Marginalized Community, Media and Gender Narratives: A Perception Analysis of Women from Religious Minorities

Abstract

Popular discourses assume that in Pakistan, about 3.6 per cent of the total 207 million populations are religious minorities but their representation in media is often limited to the episodic coverage of tragic incidents happened to them. A large number of reports have been observed that being a woman in Pakistan is difficult but if someone belongs to a religious minority, it becomes worse but their challenges get almost no media depiction. Therefore, this paper is an attempt to assess the perceptions of minority women about their struggles in Pakistan with almost no representation in media. To understand the perceptions, 20 women were interviewed through snowball sampling from religious minorities. Their responses are analyzed under the light of social responsibility theory. This study also highlights the suggestions of minority women to media organizations to improve their discourse for their community and to understand their views about policy making to strengthen the participatory democracy through a rights-based inclusive media discourse for the unnoticed and the unseen in Pakistan.