Weeping Women, Wringing Hands: How the Mainstream Media Stereotyped Women's Experiences in Kosovo

Women's experiences of war are highly misrepresented in mainstream media. A 'news blackout' of women's war experiences, or ongoing distortions of these experiences, inadvertently hide many crucial issues that would otherwise improve the public's understanding of war. The variety and frequency of occurrence of gendered interpretations of war coverage are well worth investigating. This paper provides a comparative study of gendered reporting of the Kosovo conflict using a context analysis model and applying it to the media of twenty-one nations. Additionally, the study briefly traces the commercial, political and social factors within the media business that contribute to ongoing gendered coverage of women and war.