Women and Media in the Middle East: Power through Self-Expression (Library of Modern Middle East Studies) [Paperback]

Naomi Sakr (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1850435456 | ISBN-13: 978-1850435457 | Publication Date: November 25, 2004

Is today's changing media landscape in the Middle East empowering women? This is the first book to address the dynamics of media ecology and women's advancement in the contemporary Middle East. The book spans a wide period, crosses the region and the media forms, from Iran's women's press, via Maghrebi women filmmakers and Egyptian political films, to Palestinian TV and Hezbollah's television station, Al-Manar. It takes as its starting point the diverse experiences and multi-layered identities of women and treats media institutions and practices as part of wider power relations in society. By analyzing media production, consumption and texts, it reveals where and how gender boundaries have been established or crossed.

Editorial Reviews

Review

AS SEEN ON AL-JAZEERA'S 'AL-KITAB' The Middle East in London Magazine: "admirable and timely study" "a telling commentary on the forces at work behind each successful media enterprise" The Middle East Magazine: "Rich and illuminating"

About the Author

Naomi Saker is Research Associate, Centre for Communication and Information studies, University of Westminster, London and Consultant in media and the Middle East.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: I. B. Tauris (November 25, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1850435456
• ISBN-13: 978-1850435457
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #327,666 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Important anthology of Middle East women in media, May 14, 2005

By 

Ralph D. Berenger (Sharjah, United Arab Emirates) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Women and Media in the Middle East: Power through Self-Expression (Library of Modern Middle East Studies) (Paperback)

There is much to recommend to readers in Naomi Sakr's latest offering, a departure from her previous excursion into Satellite Realms (the name of her previous book), but in many ways a more important book. Where Satellite Realms froze to a moment the dynamic situation concerning transnational broadcasting, Women and Media in the Middle East tells a different story of the cross-border broadcasting in the Muslim world, mostly through the words of women.

This is a book that should not be confined to women's studies classes, though it would be appropriate there. Instead, it should be integrated through the curricula of the burgeoning number of journalism schools in the Middle East, mostly filled with thousands of young Arab women hoping some day to be a "famous" journalist. This book gives those hopefuls a dose of reality while at the same time leaving open the possibility that the historically dismal history of women communicators in the Middle East is a thing of the past. Women activists-many of them journalists and broadcasters-have made a difference throughout the region, as this book attests.

This book introduces the reader to women from Morocco to Turkey who overcame social, cultural and economic difficulties in film, newspapers, television and even the Internet. Thirteen authors contributed eleven chapters to this book, which ought to appeal to media and development scholars, political scientists, and sociologists interested in the Middle East. Their stories are as educational as they are inspirational.

Exceptional chapters from Sonia Dabbous, Zahia Samil Salhi, Sahar Khamis, and Lina Khatib draw symbolic meaning from women's struggles in their professions and as activists, thus becoming "mothers" of their nations, if not the region, since media products are often a shared feast. Magda Abu-Fadil contributes to this theme by examining the international role of female communicators to furthering global understanding of the condition of women in the Middle East, while Victoria Firmo-Fontan examines the role of women on Lebanon's controversial Al Manar, a television channel operated by Hizbollah.

Deborah Wheeler, one of two American contributors to this book, examines Internet usage in the Middle East, which, contrary to worldwide figures, is male dominated by a very wide margin, and how female users in the region seem not to consider developing a "global voice."

An unusual attribute of this book is how smoothly the reader can move from chapter to chapter because it has a 'single author feel" to it that students will appreciate. Most edited collections lack uniformity in writing style and voice, which this volume clearly has.

Other contributors to this volume are Benaz Somiry-Batrawi, Gholam Khiabany and Annabelle Sreberny, and Haya al-Murghni and Mary Ann Tetreault.

Dr. Sakrteaches in the School of Media, Arts and Design at the University of Westminster, London.

--Transnational Broadcasting Studies Journal