I don’t know how many people have noticed this, but newspapers really need to get their act together when it comes to headlines. Either knowingly or unknowingly they feed people biases and prejudices in subtle but obvious ways. Here’s one example from yesterday:
Married woman gang-raped in Delhi, four arrested
Seems like a simple, accurate, and concise headline no? But look at it closely. Why is “Married” included here? Suppose it said instead “Brown eyed woman gang-raped in Delhi, four arrested” or “Long haired woman gang-raped in Delhi, four arrested”, you’d scratch your head in puzzlement wouldn’t you? I mean what relevance does eye color or hair length have to the fact that this woman was raped? Similarly, what relevance does marital status have to the fact that this poor woman was raped? If a newspaper won’t unnecessarily focus on her eye color or length of her hair, why is it focusing on the fact that she’s married?
What is the hidden message?
I’ve seen many other headlines describing people using irrelevant adjectives. “Techie”, “Dalit”, “North Indian” etc. are just a few of them. A person’s entire life, hopes, joys and dreams reduced to one word chosen by a reporter. But coming back to “married”, what exactly does it mean in this context?
I had put this question up on Google+ and one opinion was that if the woman was married, it means she wasn’t dressed provocatively or asking for it. Therefore it must be a “genuine” case of rape and more serious that if the woman was single. Of course, none of this is said explicitly by the reporter and it’s probably not thought consciously by the reader either. But it’s precisely due to the semi conscious implication that it’s so powerful. The bias starts with the reporter and transfers itself or reinforces the mindset of the reader.
It looks like married women are treated differently everywhere. IHM had written about how the Indian law wanted to keep an exemption for marital rape. Many comments on that article showed that people are unable to understand that rape is rape. Whether by a husband or stranger is irrelevant. It’s as if they’re truly thinking of issues like “consent” etc for the very first time. It required rape to be applied to married women to bring out this thought process!
It’s clear that people in India don’t view all women equally. Married women deserve some kind of special status in their eyes. Apparently unlike single women, they don’t ask to be raped by stranger, but have to put up with it from their husbands!
*mind blows*
I agree. “Being married” is a status that brings along with it so many connotations and denotations, it’s sad really. Whatever happened to objectivity of reporting?
I agree with IHM in her comment in your Google+ post. In the days before blogs and social networking, nobody asked these questions. It was accepted as the norm.
In reply to Ashwathy
Maybe it’s just to attract more views. If you write something that pander’s to people’s prejudices you generate more interest. Who knows?
In reply to bhagwad
Yes, that’s another possibility. To cater to the “majority” sentiment.
I think the people reporting on issues on crime and even otherwise unconsciously use terms to portray the image of a victim without actually divulging their identity. Something as meaningless as the use of the word ‘poor’ in “Similarly, what relevance does marital status have to the fact that this poor woman was raped?”. I’m sure you didn’t use the word ‘poor’ in an economic context, but using words like poor, helpless, weak and so on to label a woman who is raped is always an unconscious assumption forced on every woman who is raped to prevent her to lead her life normally after such a crime. As if strong, empowered and married women can never be raped. Secondly, a report which states a ‘married’ woman had been raped can be taken as a slap to those mindsets which consider marriage as a solution to prevent rapes.
In reply to Xing
Well, in this case “poor” means wronged or one to whom something terrible has happened. It can happen to anyone.
When a married women gets raped, there is a family behind that are destroyed. If she has children it has negative impact on them too. Some narrow minded husbands might even give a thought whether to take her back and worst case scenarios some male dominated society might blame her for the tragedy that caused a bad name for the family.
Sometimes when reporters/editors add adjectives like techie etc, this can just alert other females who belong to that group to be careful.
To me, the headline seemed harmless as it gives the reader more information about the woman.
In reply to Vinod
More information is hardly a relevant reason. Why not put the color of her saree or the length of her fingernails? A newspaper headline is specifically designed to be short and have the most relevant information in it. The fact that they chose to put “married” in a headline like that means a lot.
Also, there’s no reason why a woman’s life should be destroyed because of rape. It’s only other people who foolishly insist that a woman’s life is over. Ideally getting raped should be like getting bitten by a mad dog. It’s not the woman’s fault that it happened. All the shame is on the rapist and not the other way round.
In reply to bhagwad
Well, wouldn’t getting bitten by a mad dog just a tad bit more dangerous? You might actually die if it gets infected. And hey, can’t blame the mad dog either because it is mad. Not so for a rapist. Totally agree with your sentiments.
In reply to Fem
Maybe we should deal with rapists the way we deal with mad dogs. It’s not personal – they can’t control themselves after all (as they’re so fond of saying).
Our society, in its pressing urge to uphold ‘Indian culture’ and ‘moral values’, has forgotten the basics of reason and humanity.
In reply to Ash
Indeed.
I can’t put my finger on it but I do think something different when ‘married woman’ is written instead of ’23-year-old GIRL’ (which is what might have been used if she were single). Maybe it is to do with the fact that marriage is seen as the be-all end-all, something like B.C and A.D, so marital status must be specified? I agree that it is irrelevant to news headlines though.
In reply to BBD-Lite
Isn’t it amazing that this has wormed its way into even people like us who know better? Think of the power of the message that’s being sent out!
Had Badri Singh Pandey agreed to Jyoti’s inter-caste marriage she wouldn’t be roaming in streets in night-time and this incident wouldn’t have happened.
In reply to Communal Award
What has marriage got to do with being out in the streets at night time? And the incident would not have happened if the rapists had been taught that it is wrong to rape or had decided they are not going to rape women. What nonsense!
In reply to Communal Award
Don’t try and shift the blame onto the woman. Remember who is the criminal here – the rapist.
In reply to Communal Award
If you ever get robbed,perhaps the charges should be pressed against you for having certain amount and keeping it unsafely…not the culprit!