Evaluation of gender biases in National News and Tabloid Articles

Abstract

Newspapers are one of the most vital communications tools for humans and society. One of the most critical aspects of dailies is consuming information and an unconscious mindset that acts as beneficial and detrimental to society. This research intends to evaluate gender biases in national newspapers Bangladesh’s Daily Star Newspapers (main edition including sections-- news, city, country, international, editorial, opinion, sports, art, and entertainment) and Lifestyle tabloid articles. To examine sexism in Bangladesh’s news and tabloid articles by pattern analysis, article titles, gender-based words and issues, and contrast with relative theories related with feministic stylistic and toolkit provided by Mills (1995). The data collection approach for this research is mixed-method. The findings contain qualitative data based on secondary sources such as books, journals, articles, and quantitative data as this research also conducts surveys over the readers about the understanding and perceiving sexism through these circulations for increasing the reliability of the study. The findings of this paper are significant gender/sex bias in The Daily Star’s (Bangladesh) newspapers, Lifestyle tabloid articles’, and the respondents’ perceived presence of imbalanced gender portrayal in newspaper and magazines. However, due to a lack of materials and survey responses, this study cannot be generalized for all the newspapers or populations of Bangladesh. Language and gender studies are essential as it helps to recognize undermining gender biases, which is one of the problems of society, also a hindrance to the growth of the country.