different representations of Muslims inthe Western mass media.

While depending on the ideologicalcolor of the government in power it is pos-sible to observe changes in the way themedia construct certain events related withIslam and the Arab world

4

, there exist acontinuum in the media representationsabout “what is taking place in the world”that transcend the interests of any politicalparty in power. This situation may bedefined—to quote Deputy CommanderMarcos—as “a monologue with variousvoices.” This paper analyses this dominantmonologue, without addressing otherminority or “minoritorised” discoursesthat undoubtedly exist, and that constitutea less distorted and stereotyped vision thanthat examined in this article.

Different authors have studied themedia discourse in news on Arabs andMuslims

5

, including most notably SaddekRabah (1998), Vincent Geisser (2003) andThomas Deltombe (2005) in France. InSpain, pioneering studies have been carriedout on this subject, such as

El Mundo Arabey su Imagen en los Medios

(“The Arab Worldand its Image in the Media”

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), and morerecently the work by Eloy Martín Corrales(2002), Laura Navarro (2007, 2008b) andPablo López et al. (2010), the articles byGema Martín Muñoz (1994, 2000) and TeunA. Dijk (2008) and, finally, doctoral thesessuch as the one by Mohamed El Maataoui(2005). However, the most studies on thissubject have been published in English.Noteworthy examples include the work by

Edward W. Said (1997), Mohammad A. Sid-diqi (1997), Karim H. Karim (2000), Elisa-beth Poole (2002) and John E. Richardson(2004).

Practically all these studies highlightthe “otherisation” caused by establishing“us and them” oppositions, assigning posi-tive elements to “us” and negative ele-ments to “them,” as well as treatment in themedia that instead of facilitating betterknowledge of “others,” exacerbates feel-ings of rejection and incomprehension.Many of the abovementioned authors havealso studied in depth the relationshipbetween discourse and power. For exam-ple, Edward W. Said examined how andwhy the mass media (especially in the US,Great Britain and Israel) constantly reduceIslam and Muslims to a series of stereo-types and generalisations that merely por-tray this religion as monolithic, as a threatand danger to the West, as a violent andirrational religion. Gema Martín Muñozhas highlighted the persistence of an“agreed cultural paradigm” that westernsocieties have forged on the Arab and Mus-lim “Orient” “based on a culturalist inter-

2

See Benedict Anderson (1983).

3

See Roger Silverstone and Myria Georgiou(2003).

4

For example, the change of perception ininformation presented on TVE’s newscastsabout the Iraq war that took place soon after thePSOE came to power after their victory at the2004 General Elections.

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Authors who have studied the mediadiscourse in fiction (especially in film) include,most notably, Eloy Martín Corrales (2000),“Árabes y musulmanes en el cine español de lademocracia (1979-2000)”,

Mugak

, April-June2000, nº 11; Bernabé López García (1999), “Elcine y las relaciones hispano-marroquíes: de laimagen del protegido al del inmigrado”,

Cuadernos Africanos de la Asociación deAfricanistas

, nº 4, pp. 43-52; Isabel Santaolalla(2005),

Los “Otros”. Etnicidad y “raza” en el cineespañol contemporáneo

, Zaragoza and Madrid,Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza and Ocho yMedio. In terms of the English media,noteworthy studies include those carried out byJack G. Shaheen (2003), “Reel Bad Arabs: HowHollywood Vilifies a People”,

The Annals of theAmerican Academy of Political and Social Science

,nº 588, pp. 171-193; and in French media, PascalBauchard, “Les représentations de l'Arabe dansle cinéma français: des ‘salopards’ aux beurs,”available at: http://educine.chez-alice.fr/analyses/esquivearabe.htm (consulted on 8-6-2009).

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A collective work published by José Bodasand Adriana Dragoevich (1994).

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pretation of Islamic societies explainedfrom an essentialist and ethnocentric per-spective, thus preventing the comprehen-sion of much more plural and changingpolitical and social realities than what nor-mally seems to be the case” (2005: 206). Intwo of my studies (2007, 2008b), I have alsounderlined the important role played bythis Orientalist discourse in the legitimisa-tion of hegemonic military policies(applied for many years in the MiddleEast), as well as in the legitimisation ofpolice and military immigration policies,which have largely been responsible for thedeaths of thousands of people on geostrate-gic borders, such as the southern US borderand the southern European border.

Nevertheless, although these studieshave contributed to research on the socialreproduction of racism, most of these stud-ies also have the same shortcoming: thespace dedicated to the image of the “otherwoman.”

Virtually all these studies focuson the image of

Muslim

men

and ignore thespecific representations of Muslim

women

.This paper examines in detail these imageswhich have been studied less. To this end, Iwill first focus on the dominant representa-tions of “Muslim woman”

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in the westernmedia in general in order to highlight thespecific characteristics of the image of thefemale Muslim “other” and analyse, from agender perspective, the symbolic mecha-nisms legitimising certain Islamophobicthoughts and practices. To conclude, I willlook specifically at the treatment of

l’affairedu voile

(“the veil affair”) by the Frenchmedia in order to introduce an analyticalperspective adopted in the latest

GenderStudies

and which consists in not losingsight of the “overlapping” or “interlinking”

of sexism, racism and classism.

8

These analyses are also based on twopremises: the notion that audiences are ableto actively appropriate media texts (D.Morley and K. H Chen, 1996); and that themedia do not construct representations ontheir own but instead belong to the mecha-nisms that maintain the existing hege-mony

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, i.e., institutions that participate inthe economy, culture, public opinion andsocial mobilisation and that, according toAntonio Gramsci’s thesis, allow to intellec-tually, morally and politically manage soci-ety without having to resort to physical vio-lence to obtain the consensus of the major-ity. This complex system of building socialconsensus—through which dominantimages are also constructed of “other men”and “other women”—is a fundamentalexplanatory factor for understanding thesocial and cognitive processes that allow usto unconsciously absorb racist, classistand/or sexist representations (and eventhoughts and practices). These collectiveimages are neither the same in all geo-graphical contexts nor fixed or immutablebecause they change over time as a result ofspecific historical and social experiences,education, institutional policies, as well asthe cultural industry and public discourses(including the media discourse).

In Spanish society, for example, histor-

7

I have indicated this in inverted commasbecause I am referring to the socialcategorisation of the “Muslim woman,” and notto its real sociological meaning. In other words,I am referring to the category-object of “Muslimwoman” (within the scope of collectiverepresentations) and not to its sociologicalconcept.

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Perspective analyzed in the Chapter 6“Intersections” by Laure Bereni

et al.

, 2008, pp.191-222.

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According to Antonio Gramsci, for whomconstructing hegemony was equivalent “tocreating a social process of persuasion andgeneration of active consensus allowing socialgroups to join a cultural and/or political project[...]. Compared with systems of dominationthrough coercion and force, hegemony entailscreating social power through proposals thatgenerate the active establishment of populationmasses, since it is based on the premise that alldirectionless domination reveals a profoundweakness that will sooner or later produce acrisis.” Definition quoted from the

Dccionario deSociología

(2004) by Salvador Giner, Emilio Lamode Espinosa and Cristóbal Torres (Madrid,Alianza Editorial, p. 349).

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ical conflicts with Muslims, especiallyMoroccans, have been decisive in the socialreproduction of racist stereotypes and prej-udices regarding Islam and the Arab world(E. Martín Corrales, 2002). Likewise, fears(J. Delumeau, 2002), the disproportionateneed for security and lack of communica-tion (M. A. Vázquez, 2004) can exacerbatesuch distorted visions of the “other,” as doculturalist visions of history and the poli-tics of Arab and Muslim societies, mainlytransmitted through the education system(G. Martín Muñoz

et al

., 1998) and also, aswill be discussed later, through the domi-nant mass media discourse. Thus, todaydifferent converging factors imbue thedominant Spanish collective image of Islamand the Arab world with essentially nega-tive characteristics, many of which are notnew, e.g., the laziness, cruelty, lechery, malechauvinism and fanaticism of

Muslim men.

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Are the characteristics historically usedto describe Muslim women the same asthose applied to Muslim men? Eloy MartínCorrales (2002), despite not focusing specif-ically on this aspect, mentions some charac-teristics that have been historically attrib-uted to Moroccan women in particular andto Muslim women in general. Theseinclude ignorance and submission, butalso—albeit with different levels of inten-sity according to the historical period—sen-suality.

This sensual image of Muslim womenis, to a certain extent, a continuation of thethesis put forward by Mary Nash (1984).Since the first mass media institutionsappeared in the late 19

th

century, women ofother cultures have been represented,according to Nash, as exotic and sexuallyactive women (in postcards, labels on alco-holic beverages, etc.), in contrast to the

bourgeois model of

the

domestic angel

.Later, this conception was transferred tothe 20

th

century, since, as described byCatherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins

10

intheir analysis of numerous articles pub-lished in the middle of last century in themagazine

National Geographic

, women ofother cultures were almost absent from pol-itics and were only portrayed as mothersand nice consumable objects, a perceptionaccentuated by nude images of women(since, at that time, this was the only way tosee naked women because pornographicmagazines were still uncommon). Later, inthe nineteen-eighties and nineties, Lutzand Collins observed that these womenwere still shown as the refuge of the cul-tural tradition of the country throughimages in which they wore traditionalclothing while men copied the Westernmodel. Thus, progress was identified assomething masculine and tradition assomething feminine.

As regards the stereotypes of ignoranceand submission associated with Muslimwomen and prevalent in the Spanish socialimaginary, if we take into account the dom-inant representations transmitted in thehegemonic media discourse, today thesestereotypes seem to have been reinforced.The main characteristics of these represen-tations are presented based on the results ofthe analysis of the sample studied in mydoctoral thesis (Navarro, 2007), on the rep-resentation of this collective on the televi-sion news programmes on the nationalpublic channel TVE1, broadcast at 3 p.m.and 9 p.m. during the week from August 9to August 16, 2004

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, as well as on theresults of an in-depth study on the subject,the conclusions of which were presented inan article by Gema Martín Muñoz (2005).This second study is one of the first carriedout in this country to research the image of

10

Catherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins(2002), “The color of sex: postwar photographichistories of race and gender”. Referencementioned in Estela Rodríguez García (2005).

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Muslim women in the Spanish media12.Although this study was written in 1997—before important events such as the terror-ist attacks on September 11, 2001, andMarch 11, 2004—its main conclusions areparticularly relevant, not only due to therigour and strength of many of these con-clusions, but because this is one of the fewresearch studies currently available on thissubject.

Predominance of Culturalist Perceptions

Firstly, according to Gema MartínMuñoz, news on Muslim women “is domi-nated by the culturalist presentation andinterpretation of Islam” (2005: 208). In fact,the discrimination of these women (anissue that attracts special media attention)tends to be explained almost exclusivelyaccording to theories on Islamic culture.For example, when referring to “the rightsof Muslim women,” the news discoursetends to focus on symbolic and religiousissues such as the veil or Islam, thus elud-ing more important matters relating to theequality of these women, such as rights toeducation or public freedoms.

This dominant culturalist perception ofIslam also leads to “ethnocentric percep-tions that make it very difficult to under-

stand dynamics that do not reproduce ourconstruction of modernity and our feministsecular model” (2005: 209). These arebiased visions also hindered by the fact thatmany experiences of women in non-Mus-lim countries during long periods are con-sidered to be exclusive to Arab countries. Infact, until the 1960s in Spain, if a father orhusband murdered his daughter or wife forreasons of adultery or for having sexualrelations before marriage, this was consid-ered an attenuating circumstance in thepenal code. Moreover, the Sección Femenina(Women’s Section) of the Spanish Falangewas not suppressed until 197713. In short,and as in the case of the dominant mediarepresentations of “Muslim man,” the situ-ations and processes reported in the newsare largely explained as a consequence ofIslam itself, rather than the result of specificpolitical or socio-economic situations.

Martín Muñoz also considers that thesevisions are far removed from realitybecause they fail to take into account theconscious and deliberate adhesion of mil-lions of women to their Islamic identity. Infact, they are not differentiated according tothe criterion of Islamic women (with veil) =traditional and mentally retarded womenvs. Westernised women = modern women,which is the image the mass media appearto transmit. On the contrary, the sociologi-cal reality shows that although a distinctionis made between traditional and modernwomen, “the latter are distributed betweenIslamist and non-Islamist women. And thefactor distinguishing traditional womenfrom modern women is not the veil […],

11 Of the 269 news stories that werebroadcast in that period on that channel, 45referred—more or less explicitly—to Islam andthe Arab world. The analysis of therepresentations was based on the study ofdifferent semiotic aspects of the discourse, suchas the following: 1) thematic selection; 2) theactors in the news stories; 3) the language used;4) the selection of the information sources; and5) the visual aspect of the news.

12 Supervised by Gema Martín Muñoz, JuliaHernández Juberías and Mª Ángeles LópezPlaza, carried out in 1997 within the frameworkof the Institute of University Studies onWomen’s Affairs of the Autonomous Universityof Madrid, on The image of Muslim women in theSpanish media, and based on a sample of 417articles published in the Spanish press between1995 and 1997.

13 Created in 1934 as the Women’s Sectionof the Spanish “Falange”. Their slogan was “theessential purpose of women, in their humanfunction, is to provide a perfect complement tomen, forming with them, individually orcollectively, a perfect social unit.” See the Womenin Blue exhibition organised by theDocumentary Centre on Historical Memory ofthe Ministry of Culture, from 28 April to 28 June2009: http://gl.www.mcu.es/novedades/2009/novedades_Mujeres_de_Azul.html

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but whether or not they have had access toeducation” (2005: 21014). Nevertheless,these modern Islamist women are largelyabsent from the mass media.

Bearing in mind that much of the tex-tual strategy in ideological production isnot dictated by what is really said but bywhat it is not said, it is important to high-light the type of information and imagesthat tend to be omitted. The mass media notonly exclude modern Islamist women butalso, in general, the socially and culturallydiverse communities of Muslim womenliving in Spain. These women are not onlyhousewives, mothers and Muslims (thesimplified image transmitted by the media)but also students, researchers, entrepre-neurs, domestic workers, artists, politi-cians, volunteers, activists, etc. In thisrespect, it is also not accidental that themedia do not report on the evolution ofpro-human rights movements (includingwomen’s rights and freedoms movements)that exist in some Arab countries, such asEgypt and Morocco. Although the conceptof the sexual emancipation of women hasnot reached these countries in the sameway that in Europe, changes are takingplace, fuelled mainly by women’s associa-tions and NGOs15.

Dominant Representations: Passivity, Victimisation and the Veil

Continuing with the research carriedout by Martín Muñoz (2005), the newspa-per articles studied mainly present Mus-lims women in three ways: as passivewomen, as victims and as veiled women.Their passivity stems from the fact that

they are not portrayed as individuals whowork or seek media attention but as “vic-tims, in family relations or illustrating aspecific cultural landscape” (often linked toIslam), “instead of as a source of informa-tion on important events in their communi-ties.” In short, they are portrayed as“observers rather than as active partici-pants in their community” (2005: 210).

Their role as victims is basicallyreflected through the recurrence of newsstories describing conflicts (e.g., the Afghanor Algerian conflicts in which women areclearly victims), and through news storieson the veil, the imprisonment or exclusionof these women, all symbols of “the rela-tions and limitations of women in the landsof Islam” (2005: 211).

In my research (2008b: 231), I alsoobserved that most news stories mention-ing Muslim women tend to refer to violenceagainst women (outside and inside our bor-ders), focusing mainly on issues such asstoning, ablation of the clitoris or polyg-amy. The repetition of, and the way ofinforming about, these themes exacerbatesvictimisation and associates the practice ofIslam with the discrimination of and phys-ical violence against women. In fact, mosttelevision news and reports on these issuesdo not usually explain the political, eco-nomic and educational factors that fuelintolerable practices, such as stoning orablation, consequently fostering—as men-tioned before—the perception that Islam isultimately responsible for this situation, aswell as the perception of Muslim countriesas uniformly intolerant and anti-demo-cratic.

Another strategy that accentuated thestereotype of Muslim women as passiveand submissive women is that wheneverthe issue of “women in Islam” is discussedor reported, women are hardly ever giventhe chance to express their opinions; hence,they are deprived of preferential access tothis discourse, a source of power compara-ble to social resources as important as

14 See Gema Martín Muñoz, 1996 (pp. 45-59) and 1997 (pp. 75-90).

15 Social changes that, as Martín Muñoz(1997) explains, often appeared within Islamitself, especially within reformist Islamistmovements, due largely to new generations’disappointment with previous experiencesinspired by European models—the liberal andsocialist models—that had ended in failure.



wealth, knowledge and education. Some-times, as highlighted by Gema MartínMuñoz, when Muslim women appear asactive sources of information, they are nor-mally “Westernised” women (who do nowear veils) and they almost never belong toIslamist movements. Interestingly, thispractice contrasts with the general ten-dency to choose photographs of “anony-mous and passive veiled women inter-preted from a culturalist and traditionalistperspective” to accompany information onMuslim women (2005: 213).

As regards the third dominant repre-sentation—veiled women—the monolithicinterpretation of this garment is striking:“as a sign of mystery (Orientalist historicalinterpretations), of submission and oppres-sion (traditionalist interpretations)” (2005:211). In fact, women who wear veils arenormally portrayed as “lacking individualor personal attributes.” In contrast, when-ever “Westernised” Muslim women arerepresented, “similarities with Western cul-ture are emphasized and their individualprofessional status is mentioned,” suggest-ing that women who wear veils have noresponsibilities or professional filiations(2005: 211).

Thus, the dominant informative dis-course tends to represent the veil as the ulti-mate symbol of the exclusion of women butalso not normally reflect its multidimen-sional character. It should be rememberedthat there are different types of veil—rang-ing from veils that cover the whole body tosmall headscarves—and that they are usedfor different reasons; some are imposed bynational law or by the family while othersare used simply due to the inertia of tradi-tion. Veils are also actively used both con-sciously and politically as a symbol of iden-tity and/or political vindication16. Theycan even be used by women to optimisetheir scarce resources and thus achieve acertain level of prestige or a better mar-riage, or as a means of social mobility. Orsimply because they believe in God17.

Alima Boumedienne (2007) describes aninteresting example of how the Frenchmass media tend to present the veil as anabsolute “scarecrow” in terms of ghostsand stereotypes of Islam:

In August 2006, when the Britishauthorities decided to keepaeroplanes grounded at Heathrowairport in order to dismantle aseries of terrorist attempts. […] lib-eración.fr [the web page of theFrench newspaper “Libération”]announced “attempted attacks”which it described as Islamist […]and could not find anything betterto illustrate its article than the pho-tograph of a veiled woman withone hand pushing her baby’s pramand the other carrying a small childin the corridors of Heathrow air-port.

The fact that many educated and work-ing Muslim women have started wearingveils voluntarily in recent years “is not onlydifficult for the West to accept, but evenirritates it because it undermines the tradi-tional interpretation that it clings to so acri-moniously” and, therefore, the mass mediaconceal this fact or simply ignore it (Martín

16 As indicated by Aïcha Touati (2006), afterstudying the emergence of Muslim feminists inArab countries and in the countries ofimmigrants from the North, feminist struggleswere determined by the socio-political contextand the veil or headscarf does not have the samemeaning for women who wear it (or refuse towear it) in different contexts.

17 As described by Gema Martín Muñoz(2005), different sociological studies andsurveys carried out with women who wear veilsor headscarves voluntarily have shown that,among the various arguments used by thesewomen in favour of the use of the hijab(professionals, feminists, nationalists or anti-imperialists), “religious reasons stricto sensu arealmost never mentioned alone nor are they themain reasons in the discourse of these women”(2005: 212). Noteworthy studies include thoseby Hinde Taarji (1991), Nilüfer Göle (1993) andF. Adelkhah (1996).

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Muñoz, 2005: 211). Thus, women associatedwith having a Muslim identity or directlyinvolved in Islamist militancy are largelyabsent from news on “women in Islam.”

Invisibilization and Stereotyped Representation of “Immigrant Woman”

Since many Spaniard citizens associate“Moroccans” with “immigrants,”18 it isalso important to analyse the way immigra-tion is collectively represented. Accordingto a CIRES report (1997: 264-291), the Span-iards interviewed considered the presenceof immigrants to be “advantageous” for“our” culture, but qualified their opinion inthe case of “Arab” and “black” immigrants,considering that their sociocultural integra-tion was more “problematic” than that of“Latin Americans” and “East Europeans.”In 2002, a CIS barometer prepared a type of“sympathy” list, in which “North Africanimmigrants” were ranked last19. However,if these surveys had also asked the inter-viewees about “women”—i.e. “Arabwomen,” “black women,” “Latin Americanwomen” and “European women,”—wouldthe answers have been similar? When mostparticipants identified “Moroccans” with“immigrants,” were they also referring to“immigrant women”?

The CIS (Sociological Research Centre)surveys on “ the social perception of immi-grants” do not normally take into accountthe gender variable in these questions. It istherefore difficult to determine whether

Moroccan immigrant women enjoy thesame “sympathy” as their male compatri-ots in Spanish society. The general failure ofthese surveys to take into account the gen-der perspective is encompassed within acontext characterised by a lack of intereston the part of social scientists in the studyof immigrant women in our country. Thesame occurs in the field of information andcommunication sciences and althoughmany studies have been published inrecent years on the image of “immigrants”in the media (particularly in journalisticdiscourse), it is striking that very few haveexamined the specific representations ofimmigrant women in the media in ourcountry.20

One of these studies is the research car-ried out by Estela Rodríguez (200521),which confirmed that today news storiesdo not integrate a gender perspective whenaddressing immigration issues. On the onehand, she describes the “insufficient visibi-lization of migrant women, who are oftenseen as victims, and associated with tradi-tion and cultural underdevelopment”. Onthe other, she observes that “initiatives car-ried out by these women, self-manage-ment, political action, research or educa-tion, have not been covered in daily newsreports and articles in the last seven years”(2005: 177). Rodríguez offers two very rep-resentative examples of this: the lack ofcoverage of the different ways of life ofMoroccan women and the different concep-tions of Islam; and the “almost non-exis-tent” coverage of the sit-in by immigrant

18 According to a research study carried outby the Fundación de las Cajas de Ahorros(FUNCAS— Savings Banks Foundation), 77% ofthe Spaniards interviewed thought of“Moroccan” when “immigrants” werementioned. Percentage published in El País on22-1-04.

19 At the top of the list were WesternEuropeans (6.7 out of 10), followed by LatinAmericans (6.5), North Americans (5.4), Sub-Saharan Africans (5.5) and, finally, NorthAfricans (4.9).

20 Publications on the fictional discourse areequally scarce. Noteworthy examples includethose by Rosabel Argote (2003, 2006), Jo Labanyi(1999) and Isabel Santaolalla (2006).

21 A study carried out within theframework of the R&D project subsidized by theWomen’s Institute (Ministry of Social Affairs)called Rethinking the images of Others: immigrantsand other cultures in the Spanish press,incorporating a gender perspective in theanalysis of newspaper articles, after it wasdetected that no stories were published onimmigrant women.



women at the Sant Pau del Camp Church inBarcelona in 2001 at a time when there weremany sit-ins in churches. As the above-mentioned author explains:

their analysis in the media wascompletely biased because noexplanations were given of the spe-cific demands of immigrantwomen, thus an opportunity waslost to demonstrate many differ-ences in the plans of immigrantwomen and highlight their impor-tance given the number of immi-grant women in our country.(2005: 182).

This lack of visibilization contrastswith their actual demographic presence. Infact, immigrant women in Spain represent47% of the total foreign population, accord-ing to data in the 2004 municipal censuscarried out by the INE (National StatisticsInstitute). Ecuadorian women account for17% of the total, followed by Moroccan andColombian women (9.9% of the total), andRumanian women (6.5%). However, asindicated by Mary Nash, this is not the col-lective perception, which is dominated bythe prevailing traditional model, i.e.,dependent women excluded from society.This image distorts the real sociologicalprofile of immigrant women as dynamicindividuals with a high level of educationand who seek employment.

Other studies, such as those by FaviolaCalvo (2001) and Clara Perez (2003) whichboth analyse the press, also conclude thatnewspapers provide insufficient informa-tion in this respect and highlight the dis-torted and inaccurate manner in which thesocial reality of migrant women is por-trayed. The most recent study on this sub-ject, carried out by Erika Masanet Ripolland Carolina Ripoll Arcacia (200822), alsoemphasizes the invisibility of immigrantwomen in the press (where immigrant menare more present) and the fact that the

media only reflect the reality of a specificgroup of women: the most marginalized.

The only research to examine themedia representation of immigrant womenon television is the study carried out byAsunción Bernárdez Rodal (200723). Oneconclusion drawn by this author—beyondvariations according to the socio-politicalcontext at each moment in time and thespecific characteristics of the nationality orplace of origin of immigrant women—wasthat whenever “immigrants” are men-tioned in television newscasts “they arenormally reports on and with men, as ifimmigration was a purely “masculine”phenomenon, when official data and thelatest research show that this is not thecase”24 (2007: 106).

Furthermore, the latter study also cor-roborates the failure to recognise immi-grant women as social individuals. Thislack of recognition is evident if we analyseleading stories in which immigrant womenare the protagonists. According to Bernár-dez Rodal, there are four possible types ofnews reports: 1) stories that report violenceagainst women in which only their firstname or nickname is mentioned, with spe-cial emphasis on their nationality andattributing less importance to their lives(their past or present, the factors that havecaused them to be abused or/and mur-dered by their partners or ex-partners, etc.);2) stories that describe the daily lives andcustoms of immigrant women, in whichthey are responsible for describing or illus-trating the different characteristics of

22 Within the scope of the “Representationof immigrant woman in the national press”project, financed by the Center for Women’sStudies (CEM) of the University of Alicante in2005. Based on the qualitative analysis of articlesappearing during 2004 in El País, El Mundo andABC.

23 The body of work of this researchconsisted of three samples of television newsprogrammes during a period of one month eachin 2004, on the national channels TVE-1, La-2,Antena 3 and Tele 5.

24 See C. Gregorio (1997) and L. Oso (1998).

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“immigrants,” without speaking as immi-grant women but instead as part of the cul-tural or religious group to which theybelong; 3) stories about prostitution whichare normally the ones that present a moreconsistent representation, among other rea-sons because immigrant women are almostthe only protagonists of these news stories(this exclusivity is not shared with immi-grant men or, in most cases, non-immigrantwomen); 4) stories on the arrival of smallduck boats (pateras) which only focus onwomen who are mothers or if they are theexception among a majority of men.

Finally, although immigrant women ofall origins portrayed in the media that wereanalysed are collectively represented aspoor, Bernárdez Rodal highlights a series ofspecific stereotypes depending on their ori-gin. It is important to distinguish that“Muslim immigrant women” do notappear in the four stories described above,as the analysis shows. Specifically, they donot appear in reports on prostitution or thearrival of duck boats, or in news stories onMuslims congregating in public acts in thestreet. In most cases, these women are “rec-ognised” by their veils and gowns and nor-mally appear walking along a street in theirneighbourhood with a shopping bag ortrolley, “simply to illustrate news stories onany subject relating to immigration or ter-rorism” or “to explain customs, in theirhomes”:

In both spaces, they are repre-sented as traditional women asso-ciated with religion and family life[…] They are classified accordingto the stereotype of "traditional"women due to their education, cul-ture and religion, more inclined tobe submissive and more exposedto male violence (they share thisfeature with Latin-Americanwomen and low-working classeswomen). (2007: 137-138)

In contrast, “Latin American women”are mainly associated with certain places(discotheques, queues at police stations,markets) and certain jobs (looking after eld-erly people, domestic work, prostitution).Although they are also poor and appear asmothers or victims of abuse from their part-ners (men), they are also characterised asexuberant and do not appear in news sto-ries on religion. They also speak more(compared with Muslim or Sub-Saharanwomen) (2007: 137). “Sub-Saharanwomen” normally appear in news storieson arrivals of small duck boats:

… [a]ssociated with the stereotypeof poor and unfortunate mothers,emphasizing their poverty andvulnerability, as well as their irre-sponsible character by deciding torisk their lives and those of theirinnocent children on such ven-tures. Although the women arecharacterized as mothers or futuremothers, the stories never mentionthat fathers also travel or arrive onduck boats. Nor is there ever anymention of the presence of couplesor families. (2007: 13825)

The “Integrated Immigrant”

These dominant images are accompa-nied by another less visible image thatsometimes appears in the media, namelythe image of the “successful immigrant.”Although this type of image is normallyvery present in most printed media tar-geted specifically at immigrants26, this is

25 The sample selected by Bernárdez Rodaldoes not include the recognizable stereotype ofEast European women. This is probably becausethe sharp increases in the number of immigrantsfrom these countries had not yet started in 2004,or perhaps also because the distinctness of thesewomen (but not men) may be more blurred indominant perceptions of these groups.

26 See Laura Navarro (2008a) and JéssicaRetis (2008).



not true in the case of the mass media inwhich the aforementioned image prevails.Mathieu Rigouste has studied media repre-sentations of “successful immigrants” inthe French press and carried out a revealinganalysis of the transversal economic andpolitical interests inherent in these appar-ently positive images. In his article entitled“Immigrant, but successful” (2005),Rigouste described several representativeexamples of a discourse that, since the firstcase concerning the use of the Islamic veilin 1989, is becoming increasingly commonin all the main French daily newspapers.This discourse consists of associating suc-cessful integration with the socio-economicstatus achieved by immigrants and pre-senting this success, first and foremost, asthe result of essentially personal motiva-tions. Here are two examples of articles“reporting” on “two successful immi-grants”:

Article 1: “ Karim, wearing a Leadgrey suit, blue-striped shirt withmatching yellow tie, hair combedback, born 24 years ago in Mantes-la-Jolie, has just left his well-paidjob as a sales technician to set uphis own business.”27 Article 2:“The owner of the premises [anArab restaurant], Najia el-MounaCifi, aged 46, looks like she’s comestraight out of an Afflelou advert.Short hair, black rectangularglasses, dark sweater and perfectmakeup, this social worker wholooks after elderly people contrastsdramatically with the image por-trayed in A thousand and onenights.” 28

This discursive technique, based on the

idea that the exception confirms the rule,would by opposition define a person whohas failed to integrate, i.e., the poor orexcluded. According to Rigouste (2005), theinferred message would be as follows: “aperson who really wants to integrate can doso, while others choose or accept failure.”However, in addition to the media figure ofthe entrepreneurial immigrant, “successfulimmigrants” also include teachers, pre-fects, technicians or bureaucrats. All theseimages of “integrated immigrants” are“manipulated by the mass media like somany other anti-racist guarantees and com-pensatory measures against a rhetoric ofthreat.”

Since 1995, Rigouste has also observedan increase in the media presence of imagesof singers, comedians (e.g. DjamelDebouze) or sportspersons (e.g. ZinedineZidane). These consolidate “the image ofimmigrants valued for their spectacularperformances, often as self-sacrificing, cou-rageous, servile and especially competitiveindividuals.” According to Rigouste, this“positive” representation of integratedimmigrants has been imposed “as the mostcommon way of portraying immigration ina favourable light, prompting the generalrelegation of the group.” In short:

The figures perceived as a threatare based on the generation of adesire for security and successfulfigures on a mimetic desire thatoperates like a compelling forcetoward likeness. The images ofsuccessful immigrants are not asign of progress in the representa-tion of visible minorities: they areused to justify and promote a mes-sage of security. (2005)

27 Quote taken from the article “Grâce auxinjustices, je me suis forgé un caractère,” 28-1-2004, p. 13, published in the newspaper LeParisien as part of a series of 6 articles entitledMuslims who managed to integrate.

28 Quote taken from the article “Je n’aijamais été montré du doigt…,” 29-1-2004, p. 11,published in the newspaper Le Parisien as part ofa series of 6 articles entitled Muslims whomanaged to integrate.

106 LAURA NAVARRO


These “positive” images of “integratedimmigrant men and women” may beaccompanied by a more specific image ofwomen that is particularly visible in theFrench media: the image of “liberated andrebellious Muslim women.” According toAlina Boumediene (2007), “the massmedia, and the French media in particular,are full of surveys, articles and reports thatportray the archetypal woman of Muslimfaith or culture who has managed to escapefrom the carcan (straightjacket) of religion,customs and parents and older brothers.”According to Boumediene, in France thesewomen, often classified as beurettes (femaleMuslim immigrants), are normally pre-sented in a positive and favourable light.They are presented as “fighters,” as“women who have been successful” in spiteof. And once more, every positive descrip-tion of these women that appears in themedia is accompanied by other negativereferences to Islam, the mother of all evil,and to Muslim men in particular. In sum-mary, according to Nacira Guénif-Souila-mas (2004), the stereotype of the liberatedbeurette is the counterpoint to the stereo-type of Arab youths of voleur, violeur etmaintenant voileur (“thieves, rapists andnow veilers”), who thus also end up as vic-tims of an imaginary construction. We willnow look more closely at this counterpointreferred to by Guénif-Souilamas.

THE ANTI-VEIL LAW: SEXISM AND ISLAMOPHOBIA INTERLINKED

After France approved the law prohib-iting the use of “ostensive” religious signsin state schools (better known as the “anti-veil law”), French feminists, anti-racist mil-itants, as well as the political parties andcivil society actors take a stance and twopoints of view quickly emerged: on the onehand, the defence of women’s rights andgender equality was used to justify the law(an argument supported first by political

groups and later by associations and femi-nists); and on the other hand, the denunci-ation of discriminatory aspects of the lawand opposition to the exclusion of girlsfrom schools prompted opposition of thelaw (from anti-racist militants and alsofeminists).

According to the analysis presented inthe issue of Nouvelles Questions Féministesentitled “Sexism and racism: the Frenchcase” (2006), the dominant point of view inthe public debate and media in France wasthe first point of view described above,which justified the law based on thedefence of “women’s rights,” ignoringclaims identifying the racist aspects of thelaw and in spite of the fact that, as indicatedby the author (2006: 4), this law affected—and continues to affect—mainly the Mus-lim community (comprising principallyimmigrant men and women from Maghrebcountries and Sub-Saharan Africa, formerFrench colonies, as well as their childrenborn in France), with clear racial implica-tions fuelling division and discrimination. Iwill later examine the origin and socialimplications of this law, in order to analysein greater depth the mechanics behind the“interlinking”29 of sexism and racism, fromboth a material standpoint and, above all,in terms of its discursive and symbolicdimension by analysing the political andmedia treatment of this law.

29 This term refers to the idea that personsmay belong to various disadvantaged groups(for example, women belonging to ethnicminorities). This situation may entail moreserious and specific forms of discrimination.This idea was acknowledged and initiallydefined as “intersectional” discrimination in thelate 1980s by some feminist Afro-Americanteachers in the US. One of the mostrepresentative was Kimberly Creenshaw (1989).For more information on this theory, also knownas interseccionalité or consubstancialité, see LaureBereni et al. (2008: 191-222) and Danièle Kergoat(2008).



Genesis of the Law

As shown by the authors of the above-mentioned issue of Nouvelles QuestionsFéministes (2006: 5-6), the promulgation ofthe French anti-veil law (in March 2004)was the result of a long and complex pro-cess that started in France in 1989, when theuse of headscarves by secondary schoolgirls was starting to become a “problem”:

1) September 1989: three girls weretemporarily expelled from a school inCreil (Oise) after it was considered thattheir headscarves represented analleged “attack on secularism.” TheFrench Minister of Education at thetime, Lionel Jospin, closed the debateby reminding the French Council ofState of legislation in force at the time.The Council responded as follows:“female students enjoy ‘freedom ofconscience’ and therefore the ‘right tocarry religious signs,’” “only prose-lytism and the interruption of schoolactivities are grounds for expulsion,”and headmasters are invited to “eval-uate the situation on a case-by-casebasis.”

2) September 1994: controversy reared itshead following a circular by FrançoisBayrou—the new French Minister ofEducation—aimed at school headmas-ters, defining the headscarf as an“conspicuous sign in itself” that revealsa “proselytist attitude” (unlike theChristian cross or the Jewish kipa). Thecircular invited headmasters toprohibit the use of headscarves in stateschools.

3) July 1995: after being asked to declareon the exclusion of 18 pupils in Stras-bourg, the French Council of Stateconcluded that girls wearing Islamicveils or headscarves cannot be prohib-ited from doing so or automatically

expelled. Once again, the Council ruledthat no sign can be considered“conspicuous” by nature and that,pursuant to the 1905 law on the separa-tion of Church and State (popularlyknown as the “Law on secularism”), noreligious sign may in itself be in oppo-sition to secularism.30

4) However, the position adopted by theFrench Council of State was harshlycriticised by the defenders of secu-larism, which they considered to beunder threat; they did not so muchoppose the proselytism of certain girlsas the presence of any girl wearing aheadscarf in state schools, regardless oftheir attitude. The only way the oppo-nents of headscarves could avoid theCouncil of State’s interpretation was topass another law through Parliament.To do so, in 2003 they reminded theUnion of Islamic Organisations ofFrance (UOIF) that headscarves couldnot be worn in identity card photo-graphs. Consequently, the pro-law (or“secular”) lobby rekindled the debate,launching a campaign mainly advo-cating women’s rights. The new lawwas eventually approved in 2004,restricting the freedoms guaranteed bythe 1905 Law.31

30 At this point, it is worthwhilementioning, in line with the authors, that thearguments put forward by the French Council ofState coincided with those guiding the doctrineof the majority of international conventions andtribunals on this subject: Article 18 of theUniversal Declaration on the Rights of Man(1948), Article 9 of the European Convention onthe Protection of the Rights of Man andFundamental Freedoms, Article 18 of theInternational Pact on Civil and Political Rights(1966) and in education, Article 2 of the FirstAdditional Protocol to the EuropeanConvention and Article 14 of the Convention onChildren’s Rights (1989). See Fabienne Brion,“L’inscription du débat français en Belgique:pudeurs laïques et monnaie de singe,” pp. 121-147, in F. Lorcerie (dir.) (2005).

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The discourse legitimising the law

While the law was being drafted, apublic discourses began in favour of thelaw and gradually became the dominantdiscourse (Natalie Benelli et al. (Eds.), 2006:6). In this process, male politicians sud-denly discovered that they were staunchfeminists and that the arguments postu-lated by militants who already supportedthe new law were accompanied by criticismof the oppression suffered by youngwomen in the quartiers32 (neighbourhoods).I will now examine how the use of head-scarves by female secondary school stu-dents gradually became a problem.

Firstly, as from January 2001 mediacoverage of collective transgressions(referred to as tournantes) committed inthese neighbourhoods intensified. In 2002,after the so-called “March by women fromthe quartiers” (organised by Ni Putes NiSoumises to denounce violence in theseneighbourhoods), the spokeswomen of thisassociation began to receive coverage in themedia and greater political support. At thesame time, other instruments werelaunched to prepare this law. On the onehand, Ni Putes Ni Soumises joined the pro-law lobby (prohibition of headscarves) ofthe Socialist Party and the government(which financed them). On the other hand,Jacques Chirac set up a commission “toapply the principle of secularism,” pre-sided by Bernard Stasi. In September 2003,the Stasi Commission began its public hear-ings and soon declared that:

“Equality between men andwomen […] is an important ele-ment of the republican pact” and

“the State cannot remain impassiveif this principle is attacked.”33 Thecommission also declared thatyoung women living in the quar-tiers suffer “harassment from polit-ical-religious groups” that wouldincite them to wear clothes inaccordance with their religiousprinciples, and that they suffer“verbal, psychological or physicalviolence” from young men whoforce them to “lower their eyes onseeing a man” and wear “clothesthat are concealing and asexual,”adding “forced marriages, polyg-amy, female genital mutilation.”34

In short, although the Stasi Commis-sion recognized the exclusion, unemploy-ment and racial discrimination suffered byFrench descendants of migrants originallyfrom Maghreb countries, it considered thatthe main problem was the visibility ofIslam. According to Natalie Benelli et al.(2006: 7), “the denunciation of the place ofwomen in Islam and in the quartiers willhereinafter be at the core of arguments infavour of the law.” Rémy Schwartz, one ofthe main authors of the Stasi Commission,even criticised “actions against secularism[…], which are increasingly numerous,especially in the public sphere,” referring towomen who wear headscarves in public(Lorcerie, 2005). Thus, women wearingheadscarves become gradually, in theFrench social imaginary, like the evils thatthreatened the Republic and its values.Moreover, the public discourse has gradu-ally legitimised the need for a law to reducethe visibility of this “sexist” Islam, in theonly place in which international conven-tions permit such restrictions: state schools.

As regards media coverage of this pro-31 See Françoise Lorcerie, “À l’assaut de

l’agenda public. La politisation du voileislamique en 2003-2004,” pp. 11-36, in F. Lorcerie(dir.) (2005).

32 Term used to refer to generally marginalneighbourhoods in the suburbs of large Frenchcities.

33 Bernard Stasi (dir.) (2004), Rapport de laComission de réflexion sur l'application delaïcité dans la République, Paris, LaDocumentation française, p. 35.

34 Stasi (2004: 101-105).



cess, the arguments of opponents of the lawdid not receive the same amount of cover-age in the mass media. Firstly, the opinionsof girls wearing headscarves were largelyignored. Little attention was given to thevoice of political, trade union and associa-tive representatives, secular organisationsand associations that opposed the law, orfeminists who emphasized the need to sup-port young women who wore headscarvesat state schools at all cost. The media gavemuch more coverage to men and womenwho invoked the dignity of women to jus-tify the exclusion of such women. In con-trast, while the few conflicts in schoolsreceived excessive media coverage, situa-tions of “peaceful coexistence” amongteachers and female students wearingheadscarves went unreported by the mainmedia (press, TV and radio35).

In short, most media focused on thecivilization problem (through debates on“religion vs. secularism” or “Islam vs.West”), without addressing the real chal-lenges of the debate, such as the specificproblem caused by the presence of femalestudents wearing headscarves in class andthe consequences for students expelledfrom school.

The Instrumentalisation of Women’s Rights

Many academic studies have beenwritten about this controversial issue.Some authors, like Emmanuel Terray (2004)and Saïd Bouamama (2004), have inter-preted it as the result of a specificallyFrench form of Islamophobia. Feministshave expressed their fear that social mobil-

isation would focus on racism rather thanon male chauvinism, thus conferring theoppression of women , once again,36 sec-ondary importance.

I would especially draw attention tothe theory presented by the female authorsof the article in Nouvelles Questions Fémin-istes because they try to overcome thesefears (which are, nevertheless, very legiti-mate) by analysing the “interlinking” ofboth forms of oppression: sexist oppres-sion; and racist oppression. Christine Del-phy (2006) examined this interlinking,claiming that the feminist discourse on“women’s rights” was instrumentalised bythe supporters of the law for racist pur-poses because although the law refers to“conspicuous religious signs in general,” inpractice it affects a specific sector of thepopulation: the Muslim community resi-dent in France, formed mainly by immi-grant men and women from Maghrebcountries and Sub-Saharan Africa, formerFrench colonies, as well as their childrenborn in France.

Also, the strategy of addressing sexismpresent in the homes of “others”—in thiscase, Arabs, Muslims—has two implica-tions: a clearly Islamophobic implicationbecause this strategy helps consolidatebelief in the existence of racial differences(as demonstrated by Nacira Guénif-Souila-mas since 2000) and, more specifically,plays a key role in the construction of theviolent and abusive “essence” of Muslims;and a sexist implication because it rela-tivises and even conceals masculine domi-nation in “our” home, as well as elementspresent in the entire patriarchal system.

The above-mentioned authors con-cluded that the (re)emergence of the socialfigure of “Islamic women” (silent, manipu-lated victims) in the debate on the use of

35 At this point, it is important to indicatethat this law was not a feminist initiative(feminists had other priorities, although manylet themselves be influenced in that sense) noran initiative of male or female students orteachers who, in the immense majority of cases,did not consider the veil to be a problem beforethe campaign to promote the law (P. Tévanian,2005).

36 In reference to the marginalisation offeminist issues by left-wing movements that,during the sixties and seventies, eventuallyprioritised mobilisation against “class”oppression.

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headscarves in state schools is neither theproduct of chance nor the reflection of aparticular obsession of France. The socialfigure of “Muslim women” (rooted deeplyin the history of power struggles betweenneighbouring civilizations) underpins adual system of oppression: the system thatclassifies persons as inferior due to their“race”; and the system that condemns themas inferior for reasons of gender. Theseauthors asked the following question:“Which elements would underpin one orseveral forms of feminism that refuse tochoose between anti-sexism and anti-rac-ism and oppose one more justifiably thanthe other?” (Natalie Benelli et al. (Eds.),2006: 9).

Houria Bouteldja, a member of thefeminist collective Blédardes and the mou-vement of the Indigènes de la République,provides certain clues to answer this ques-tion. In an interview with Christelle Hameland Christine Delphy in the same issue ofthe magazine Nouvelles Questions Feministes(2006: 122-135), she describes her career asa politically active feminist and anti-racist,emphasizing her experience of both sexismand racism, as well as the way in which thisexperience had influenced her feminism.She describes her feminism as “paradoxi-cal” because she has to protect “Arabwomen” from real sexism in her commu-nity (and sexism on the part of French soci-ety) and, at the same time, defend “Arabmen” from racism when they are accusedof being sexist by nature. She supports atype of feminism encompassed within theemancipation movements that fought forindependence and decolonisation.

CONCLUSIONS

The Western mass media tend to con-struct an image of Muslim women using adiscourse dominated by the notions of pas-siveness and victimisation. The samemedia, albeit in a minority of cases, also

portray a seemingly positive image of “lib-erated Muslim women”, closely linked totheir “Western-style clothes” and/or theireconomic success. This reductionist con-struction on the part of the mass mediatends to erode the social, cultural and eco-nomic diversity of Muslim women. Manywomen of Muslim culture or faith, likeAlima Boumedienne (2007), emphaticallyreject this:

I, a woman of Muslim culture and/or faith, and many people like merefuse to be prisoners of either ofthese stereotypes. We are who wedecide to be and not what the massmedia want to us to be!

Islamophobia and Market Journalism

The media representations studied pro-mote a reductionist perception of Muslimwomen as victims of “the male chauvinisticviolence of Islam” or Islamic fundamental-ism. This vision—which is very wide-spread in Western societies—tends tohinder the acceptance of other more com-plex perceptions than would help usunderstand, for example, that refusal of theright to voluntarily wear headscarves mayalso be a manifestation of intolerance.These Orientalist representations also fuelprejudices such as considering that womenare submissive simply because they wearan Islamic veil (when this really dependson their use of this garment because, as wehave seen, this can be very diverse) or onlyrecognising Muslim women who copy ourculture or dress codes as valid intermediar-ies (thus hindering comprehension of thisextremely complex cultural reality).

Journalists’ responsibility not to exac-erbate these simplistic perceptions thathinder comprehension and interculturalcoexistence acquires greater importance ifwe acknowledge that stereotypes regard-ing the discrimination of Arab-Muslimwomen is today one of the most effective



instrument for demonising their societiesand also an extremely forceful instrumentfor legitimising culturalist theories such asthose that claim that Islam and modernityare incompatible, or those that argue thatMuslim immigrants, due to their religion,cannot “join” European societies. In ordernot to favour culturalist explanations of thediscrimination of Muslim women, journal-ists should give more consideration toother (legal, educational, political and eco-nomic) aspects when reporting on the situ-ation of these women. As Martin Muñozconcludes:

Why is it not reasonable to thinkthat in Muslim societies, as hasoccurred in most European coun-tries, social change and the deterio-ration of patriarchal structures isdue more to democratisation,development and the possibilitythat these societies have to definethemselves without having to bedefined by the West? (2005: 214-215).

In spite of the foregoing, I am not sug-gesting that we should ignore these intoler-able situations of tremendous injustice thatexist in many of these countries. However,it is important to highlight the perniciouseffect of only emphasizing, dramatising,almost always generalizing and failing tocontextualise the catastrophic and negativeaspects of the situation of these women,because the reality is multiple and diverse.

So many converging factors influencethe construction of essentialist representa-tions of Muslim women that this Islamo-phobic discourse cannot only be changedby ensuring journalists are responsiblewhen reporting. In fact, these factorsinclude not only interests and the journalis-tic ethics of news professionals, their ideol-ogy and their training on subjects such asIslam, the Arab world and immigration,but also dominant journalistic practices

such as available time, the news agenda,the prevalence of emotion over explana-tion, the preference for institutional sourcesof information, the political and economicinterests of media companies, etc.37 Struc-tural factors closely linked to the globalisa-tion of communications and its subsequenteffects on information and on informativeprocedures are also extremely important.38

In short, structural factors are so com-plex that, as reported by Chiara Saez (2008:4), the wide variety of discourses on themedia system in general is less dependanton changes in traditional media discoursethan on identifying the necessary condi-tions to ensure that the discourses of othersocial collectives have an equivalent pres-ence in the public arena. Hence, the impor-tance of supporting the access of immigrantwomen (and especially Muslim women)not only to the mass media but also to so-called Third Sector39 media, and also ofsomehow counteracting the US monopolyon film distribution circuits and news agen-cies.

Islamophobia and Sexism

Finally, I would like to highlight thatthe media discourse analysed in this studyis inextricably linked to one of the mostimportant forms of Islamophobia in Spainand France today, a discourse that is basedon the imagination and construction of thesocial figure of the “Muslim woman.” Inother words, to quote Ángeles Ramírez(2006), “neocolonial sexism” is the “bestresource” available to fuel Islamophobia.This sexism is similar to what was known

37 Each of these factors is examined in moredetail in the paragraph “Hegemonic media: the(re)production of Orientalism,” pp. 338-367 ofmy doctoral thesis (see Navarro, 2007).

38 See Pierre Bourdieu (2000) and ManuelCastells (1997).

39 These media, also referred to ascommunity, free or alternative media, do notbelong to either the commercial media sector orthe public media sector.

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as “colonial feminism” in the colonialperiod (19th century and early 20th century)when the condition of colonised womenwas used to make colonised men primitiveand, in short, confirm the basic idea thatMuslim women were submissive and weakand that Muslim men were authoritarianand aggressive. Islamophobia todayappears to still be based largely on the per-ception of the women of “other men” and isespecially visible in the criticism of the sit-uation of Muslim women who wear head-scarves and who seem to be in need of sal-vation.

However, this particular racist dis-course does not occur only in the West.According to a comparative analysis ofWestern and Eastern political and mediadiscourses carried out by Laura Nader(2006: 9), the assessment of the intention-ally favourable treatment reserved forwomen in the group to which they belong,is accompanied by a devalued interpreta-tion of the way in which “other men” treat“their women.” Thus, while headscarvesare seen in the West as a sign of the submis-sive nature of Muslim women, in Muslimcountries, pornography, prostitution andlack of respect for women in the massmedia are used by the heads of MuslimStates to systematically criticise Westerncountries and their citizens. In both dis-courses, there is not a real concern for “thecondition of women” but rather the will todefend a geopolitical space in which theWest seeks to maintain its “position ofsuperiority” and the Orient strives to chal-lenge that position.

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ADELKHAH, Fariba (1996), La revolución bajo elvelo. Mujer iraní y régimen islamista, Barce-lona, Bellaterra.

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ARGOTE, Rosabel (2003), “La mujer inmigrante

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