From Beirut to Washington: A Comparative Analysis of the Media’s Impact on Female Political Participation
I am Meerna Yamut, a Lebanese American student majoring in Culture and Politics and minoring in Government at Georgetown University in Qatar. While I have spent most of my life in Qatar, naturally, I was a bit disconnected from two monumental parts of my identity. I have not been to Lebanon for 13 years, and I have not been to America for 20 years (except for a one-week trip with Georgetown, “Women as Changemakers”). Hence, I always experienced an identity crisis encompassing all of these various cultural interactions that heavily impacted me in many ways. These impacts range from the strength of the languages I speak, my accent, my attire, my behavior, and most importantly, my beliefs and perceptions.
However, with this physical disconnect, my perceptions of both countries came from sources that were mainly digital. It was heavily reliant on the media, ranging from online newspapers and magazines to social media, films, and news channels. However, after viewing multiple media outlets, I rarely ever saw a female politician on screen or even heard of them through public conversation regularly. I always saw male politicians on screen, read their names in newspapers, heard of them in the day-to-day political debates and conversations, and even studied thoroughly about them in school. The buildings were named after them, memorials were built in their honor, and their social perceptions and political credibility were always on the tip of everyone’s tongue. The same could not be said for their female counterparts. Hence, I wanted to analyze and compare different perceptions and effects that the media causes across my two cultural components with a specific lens focusing on female political participants. Especially, considering my cultural and political field of study and my identity as a female Lebanese American, I wanted to explore how women in these two countries find that the media impacts their political participation and how feasible pursuing a career in politics is. While women are known to be a minority in the political arena globally, applying a personal cultural lens that compares the Eastern and Western media and its political and social impacts would make this project more intriguing while also addressing the broader issues of media framing and stereotyping, patriarchal societies, and the large exclusion of women in politics. This exclusion diminishes the representation of half of the population and does not give a chance for womens’ intellectual and enriching qualities to serve as an asset to countries and their respective governments. Therefore, it is imperative to locate the issue within the media and carefully assess the similarities and differences between segments of the East and West. The solution to the problem must come from the ground up which calls for a grassroots movement in reshaping the way the media portrays women and their societal perceptions in politics.
Faculty Mentor: Prof. Firat Oruc
E-Portfolio: https://my5581.wixsite.com/my-site-2
