Abstract
Being a country with profound patriarchal traditions, the media environment remains conservative on feminism and gender-related issues in China, despite prevalent feminist movements worldwide. This sphere is increasingly scrutinized when Xi took power, who has displayed a strongman leadership to further centralize the overall dominance. Nevertheless, there is still space to negotiate women’s rights and gender-related issues. One example is China Women’s News (CWN), the official publication of All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF) - the one and only state-sponsored organisation on women’s affairs. It is particularly discovered that there is a special column on CWN called Women of the Year, which presents 10 most outstanding female figures annually as role models who have made extraordinary achievements and demonstrated women’s empowerment. However, considering the institutional association between CWN and the nation-state, there might be implicit ideological connotations underneath the high-profile acknowledgements, given the social reality where most women still suffer from systematic discrimination and under/ misrepresentation. This study conducts a critical discourse analysis (CDA) on the media discourse of Women of the Year, deciphering its ideological implications through the examination of texts as a site where women, media and state interplay with each other. This study also invites more research on the challenges women are confronted with in media representations and in the reality, to contribute to broader social justice.
Author Information
Congcong Chen, The London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom
Paper Information
Conference: MediAsia2023
Stream: Critical and Cultural Studies
This paper is part of the MediAsia2023 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Chen C. (2023) State-Run Feminism in China: Who Has Been Empowered? A Critical Discourse Analysis on Women of the Year (2017-2021) in China Women’s News ISSN: 2186-5906 – The Asian Conference on Media, Communication & Film 2023: Official Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-5906.2023.9
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-5906.2023.9
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