A New Discovery on Women Day

 I would like to celebrate women day with a personal discovery. I recently discovered the Ms. magazine, a very different women magazine in the market.  For many of you who are not familiar with the Ms. magazine, please let me share with you what is interesting about the Ms.’ editorial and advertising content.

Ms. has a firm understanding of feminist issues and its editorial staff creates important content for women that are hard to find elsewhere in mainstream media. Topics vary from abortion, immigration law, politics, discrimination, global feminist movements, and much more. The content is not simply framed as objective news, but Ms. articles have a clear advocacy of women’s rights. Ms. contains thoughtful analysis of those topics and how they impact women’s lives.

Another important aspect of Ms. online magazine is the advertising content. The online edition has no ads while the magazine has very little. The ads in the magazine are carefully chosen in harmony with its principles and the ads represent the magazine’s community. In Ms. Fall 2012 edition, I counted 15 ads inside the magazine, representing mostly non-profit organizations. Needless to say, there were no Dior, Calvin Klein or beauty products advertising in their pages. The types of ads that represent women in a very stereotypical way (inhumanly beautiful, irresistibly sexy, and treated as an object) are forbidden in Ms. content. Female representation in Ms. is about real women and real issues that affect them.

Moreover, it is important to note the magazine not only covers news from white women but from different races as well. Ms. covers news that affects women across the globe. For example, there are articles ranging from a rape survival in Somali, to a gang-rape in New Delhi which all reflect that sexual violence is not an issue aimed at a single race, but is a issue across the globe for all women.

This brings another important point about Ms. staff members and its publication.  As opposed to the mainstream media outlets, women occupy the upper positions within the magazine, where the hegemony of power is atypical to other news media outlets.  Ms. ideology differs greatly from most mainstream media because it promotes a female perspective and not the point of view of a white-male dominance.

Women outside Ms. are under-represented in the media. Another Ms. article points out that 71% of print journalists between January and November of 2012 were men. This easily translates to a cultural ideology of white-male privilege when it comes to producing news. Consequently, this inequality leads to a lack of understanding and representation about women issues. Moreover, the news routine produced by the dominant white-male ideology creates the perception that this is the “natural” way of our world.

Ms. recently celebrated its 40^th anniversary and I wish them many more!!