La metodología de conversión de las variables en la Encuesta de Ingresos y Gastos a los conceptos de las cuentas nacionales

In 2011, British newspapers published an increased number of news stories about Saudi women driving. The four newspapers selected here covered the two campaigns in 53 news items selected for analysis across nine years.

In 2011, British newspapers published an increased number of news stories about Saudi women driving. The four newspapers selected here covered the two campaigns in 53 news items selected for analysis across nine years.

The Independent The Guardian Daily Mail The Daily

Telegraph n % n % n % n % Religion (n=41) 8 19.5 22 53.7 7 17.1 4 9.8 Rights (n=68) 37 54.4 18 26.5 2 2.9 11 16.2 Allowed (n=48) 18 37.5 9 18.8 16 33.3 5 10.4 Arrest (n=39) 10 25.6 1 2.6 11 28.2 17 43.6 Ban (n=89) 39 43.8 8 9.0 32 36.0 10 11.2 Activist (n=60) 18 30.0 11 18.3 24 40.0 7 11.7 Campaign (n=77) 26 33.8 11 14.3 27 35.1 13 16.9 Protest (n=49) 10 20.4 3 6.1 27 55.1 9 18.4 Defy (n=49) 23 46.9 6 12.2 10 20.4 10 20.4

Table 6.2 The frequency of common words in the Saudi women campaign on the ban of driving

Table 6.2 shows that the most common word is "ban" (89n), used to describe the driving campaign; The Independent recorded the highest percentage (n=39, 43.8%) of ''ban'' , while the word ''religion'' recorded the lowest percentage (n=8, 19.5%)

The word 'arrest' was absent in The Guardian (n=1, 2.6%) because The Guardian

focused on coverage of the human stories of Saudi women such as loss of rights and male guardianship and was not focused on the punishment of Saudi government, while the word ''rights'' recorded the highest percentage (n=18, 26.5).The daily telegraph recorded the high percentage of ''arrest'' (43.6%) because the daily telegraph focused on the Saudi government when it punishment Saudi women driver. The four newspapers recorded differences between the frequencies of common words. The highest percentage word that The Independent recorded was rights (n=37, 54.4%) while the lowest average of the frequency words was 'religion' (53.7%) because The Independent did not focus on the reaction of the religious men in Saudi Arabia and their objections to the right of women to drive although it was used. Otherwise, The Guardian recorded the highest percentage of 'religion' (n=22, 53.7%) because it focused on the issue of driving as a human right and the religious men posing a threat to Saudi women driving. The Guardian also did not focus on the Saudi government's punishment.

The Daily mail tabloid recorded the highest percentage of 'ban' (n=32, 36%) because it covered the details of the campaign and the reaction of Saudi society. For example it made much space for the video in Youtube concerning the warning delivered by religious men to Saudi women that driving would damage their ovaries. On the other hand, the word 'rights' recorded the lowest average, (n=2 ,2.9% ) as Daily Mail was not focused on the ban on driving as an issue as much as other stories about women in the middle east, which were sometimes treated with a sarcastic tone.

The Daily Telegraph focused on the punishment of the Saudi government so, the highest word was 'arrest' (n=17, 43.6% ). However, because it did not focus on the reaction of the Saudi religious men, its recording of the word 'religion' has the lowest percentage (n=4, 9.8%).

Figure 6.8 Percentage of news stories published in the four British newspapers over the nine years period.

Figure 6.9 Number of news stories of the Saudi women campaign against of the ban on driving

According to the statistics shown in Figure 6.8, 2006 and 2009 were the two years with no media coverage of the protest campaigns. However, 2013 saw the greatest media coverage with 25 articles dedicated to Saudi women protesting against the ban on driving, constituting 53% of the total coverage with 25 articles dedicated to Saudi women protesting against the ban on driving, constituting 47.16% of the total coverage during the whole period (nine years). There was an increase in published news stories from 2012 because this marked the start of the first anti-driving ban

2% 4% 4% 2% 30% 6% 53% 2005 2007 2008 2010 2011 2012 2013 41.5 22.6 15.1 18.9

Total news stories per newspaper

The Independent (N=23) The Guardian (N=12) The Daily Mail (N=8) The Daily Telegraph (N=10)

campaign, when Manal Al-Sharaf posted a video of herself on YouTube. The Independent contributed almost half of the total UK articles found here 23 stories (43.39%). The Guardian had the second highest overall reporting frequencies during the whole period 12 stories (22.64%); third was Daily Mail 8 stories (15.09%) with the least coverage of the event by The Daily Telegraph 10 stories (18.86%) (Figure 6.9). A possible reason for the low rate of reporting by The Daily Telegraph may be that its readership is not interested in Middle Eastern women’s issue.

As shown in Figure 6.10, the most frequently cited themes varied across the four newspapers. The theme “Saudi women arrested” appeared in all four newspapers, but

Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph published the fewest stories on that theme. On the other hand, The Independent published the highest percentage of stories about the

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

The Daily Mail The Guardian The Independent The Daily Telegraph

details of Saudi activists who protested against the ban and were behind the wheel, while it focused the least on the support of wider Saudi society. Only The Daily Telegraph did not focus on the role of religion in the driving ban on Saudi women. The “government against Saudi women driving” theme was prominent in three newspapers, while The Daily Telegraph published a lower percentage of stories on this theme. There was frequent sardonic coverage of Saudi women’s right to drive, focusing on what Saudi Arabia published about the risks of driving and their connection to women’s health, except in The Guardian. Articles about the support in Saudi society for Saudi women driving, or for individual female drivers, appeared only in The Independent and The Daily Telegraph.

References to the Saudi women who managed the campaign or participated in driving on the streets had the highest frequency in The Independent, while they were also quite frequent in The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph. Daily Mail did not refer to this subject.

As Figure 6.11 shows, all four newspapers paid attention to the issue of Saudi women drivers, but they did so in different ways. The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, and The Independent recorded a higher percentage of news stories on the opinions of the Saudi women drivers than those including the women’s names. The Guardian published an equal number of women’s names and women’s opinions in their news stories.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 The independent

(N=23) The guardian (N=12) The daily mail (N=8) telegraph (N=10) The daily

Opinion (yes) Name (yes)

Moreover, The Independent provided more space for coverage of the Saudi women’s driving ban protest and gave greater prominence to the Saudi feminists involved in the campaign. This newspaper also included the opinions of Saudi women involved in the driving protest behind the opinions of others, whether official, experts or ordinary people.

Figure 6.12 The sources that newspapers used in coverage of the campaign against the ban on Saudi women driving.

Figure 6.12 shows the sources used in the published news stories in order to assess their credibility. The Guardian recorded the highest percentage of Saudi women campaign participant and Saudi people as a source for the published news, while The Independent did not focus on the Saudi women campaign participant as a source. The Independent focused more on random Saudi people as a source. On the other hand,

Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph used other sources for their news such as: Saudi religious men and officials and did not focus on Saudi women participants in the campaign.

The results from this case study broadly show that the selected British newspapers were interested in the issue of women’s right to drive in Saudi Arabia. The centre-left liberal broadsheets, The Guardian and The Independent, published large numbers of news stories on this topic, while the tabloid Daily Mail and the conservative broadsheet The Daily Telegraph published a lower amount of related reports. Overall, by far the most frequently reported event was the 2013 campaign, in which protests were led by Saudi women against the ban on driving. Daily Mail published these

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 The Independent (N=23) The Guardian

(N=12) Mail (N=8) The Daily Telegraph The Daily (N=10) S.W. Campaign parbcipants Saudi People Saudi Government Others

stories in its news section, while they appeared in a range of sections in The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and The Independent. There are distinctive differences between the four newspapers in terms of their focus on the driving ban protest within their news articles. Daily Mail and The Guardian focused on the Saudi government’s resistance towards Saudi women driving and the protests the women carried out against the ban, while The Independent chose to focus more on the details of the campaign run by Saudi women drivers. The Daily Telegraph focused on the reactions to the protests by various members of the Islamic clergy, employing a sarcastic tone as it did so.

The perception of Saudi women drivers as a result of their protests against the driving ban led to newspaper readers presuming that Saudi women suffered from negative life experiences because of the traditional gender roles in their society. Thus, the driving ban is framed as part of the persecution that Saudi women suffer, in addition to wearing the veil (niqab), and not being able to travel without permission from a male guardian. Because of the differences between British culture and Saudi culture, the British media did not understand the reasons why Saudi women were banned from driving, because British society supports universal human rights. While both the Western and Middle Eastern worlds continue to closely monitor the improvement of participation of women within society, Saudi Arabia still bans women from driving, an issue which has drawn increasing interest among the Western readerships.

British newspapers have also covered the driving protests in Saudi Arabia in the human rights context. Van Dijk (1991) argued that freedom, democracy, and human rights are gateways that organize political and media legitimization of the elite perspective and actions with respect to others. He described the effect of this discourse as follows: “The problem is that for most Western countries, especially the United States, these and related notions were selectively defined and applied to those situations in which their interests were being threatened […]. Democracy is advocated only for those nations in which the current leaders (whether dictators or elected governments) are seen as a threat to Western interests. Human rights are a strategic argument focusing primarily on unfriendly nations or leaders, while being ignored for Western client states” (Van Dijk, 1991: 27).

The concept of freedom is clear in the context of news stories in which the ban is described in terms of a puzzle. These newspapers report any updates relating to the ban in Saudi Arabia, and their news stories highlight the suffering of Saudi women rather than the efforts of Saudi women to break the power of traditional norms in their society. The concern is that the journalists who cover these issues related to women have a negative attitude not only towards Saudi women but towards other Arab women, and indeed to the entire Middle East as a region. In her analysis of the description of Middle Eastern women and based on her analysis of the narratives of Western travellers, Kabbani (2008) argued that this attitude is typical of a situation in which the members of the dominant group (the colonial or imperial power) “forge images of the ‘alien’ by imposing its own self-perpetuating categories and deviations from the norm.” This has typically meant that Westerners have treated the people and countries of the Middle East, and particularly their female inhabitants, as something special and mysterious without assigning these features to any universal standards (Kabbani, 2008). Hasan (2005) argued that Orientalist depictions which focused on the harem and seraglio deepened the Western belief that Middle Eastern women (particularly Muslim women) somehow existed simply for men’s use and sexual gratification. This image of Middle Eastern women, who were apparently materially different from their Western sisters, made them more appealing as sexual objects. Graham-Brown (2003) also believes that texts and photographs from colonial writers, and paintings by French nineteenth century artists, portrayed oriental women as male possessions, who were merely passive playthings of men, shut up within the walls of the harem. Since foreign males would never have set foot inside the female quarters, these scenes were simply the imagined products of Western imagination.

It is important to draw attention to the fact that different cultures affect the procurement of news. As noted in the context of coverage about the piece by Jack Straw and the niqab, the issue of ‘veiling’ served as a pretext for surfacing many underlying concerns about national identity, values, and otherness. It was noticeable too in the case of coverage related to Saudi women, this served as a means of allowing journalists to raise other underlying concerns which as the framing analysis shows relates particularly to aspects of women’s rights and conservative culture. Entman (2010: 393) talks about how bias in coverage has two main causes: content bias and decision-making. In the case of the former, consistently slanted framing

promotes a particular ideology and denigrates others. This can be seen in the Orientalist views which frame Saudi women. This use of the figure of the ‘veiled’ Saudi woman functions, as Janson (Janson, 2011: 183-184) states “as the epitome of the oppression and patriarchy of the Islamic world” and variously attracts the incomprehension, the ridicule or the wrath of Western journalists, particularly those who are feminists. The decision-making process depends on reporters and editors. Although journalists like to think they promote objectivity as part of their cultural frame, and ensure equivalent treatment to competing frames to prevent their reports from slanting, this analysis had shown that their belief systems and personal ideologies do influence this process, guiding their news decisions and ultimately, of course, the texts which they produce. This can be seen at the level of language, photographs and the captions which accompany them.

Some people may argue that a few negative representations in a newspaper does not really matter. However, He (2010) highlights that:

"When we only see pictures of criminals, entertainers, and sports heroes, we forget we have been led by the media at the same time. […] newspapers usually influence the public’s thinking about the image of Jews, women, gays and lesbians. This happens because the photographers, reporters, editors, and publishers of some media organizations often pursue quick decisions and high volumes of publication without considering the issues carefully" (He, 2010: 47).

The issue is that the media does influence us and particularly how we frame those we consider as being unlike us. According to At Home in Europe Report (2015) most women who had been wearing the niqab for over a decade said that they experienced more abuse after 9/11 than before. A few women also said that they noticed an increase in abuse around the time of 7/7. When the media creates stereotypes of Muslim women as a veiled threat, it is those women themselves who live with the consequences. However, about the effort of feminists in support women improvement, mainstream feminists are seeking to contribute to change, however, they are confronted with problems dealing with positive change and trying to understand the multi-faceted range of issues that modern women encounter, such as racism, religion and sexuality, which has been termed intersectionality. Shields (2008)

states that intersectionality is a pressing issue for researchers interested in addressing positive social change for women. Indeed, intersectionality, has become a pivotal principle of feminist thinking, which McCall (2005) and others believe is key to gaining a much greater understanding of gender. Indeed, at the theoretical level, intersectionality has changed how gender is viewed. Feminist theorists, for example, have challenged previously accepted ideas about gender underlying empirical research; psychologists’ standardization of gender is a case in point. Further research into intersectionality has revealed that individuals’ social identities profoundly influence their beliefs about and experience of gender. As a result, feminist researchers now realise that any profound study of what constitutes gender must take into consideration the individual’s social position within a framework of intersecting identities. Furthermore, any investigation of gender in particular, should necessarily be mindful of the circumstances in which power relations become enmeshed in social identities.