In Whose Style? A Critical Analysis of Content in the Sunday Nation's "Femalestyle" Pages

Abstract

The newspaper has been a major mass communication medium since the early 1800s, with the development of the American penny press. While early newspaper offered news, analysis and entertainment features to the mass public, researchers agree that these did little to cater for the information needs of women beyond women's sections or pages that provided "traditional fare"-a small number of pages dedicated to child care, fashion and beauty, recipes, gossip and society news and household matters. Most of these sections in the early days were written by female journalists. With the development of the women's movement worldwide, media and femist scholars have called for the rethinking of these pages to include material more directly relevant to the information needs of women. Mainstreaming, where women's news is included in the different parts of the newspaper, is also another direction development in an effort to include women's news in the general public debate. The Sunday Nation in Kenya carries the only formal women's section in the country. This study is a content analysis of the material appearing on these pages in relation to the most frequent themes, issues, personalities and items covered in January to December 2001, as well as the paper's own editorial policy concerning women's sections. Findings show that these pages typically cover fashion and beauty, childcare and nutritional issues, as well as women's health. The pages also fall short of the paper's intention to cover womens news in the rural and regional areas of East Africa, concenrating instead on coverage of urban issues and personalites.