Helpless Maidens and Chivalrous Knights: Afghan Women in the Canadian Press

Abstract

On the international stage, Canada is renowned for its multicultural ethos, its peacekeeping reputation, and its moderate politics vis-à-vis the United States. Nonetheless, post-9/11, the Canadian press followed the US media in casting Afghan women as abject victims who could be rescued only by what Iris Marion Young has aptly called the ‘knights of civilization.’ Yet the discursive manner in which support for the US-led war was invoked bore traces of a counter-hegemonic frame. This essay interrogates representations of Afghan women in the Globe and Mail, Canada's major English-language daily and newspaper of record. Examining the coverage over a seven-year period, the author traces the changes and continuities marking these representations in response to Canada's initial peacekeeping and subsequent military involvement in Afghanistan. The Orientalist construction of Islam as a homogeneous and monolithic faith and its representation as an essentialized patriarchal force are underscored. The framing of Afghan women living in Canada in contrast to their counterparts in Afghanistan is explored with respect to issues of agency, victimhood, and Canadian benevolence. The essay concludes with observations on how this coverage reinforces and legitimates an imagined community that is reflective of Canada as a white, settler colony.

Gendering pastoral power: masculinity, affective labour and competitive bonds of solidarity among Filipino migrant men in Saudi Arabia

“…3 offer up their freedom and autonomy in exchange for state protection from external threat (see also Messner 2007, Jiwani 2009, Babül 2015. In this article, I bracket partially the 'masculinist logic' of the security state to extend Young's observation that the model of pastoral power also illuminates important components of men's subjectivities whose hegemonic forms have come to be understood as aggressive, competitive and domineering in opposition to women's putatively compliant, caring and submissive position and subjectivities (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005).…”

Race and the Media: A Retrospective and Prospective Gaze

“…This research has involved a comparison of Aboriginal women's representations with those of Afghan women in the Globe and Mail over a seven-year period (Jiwani, 2008(Jiwani, , 2009a(Jiwani, , 2009b. The research was spurred by my interest in gendered narratives of war, wherein I discovered that, contrary to all other preconceptions, Afghan women were actually portrayed as heroic women, able to transcend the challenges they encountered.…”

The road to Afghanada: militarization in Canadian popular culture during the war in Afghanistan

“…While Canada went to Afghanistan in order to stand 'shoulder to shoulder' with the United States, becoming involved initially soon after the 9/11 attacks to hunt for the perpetrators, the mission was increasingly sold to the Canadian public in terms of women's rights (Hunt 2002;Jiwani 2009). This sales job had two primary narratives.…”