Hiding women healthcare workers in the media spotlight: how the Chinese state media represented women HCWs in response to the Covid-19-engendered crises

ABSTRACT

As the first country to be hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese government was confronted by the dual crisis in public health and gender domination. How did the Chinese official media discursively respond to the crises? Using qualitative content analysis and critical discourse analysis, this study examines the Chinese state media’s discursive tactics amidst the COVID-19-engendered crises that destabilized the gendered symbolic order. Examining six party organs’ coverage of healthcare workers (HCWs) on Weibo in the first half of 2020, the findings show that the state media managed to achieve two seemingly incompatible objectives—valorizing women HCWs while maintaining gender domination—through selective visibility and the manipulation of the discourses of domesticity and femininity. While women HCWs were given considerable attention and valorized for their sacrifice and emotional labor, they were relegated to marginal topical areas and demanded to suppress their private and bodily needs. This study, henceforth, contributes to extant feminist studies by unraveling the sophisticated representational devices employed by powerholders in coping with crises in the gendered symbolic regime and the contradictions in such maneuvers that portent subversion of these very strategies of discursive domestication.

KEYWORDS:

• Female healthcare workers
• gendered health profession
• gendered symbolic regime
• crisis
• change
• continuity

Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to the Feminist Media Studies’ Editors’ prompt responses, especially Editor Cynthia Carter’s helpful guidance in the revision process. I express my deep gratitude to the anonymous reviewers’ insightful comments, which tremendously helped improve the manuscript. I also thank Bo Shan, Min Wang, and other colleagues for their help and support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See, https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/#graph-deaths-daily

2. See,https://china.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202004/05/WS5e89e37ba3107bb6b57aaf57.html

3. See, https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_6416824

4. See, http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2020-03/09/content_5490382.htm

5. See, https://www2.unwomen.org/-/media/field%20office%20eseasia/docs/publications/2020/04/ap_first_100-days_COVID-19-r02.pdf?la=en&vs=3400

6. See, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-propaganda-a/in-peoples-war-on-coronavirus-chinese-propaganda-faces-pushback-idUSKBN2100NA, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/chinas-ineffective-coronavirus-response-could-create-its-own-black-swan/, He, Shi, Liu (2020) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/25741292.2020.1799911?needAccess=true

7. See, https://jingdaily.com/navigating-chinas-complicated-gender-movement/

8. https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/639357.html

9. Li was the first expert who recommended the lockdown of Wuhan to the State Council, which was never mentioned in these reports. See, https://www.cma.org.cn/art/2020/3/27/art_1783_33939.html

10. While Stacey Liang initiated and profiled herself as the leader of this campaign, this study does not attribute the whole campaign to any one individual initiator. Rather, it was the volunteers, donors, and netizens who, through their contributions and discursive online engagements, brought to the fore the feminist dimension of the campaign. See other similar discussion on this point: https://www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org/2020/07/13/stand-by-her-chinese-feminist-rhetoric-during-the-COVID-19-pandemic/

11. See, https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1006227/wuhan-nurses-death-highlights-a-profession-in-crisis

12. See,https://www.dw.com/zh/%E6%8A%97%E7%96%AB%E5%89%A7%E6%9C%80%E7%BE%8E%E9%80%86%E8%A1%8C%E8%80%85%E6%AD%A7%E8%A7%86%E5%A5%B3%E6%80%A7/a-55006953

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hao Cao

Hao Cao (PhD, UT-Austin) is a faculty member at School of Journalism and Communication at Wuhan University, China. She is also affiliated with the Center for Studies of Media Development, as well as the Data Protection and Institutional Innovation Research Group. Her research focuses on social movements, global communication, gender and sexuality, communication technologies, and democratic communication. Her work has appeared in journals such as Media, Culture and Society, International Journal of Communication and Global Media and Communication.