Elsevier

Women's Studies International Forum

Volume 51, July–August 2015, Pages 10-18
Women's Studies International Forum

Gender, abortion and substantive representation in the South African newsprint media

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2015.04.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We compare the substantive and descriptive representation of women regarding abortion in the South African newsprint media.

  • A bifurcation of positions taken by male and female commentators represented in the newsprint media is identified.

  • It is found that female commentators consistently assume a pro-choice position before and after political and legislative transformation.

  • The stance taken by male commentators shifts from neutral (before transformation) to a largely pro-life stance afterward.

Synopsis

Democratisation and abortion legislation transformation in South Africa provided a unique opportunity to reflect on the descriptive and substantive representation of women regarding abortion in the newsprint media. Using Celis and Childs' (2012) inductive approach, we conducted a content analysis of newspaper articles on abortion from 1978 to 2005 answering: ‘Who is called upon to comment on abortion issues?’; ‘From what position do these commentators contribute to the discussion?’; ‘What changes emerged around the transition to democracy?’ Our analysis revealed the distinctly gendered nature of substantive representation of abortion in the newsprint media, including: a bifurcation of positions taken by male and female commentators, with around two-thirds of women commentators substantively representing women through a pro-choice position; a consistency in the percentage of female commentators taking this position both before and after democratisation; and the socio-political changes shifting male commentators' perspectives from neutral or unstated positions to, mostly, a pro-life position.

Introduction

Abortion has become an intensely political public issue. Contestation over who should legitimately control abortion, under what circumstances it should be permitted (if at all), and how and where it should be practised is, by now, commonplace (Fried, 2006). This contestation takes place in a range of spaces, an influential one being the newsprint media (Ferree, Gamson, Gerhards, & Rucht, 2002).

In this paper, we pose the question whether there are discernible differences in South African newsprint media commentators on, and representations regarding, abortion prior to 1990 (a time of: restrictive abortion legislation (Abortion & Sterilisation Act, Act No. 2 of 1975 (A&S Act)), severe media restrictions (see discussion below), and limited possibilities for public gender activism) and after 1990 (the transition to, and initial years of, democracy which saw: the liberalisation of abortion legislation (choice on Termination of Pregnancy (CTOP) Act, 1996 (CTOP Act)), transformation of the media, and increased public gender activism). In particular, we address how abortion was framed during these different time periods and who (specifically men or women) were drawn on to comment on abortion in the newsprint media.

Our analysis, reported on below, reflects the observation of Skjerdal (2000) and our own readings of our data set that abortion was (at least in the period from which we collected our data) largely portrayed in the newsprint media in a simplistic way, with articles reinforcing positions on abortion as a dichotomy between ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’. Journalists tended to quote commentators who were identified superficially as taking either a pro-life position (meaning against abortion and thus against the legalisation of abortion) or a pro-choice position (meaning in favour of legal abortion and a woman's right to choose). Despite the nuance of debate concerning abortion in other fora, this dichotomy serves to create the stark contrasts that make a good news story.

Keeping this in mind, the questions that we asked were: Who is called on to comment on abortion in the newsprint media? How is abortion framed? How have these changed as a result of the transition to democracy? These questions allowed us to reflect on the descriptive and substantive representation of women in the arena of abortion representation (in the newsprint media) in the context of radical social change and significant abortion legislation liberalisation in South Africa. Like Ferree et al. (2002) we argue that who says what about abortion in influential cultural spaces like the newsprint media contributes to the outcomes that we see concerning abortion.

The concepts of descriptive and substantive representation that we deploy in this article are often used to articulate the difference between the straightforward numbers of female representatives (descriptive representation) as opposed to the more complex representation of women's issues, interests, needs and wants (substantive representation). Thus, in this case, descriptive representation refers to the number of women being asked to comment in the media, whilst substantive representation refers to media coverage given to those positions that would be considered to be in the best interests of women (see further discussion below). Although much work on descriptive and substantive representation has been conducted in parliamentary settings, Celis and Childs (2012) argue that substantive representation is not limited to legislatures, and that it is important to study descriptive and substantive representation in a range of contexts (in our case, the newsprint media).

In the following we talk to debates concerning the concepts of descriptive and substantive representation and outline the elements of the inductive approach suggested by Celis and Childs (2012) that we adopted. We describe the context of abortion legislation in South Africa and changes in South African media.

Section snippets

Descriptive and substantive representation

Much of the literature around the political representation of women has focused on the concepts of descriptive and substantive representation and the ways in which these two forms of representation may be linked (Celis, Childs, Kantola, & Krook, 2008). The politics of presence literature suggests a link between descriptive representation (being a woman representative) and substantive representation (representing women's needs or interests) on the basis that women representatives will share

Transformation of abortion legislation in South Africa

The A&S Act, introduced at the height of Apartheid, became, according to Cope (1993), another political tool utilised by the Nationalist government in pursuit of white male supremacy. Abortion was legal under restrictive conditions, with the processes required to obtain such an abortion being very bureaucratic. Although white women comprised less than 13% of the country's female population, they received the vast majority of all legal abortions during the Apartheid years. By contrast,

Transformation of the media in South Africa

Media scholars in South Africa have highlighted the changes that the newsprint media has undergone since the transition to democracy. Under Apartheid the media were controlled in various ways by the National Party government, which used the states of emergency, ‘warnings’ to newspapers and the Bureau of Information to restrict press freedom (Tomaselli & Louw, 1989). The Afrikaans language press was regarded as lending support to the National Party government in the implementation of its

Abortion in the media

There is little research on abortion in the media. The studies that have been conducted show how social movement organisations obtain mainstream media coverage (Rohlinger, 2002, Rohlinger, 2006), how the word “baby” or “foetus” is used by opposing political elites in the media (Simon & Jerit, 2007) and, in South Africa, how the change in abortion legislation became a symbol in the newsprint media in the 1990s of fundamental change in the state (Skjerdal, 2000). The study by Ferree et al. (2002)

Research questions and method

The research reported here formed part of the larger project on representations of abortion in the South African newsprint media (Feltham-King, 2010). In this paper, we explore the following questions:

  • 1.

    Who, men or women, are called on to comment on abortion in the newsprint media?

  • 2.

    From what position (pro-life, pro-choice, neither) do commentators contribute to the discussion on abortion?

  • 3.

    Is there any correlation between the gender of the commentators and the position taken?

  • 4.

    Do changes emerge in

Results

The quantification of articles from 1978 to 2005 in terms of the four categories of commentator gender revealed the following: female-only commentators: 25.2%; male-only commentators: 28.2%; gender of the commentators remained unstated/indiscernible: 27.9%; and both male and female commentators: 18.6%.

In Table 2 a cross-tabulation of articles with female-only commentators, male-only commentators, both female and male commentators and commentators with unstated/indiscernible gender before and

Discussion

Female commentators (inclusive of articles with “female only” and “both female and male” commentators) comprised 45.3% of commentators across the full data set. This is higher than the percentage of female commentators in newspaper articles in general: the Global Media Monitoring Project of 2005 found that South African women constituted 22% of commentators in newspaper articles of all types (Lowe-Morna, 2006). Therefore, in terms of the descriptive representation of women in commenting on

Conclusion

McBride Stetson (2001) argues that, despite feminist advocacy around abortion, its highly gendered nature has remained remarkably hidden in public spaces. This paper shows how positions stated in the South African newsprint media about abortion are distinctly gendered: there was a clear trend towards a bifurcation of positions taken by male and female commentators; the percentage of female commentators taking a pro-choice position were remarkably consistent before and after the transition to

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (2054126). Thank you to Nicola Graham and Lindsay Kelland for the assistance with the coding.

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