Structural Masculinism and Women’s Media Ownership

An article co-authored by Marlene Radl, Burçe Çelik, Mojca Pajnik & Birgit Sauer on structural masculinism and women’s media ownership in the context of authoritarian populism has been published in the International Journal of Communication.

This study explores the structural imbrications between gendered news media ownership and masculinist authoritarian populism from the lens of a feminist political economy of communication. The existing literature offers useful insights into the authoritarian-capitalist restructuring of media but fewer into how these processes are gendered. Drawing on primary data and secondary resources of ownership ties in Austria, Slovenia, and Turkey, the authors explore the masculinist configuration of news media ownership in countries that saw the rise of authoritarian-populist politics in recent years, albeit in varying degrees. The authors employ the concept of structural masculinism and the perspective of feminist political economy of communication to reveal the ways in which news media ownership structures are gendered. They argue that female underrepresentation coupled with patriarchal family business models, ownership concentration, and clientelist-masculinist ties between politics and the media create a fertile ground for media influence and control by masculinist authoritarian populists.

The article is one of seven published in a special section of the journal titled Unpacking Property: Media, Ownership, and Power in Transformation, edited by Sebastian Sevignani and Hendrik Theine.