Women Making Meaning

New Feminist Directions in Communication

Lana F. Rakow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317367123
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Originally published in 1992. This book captures the dynamic confluence of feminist and communication scholarship by setting out some of the provocative questions that mark this intersection. Several of the essays in the book are theoretical in nature, and consider the changing complexion of the field in view of this cross-fertilization; other contributors tackle those individual forms of communication that pose certain challenges for women such as verbal harassment and pornography. The final section of the book, more ethnographic in nature, presents a number of case studies, written primarily by women of colour, which recount the various ways that communication forms such as television, journalism and spoken discourse construct and perpetuate racist and sexist stereotypes.

Part 1
The Politics of Making Meaning

Making meaning is a political act by feminist scholars with intentional and sometimes unintentional consequences. These authors take up key political issues surrounding the introduction of feminist work into the field of communication, the development of Western feminist theory, the exclusion of issues of women of color from feminist communication work, and the inherent dangers of representing "the Other."

1
The Field Reconsidered

Lana F. Rakow

In the second half of the 1980s the rest of the field of communication studies could no longer ignore feminist scholarship or the growing number of women calling themselves feminist scholars. Though the recognition of feminist scholarship by the rest of the field represented a new and significant phase for feminism in communication, the field's late recognition of feminist theory illustrated a great irony. Understanding communication has been central to feminist theory in many disciplines in the past several decades. In fact, feminists outside the field have made significant contributions to communication theory without most of those in communication being aware of it (Treichler and Wartella 1986, 2). We feminist scholars in communication are, in turn, making a substantial contribution to feminist theory, even while we undertake two major challenges. One is to insist that scholars in our own field not only recognize the existence of feminist work but that they also be held accountable for it, preventing feminist scholarship from being marginalized into simply another approach to studying communication. A second challenge is to complete our own internal revolution, accounting for and theorizing our own political, epistemological, and cultural differences as women and as feminists.

A History of Feminist Activism

I should make it clear that feminists and research on gender were hardly absent from the field until the 1980s. On the contrary, activist women have been challenging the field's male power structure and research agenda for almost two decades. In addition, foment from other quarters—from those in international communication, intercultural communication, racial and ethnic minority communication, critical theory, and gay and lesbian communication—helped open up space in professional organizations and journals for feminist scholars to make a public presence in the field. Women of color and white women, heterosexual and lesbian, with varying political and epistemological agendas, have come to feminist scholarship from varying streams of activism and research. By and large, however, feminist scholarship as a collective and public endeavor in the field has been by and about white women.

My own reading of this history is, of course, partial.¹ Feminist theory has helped us understand that our individual standpoints provide us the framework for seeing and participating in the world around us. Those women who were at work making change in the field in the 1970s and early 1980s, those who are women of color, and those who hold a different political or epistemological approach than I will no doubt have different interpretations of the history and current state of feminist scholarship in communication. My account of feminist scholarship in the field of communication stems from my own position as a white radical feminist graduate student in the U.S. in the 1980s. Let me provide some detail about the developments that led to the feminist turning point in communication as they appear to me. I realize that I name names and choose particular events at my own peril, since I will leave out the names of many women who have been instrumental in setting the course of feminist scholarship through their hard physical and intellectual work. However, the benefits of beginning to record and document our history so that it is not lost (see Spender 1982 on the importance of women preserving their past) and so that others in the field must begin to account for our role in shaping the direction of the discipline seem to outway the risks.

An academic field or discipline exists in and through the networks of individual faculty and programs held together and made visible by professional associations and journals. In communication's associations and journals we can see how and when feminist scholarship became a viable enterprise. In U.S.-based organizations such as the International Communication Association (ICA), Speech Communication Association (SCA), and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), women created committees and caucuses as early as 1972 to monitor and change the status of women in these organizations and the field and to support research on women's issues. Scholars from around the world have been affiliated with the currently named "Gender and Communication" group of the International Association for Mass Communication Research since its founding in 1981 by Madeleine Kleberg and Ulla B. Abrahamson in Stockholm, Sweden.

Research on gender conducted in the 1970s was often done within the dominant theoretical and methodological frameworks of the field at the time. To do otherwise was risky business indeed, and unlikely to get much of a hearing. Though often responding to questions they had not posed (Thorne, Kramarae, and Henley 1983,8), feminists did manage in the 1970s to publish works that reverberated with the feminist activism of the day, drawing attention to stereotypes and discrimination in communication contexts such as conversations and television programming (see Rakow 1986). Conference panels on such topics as women and language were held in related organizations, such as at the Linguistic Society of America conference in 1975 and the American Sociological Association in 1976, with such presenters as Cheris Kramarae, Barrie Thorne, Candace West, and Julia Penelope. Some feminists were able to challenge the focus and philosophy of the communication programs they worked in, such as the 1970s challenge by feminists at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (Long 1989, 427).

New organizations and journals were started in the 1970s as well, such as the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press founded by Donna Allen in Washington D.C. in 1972. Allen published Media Report to Women until its transfer to the editorship of Sheila Gibbons and publication by Communication Research Associates in Silver Spring, Maryland in 1988. The Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender (OSCLG) formed in 1981 as the result of conferences held on communication, language, and gender that began in 1978. The official publication of the Organization for Research on Women and Communication (ORWAC) of the Western States Communication Association, Women's Studies in Communication, began publication in 1977 under the editorship of Sandra A. Purnell. Sonja K. Foss and Karen A. Foss were editors from 1981 to 1988, Sandra L. Ragan was editor from 1988 to 1991, and Roseann Mandziuk from 1991 on. It remains the only refereed feminist journal published in the field, but it was only included in Speech Communication Association's Index to Journals in Communication Studies beginning in 1990. Women and Language was begun by Patricia Nichols, Pam Tiedt, and Sharon Veach at Stanford University in 1976, changing hands in 1982 when Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana took over its publication (Treichler and Kramarae 1982, 1). The periodical was transferred to Anita Taylor at George Mason University in 1988.

With this kind of groundwork laid by feminists in the 1970s and early 1980s, with a period of confusion and disarray in the field as it faced a number of challenges, and with exciting developments in feminist theory and research in other academic disciplines, conditions were ripe for the launching of the distinct and visible enterprise of feminist scholarship in communication. White feminist scholarship crystalized in the field around 1986, when the Committee on the Status of Women of AEJMC, the Feminist Scholarship Interest Group of ICA, and the Women's Caucus of SCA were all sponsoring significant programming on feminist theory and research (though all three organizations had in the past sponsored programming on gender research and women's issues and some feminist papers). In the next few years, the possibilities for a diverse and multicultural feminist scholarship were introduced, along with the difficulties that confront feminists in all disciplines grappling with the issue of differences among women and among feminists.

The development and appearance of feminist scholarship in and through SCA was perhaps the most gradual of the three organizations. With a strong Women's Caucus sponsoring programs since its inception in 1972 (chaired that first year by Bonnie R. Patton who was joined by other charter members such as Anita Taylor, Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, and Sally Gearhart), the introduction of topics on feminist theory and research using feminist methodologies was less sudden. In the 1986 program of SCA's annual convention, panels ranged from some sponsored by the Women's Caucus that represented traditional research approaches to gender (for example, how women can succeed in business and the affect of gender on how managers are perceived) to some that were explicitly feminist, including one panel called "Contemporary Radical Feminist Theory: The Challenge of Finding New Rhetorical Tools," with Cheris Kramarae (see her chapter in this volume), Patricia Cramer, Cindy Jenefsky, Ann Russo (see her chapter in this volume), and Karlyn Kohrs Campbell.

With a few exceptions, paper topics on panels sponsored by the Women's Caucus of SCA dealt with research on and issues concerning white women, without their explicit reference to it. The Black Caucus, on the other hand, had a history of programming papers—if not separate panels— about women, such as Melbourne S. Cummings' 1986 paper, "Socio-Historical Continuities of Afro-American Comedy: The Case of the Black Female Comic." In the next few years, and at the prodding of women such as Marsha Houston (see her chapter in this volume), more discussion has taken place about the need to remove white middle-class women from the center of feminist scholarship and more attention has been paid to the communication issues of women of color, particularly black women. For example, beginning with the 1988 convention, the Women's Caucus has sponsored each year an open forum on issues of diversity in race and ethnicity, sexuality, religion, age, and class. The 1988 forum was facilitated by Marsha Houston and Fern Johnson; the second forum had Houston, Barbara Bate, Sally Gearhart, and Lynne Webb as speakers; Marsha Houston [Stanback], Karen A. Foss, Dorothy L. Pennington, Olga Arenivar, and Nancy L. Roth were participants in 1990.

At its annual convention in 1990, the SCA Women's Caucus became two entities, through the work of such women as Anita Taylor, Judith Trent, Rebecca Swanson-Kroll, and Cynthia Lont: the Women's Caucus remains as the group that will deal with women's professional concerns and development. The newly created Feminist and Women Studies Division [sic] will now be the research and programming group, the compromise name for the group suggesting that more traditional political and methodological approaches to gender will be included as well as feminist scholarship. By 1990 in SCA, La Raza Caucus had been formed, the Women's Caucus and Black Caucus were jointly sponsoring programs, and panels such as "Storytelling and Black Women Preachers in the traditional Black Church" were sponsored by the Black Caucus, signaling that more attention was being paid to ethnic minority groups, to women of color, and to the relationship between race and gender.

White feminist scholarship arrived more suddenly and noticeably in the International Communication Association and the Association For Education in Journalism and Mass Communication because the roles of their respective Committees on the Status of Women were less viable than SCA's Women's Caucus. While the Committee on the Status of Women of AEJMC had had periods of strong activism since its founding in 1972 (see Sharp, et. al. 1985, 1), in the mid 1980s, it was lagging. Some women members of the organization expressed the opinion at the Committee's 1985 and 1986 business meeting that the Committee had outlived its function-women no longer seemed to need the Committee to succeed in the field and no interesting research questions remained to be examined. Fortunately, women with an interest in feminist scholarship had other ideas. At the 1986 annual convention, a panel called "Taking Gender Seriously: An Introduction to Feminist Theory and Methodology" was sponsored by the Committee. On the panel were Kathryn Cirksena (see her chapter, with Lisa Cuklanz, in this volume), Georgia Anne NeSmith, Linda Steiner (see her chapter in this volume), and myself. Feminist programming continues to be a strong component of the Committee's programming although more traditional research topics and methodologies are also included.

In 1988, the Committee on the Status of Women of AEJMC began addressing the need to move beyond white feminist scholarship. A panel was sponsored with the Minorities and Communication Division and Qualitative Studies Division on "New Approaches to Gender, Race and Class: A Dialogue" and another panel was cosponsored with the Minorities and Communication Division on "Strategies for Research on Black Women and the Media." The startling degree to which feminist scholarship had made inroads into the organization (an organization characterized by its professional ties to media industries) in such a short time was reflected at its 1989 convention, where the organization's general plenary session was entitled "Freedom and Equity: A Mandate for Feminist Studies in Communication," with an address given by Brenda Dervin and remarks by Carolyn Stewart Dyer, Leslie Steeves, and myself. In 1990, after several years of threats to reduce or eliminate the Committee on the Status of Women's right to sponsor programming, the organization approved a change in the constitution and by-laws that makes the Committee a Commission on the Status of Women with full programming rights as well as a vote on the organization's executive committee. For the first time the Committee, now a Commission, is chaired by a woman of color, Jane Rhodes (see her chapter in this volume).

In 1984 and 1985 the groundwork was laid for the formal entrance of feminist scholarship into the International Communication Association in 1986. In 1984 a meeting was conv...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Preface
• Part 1. The Politics of Making Meaning
• Part 2. Beyond the Field's Boundaries
• Part 3. Case Studies in Making Meaning
• Index
• About the Contributors