Fashionable (Dis-)Order in Politics: Gender, Power and the Dilemma of the Suit

Autor(en)

Eva Flicker

Abstrakt

Women in political leadership are imprisoned in a double-bind communication: when they perform and dress along feminine patterns, they might be looked as deficient actors in the hard field of politics. When they refuse typical female looks and submit to male dress code, their performance is commented as conspicuous. The global visual political communication in media sends clear signals: nothing changes. Women are still the exception, ‘the other’. The visualized lose-lose situation for female politicians is conceived as symbolical violence. In this article the central piece of clothing - the dark suit – is discussed under cultural perspective, along macro-structural principles of the gender order, as instrument in the repetitive practice of exclusion in politics and within the distribution of media pictures. A visual discourse analysis - a ‘vis-course analysis’ - of international group photos from political events like summits traces fashion practices marking the fields of masculinity and power.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Soziologie

Journal

International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics

Band

9

Seiten

201-219

Anzahl der Seiten

18

ISSN

1740-8296

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1386/macp.9.2.201_3

Publikationsdatum

2013

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

508007 Kommunikationswissenschaft, 504001 Allgemeine Soziologie, 504014 Gender Studies, 504018 Kultursoziologie

Schlagwörter

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 16 – Frieden, Gerechtigkeit und starke Institutionen

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/2a2ea956-6dbb-4a7d-aff9-4acab49f93f6