Gender and violence in news media and photography

Questions of gender permeate all aspect of media coverage of violence. Wars and the militarized practices that sustain them are deeply gendered, and so is press coverage of them. Rape and other forms sexual violence make the news on a regular basis. But the links between gender and violence go beyond the obvious: they range from dramatic to seemingly mundane, invisible in social structures and institutions that shape everyday society and politics. The purpose of this chapter is to focus on the links between gender and violence in photographic representations of humanitarian crises. We examine their deeply gendered nature. Whether they relate to war, famines or natural disasters, images of suffering often replicate gender stereotypes in highly problematic ways. But the chapter also shows how these visual narratives, which are a form of structural violence, can be challenged through alternative visual representations. The resulting feminist aesthetic encourages us, quite literally, to view the world differently. Seeing, in this sense, is a form of agency, an active engagement with politics, for established – and highly gendered – models of international relations can ultimately only change when we and our aesthetic sensibilities do.