Beyond feminist heroines: framing the discourses on Kurdish women fighters in three types of Western media

ABSTRACT

This article is a feminist framing and discourse analysis of Western media representations of women in armed conflicts. Looking specifically at the case of Kurdish women fighters, I conducted a qualitative data analysis of 125 news articles in three different media spaces. The results highlight the complex and socially constructed nature of media representations and how these representations are intertwined with larger geopolitical power relations. The analysis suggests that different actors carry the discourses on Kurdish women combatants for different purposes. While mass media and specialized media (including women’s and cultural magazines) are relatively similar in their representation of Kurdish women fighters, only the alternative media (both left and right-wing) are significantly different in their way of portraying them. While the images of Kurdish fighters are often believed to challenge the Orientalist gender stereotypes, I argue that the Western media coverage only reproduces these stereotypes by portraying them both as heroines and victims. The analysis also demonstrates the contrasted agency whether articles talk about Kurdish women vs. Western women fighters, in which the latter are part of larger discourses of “protection” and Western liberal feminism.

KEYWORDS:

• Kurdistan
• framing
• discourses
• representations
• women fighters

Acknowledgments

This paper is taken from my master's thesis “Victimes, héroïnes ou terroristes? Représentations des femmes combattantes kurdes dans les médias occidentaux” done in May 2020, at the University of Montreal, under the direction of Pascale Dufour. For this reason, I would like to thank her, as well as María Martín de Almagro and Marie-Joëlle Zahar for their valuable feedback on my work.

Disclosure statement

The author does not report any potential conflict of interest.

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Bénédicte Santoire

Bénédicte Santoire is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at the University of Ottawa. Her research interests include feminist international relations, feminist security studies, and the United Nations Security Council Resolutions on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS).