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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://anrows.intersearch.com.au/anrowsjspui/handle/1/12570
Record ID: 8a647e9b-87b9-4ad7-9898-29116bd59a0e
Type: Journal Article
Title: The war against women: media representations of men's violence against women in Australia
Other Titles: Violence against women
Authors: Howe, Adrian
Keywords: Representations of women;Community attitudes
Year: 2006
Publisher: Sage Publications
Citation: 3 (1), February 1997
Notes:  General overview: This article looks at the way in which an Australian newspaper, 'The Age', published in Melbourne, represented men's violence against women and children in a 3-week series titled 'The War Against Women' in 1993.

Method: The series are analysed from a Foucauldian perspective (a question of power / knowledge on exploring how the issue of men's violence against women and children, is being 'put into discourse' or represented in the mainstream media).

Discussion: It discusses how the series responded with shock at the "new" discovery of statistics and reports indicating wide-spread domestic violence and sexual assaults in Victoria. The effect was to reinscribe its critique of men's violence against women within hegemonic discourse of gender relations in which feminists vilify men, women acquiesce in domestic violence, and men as a group are not to be held accountable for a small, out-of-ordinary minority.


Conclusions: The series' message was one of helplessness, that is, domestic violence is a war that cannot be won. The media appropriated feminist knowledge and activism against men's violence by translating it into material that could be acceptable for a mainstream readership.

URI: https://anrows.intersearch.com.au/anrowsjspui/handle/1/12570
ISSN: 1077-8012
Appears in Collections:Journal Articles

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