The Audience and Media Representations-a Stake to Take?

There was an article from The New York Times magazine which I needed to read for a class about women in need of help and how people could help them, and there were some interesting discussions about the representations of women inside the article. The article was about the poverty and exploitation of women in countries such as India, Afghanistan, and countries in the African continent.

The article was about how women in such countries were threatened with sex trafficking, acid attacks, and bride burnings and mass rape. The article was trying to explain these situations, and also explain how organizations are now interested in funding women, for they are the key in solving world poverty and terrorism.

Interestingly there were students who had families in India and Afghanistan, and they pointed out the representations of the state of women inside the article were not fair. The women in their families were treated without discrimination and had an education.

Also the reason the article gave for concentration on funding women was because women would use money for the home and children, while the women would use the money for alcohol and other ‘personal’ use. Another reason was that if women in extremist societies were educated, such societies would not have an extremist ideology which leads to terrorism.

Representations of women in foreign counties in this article, and many others could be ‘over-generalized’, and the presumption that women are caring, responsible for their children, and are somehow naturally peaceful does have problems. However, the article aims to show that there are women desperate in need, and is aimed to an audience who perhaps does not know much about the women in those societies. To give out a message, and to show that there is, whether it is a just a part of a society or not, women who are in need of help, some generalization is inevitable.

http://www.charityhelp.org/press/the-new-york-times-magazine-the-womens-crusade.htmlThis is a link where a pdf file of the article is.