The Construction Of Gender In Opinion Articles From Kenya: A Case Study Of Magazines From The Saturday Nation And The Standard Newspapers

ABSTRACT

Gender is a socially constructed unit in society. This means that society assigns identities as either masculine or feminine through studying behavior. Language too has been categorized as either feminine or masculine. Studies on differences in language used by male and female appear to have focused on speech and rarely on writing. This motivated the researcher to carry out a study on the construction of gender in opinion articles in Kenya, specifically, the Saturday magazines from The Nation and The Standard newspapers. In particular the study aimed to investigate gender role stereotypes, under-representation of the female and male gender and different writing styles of male and female authors. The data elicited would answer the following questions, which gender role stereotypes do the writers advocate, which gender has been under-represented and does the language used in the articles reflect gender differences. Articles from Femalespeak, Mantalk, MenOnly and GirlCode columns were selected using judgmental sampling procedure. The study was aided by the Appraisal Framework and Social Role theory. A checklist of gender role stereotypes was constructed and it aided in the collection of data. Content analysis was used to analyze the raw data. The findings presented that female and male writers do advocate for gender role stereotypes that are detrimental to the society. The study recommended that there is need to constantly sensitize the masses on harmful gender role stereotypes that lead to gender inequality. This can be done by setting up policies and programs that educate the society about equal treatment of the boy and girl child. It was commendable that the findings presented an equal representation of both gender as subjects in the articles analyzed. The researcher also noted that male writers tended to use more determiners, quantifiers and pronouns than their female counterparts. More findings and recommendations are discussed in the dissertation.