Off/On-Screen Representation Of Women in Kurdish Television Advertisements

The present study attempts to examine the „on/off screen portrayal‟ of women in mass media in particular in Kurdish television advertisements. As gender representation, stereotyping and objectification of women in Kurdish television advertisements have received little attention in academic filed. This research focuses on the issues of mis/representation of women in Kurdish Media advertisements. It also implements feminism and postfeminism literature on contemporary Kurdish advertisements to see if they are applicable. Therefore, this research, critically explores the role of women in advertisement in Kurdistan region media to understand the impact of advertisement on the changing role of women in the society. We employ qualitative methodology of questionnaire to collect the data from ads „directors‟. 6 Kurdish advertisements selected in accordance of three themes, 2 videos for each theme. And for the questionnaire 8 Kurdish advertisement directors. In this regard, the research implements more than one tool to achieve triangulation to enhance validity and reliability of this study. Article Info Received: October , 2020 Revised:November,2020 Accepted: December ,2020 s


1-Introduction
This chapter starts with an overview of the background of the study, follows by the background of advertisement in Kurdistan.
Thereafter, it will shed light on the statement of the problems and the context of this study. From here on the rationale behind designating the topic, followed by the aims of the study will be highlighted. The final part will explain the value of the study.

2-The background of this study
Advertising is becoming more and more important in our daily lives and it is a tool that companies use in order to gain the trust of the consumers so they would buy those products.
With the technological advancements and the spread of social media platforms, people are relying more on advertisements to make their purchase decision. Advertisement is one of the effective ways that companies and even social enterprises use to deliver their messages. So, advertisements are created by company"s producers in order to attract most viewers to the product and the directors would try their best in order to make the ads as appealing as possible.
In creating advertisements in which women are used as main characters, or even secondary characters, it is essential to observe which role the women are assigned to (Nagi 2014: p.76 about her. Therefore, through assigning women with different roles one can assume the subtle message of the particular advertisement that it wants to convey. As an opposite example, when we see a woman trying to use detergent to wash the dishes, the hidden message we receive is one of a submissive and a housewife woman. The analysis done by Belkaoui and Belkaoui (1976) Journal of the University of Garmian 7 (4), 2020 Page 260 on some major magazines from the 1950s showed that women are represented as secondary characters and the women are assigned mostly as housewives (as cited in Nagi 2014). Tsichla and Zotos (2014: p.26 argue"[stereotyping is to] attribute independence to men and affiliation to women "Whereas nowadays, the role of women has dramatically changed. Women are not a secondary character any more.

Background of Advertisement in Kurdistan
Research done exploring this area, role of women in advertisement, has been carried out in the west and those papers are not compatible with the Kurdish culture as there are vast differences between a middle eastern society and a western society. For instance, women and men cannot express their affection for each other publicly in Kurdistan, which is a very normal thing to do in a western society (Robson 1996).
Robson states that Kurdish women are considered to be a part in the house of their husbands and even they themselves may see their situation like that (1996: p.16

The aims of this study
Based on the aims set for it, the research endeavors to answer the following questions:  as Mies (1986: 199) as cited in (Yeşil 2003) argues that "the role of women…is obscured by idealizing the founding fathers…" (p. 26).
Under patriarchy the right of women's education is a top priority for Feminists as education makes women aware of their own values "…restricting women"s right to education denies them access to information about their rights, especially their right to choose how they live" (Yeşil 2003: 32 Based on the previous understanding of how patriarchy dominates societies, feminism as a movement arose to go against the norms and to help individuals to discover themselves outside the rules put forth by patriarchy "feminism has been the most important source of self-discovery and political change for us, slowly transforming our understandings of ourselves" (Murphy 2004: 82).It can be said that feminism is a movement which demands equal rights for women in every aspect of life; they reject sexism, patriarchal oppression and all the discriminations that come with them, and they strive for women to have the right of choice (Hooks 2000: 1). As it was said above, having the right of choice is important for women as it allows them to take back control of their bodies and be independent individuals as they would not wait on men to make their choices for them.

Historical Context
Feminism is not static as it changes according to the changes of the needs and situations of women. Bryson (2016) (Miller 2008). The first wave feminist movement relied heavily on single women to achieve their goals as these women were brave enough to step up for their rights.
However, this movement was too white as women of color were no were to be seen so the rights of those colored women were not high on the list of priorities (Moran 2004).
Just like the first wave feminists, the second wave feminists were white and middle class (Moran 2004 Adriaens and Van Bauwel (2014: 6) argue that postfeminism is "…a discourse that gives women the opportunity to be feminine, attractive, and a feminist at the same time". So According to Gill (2007) as cited in (Sun 2017) postfeminist discourses include:

Postfeminism
(1) Femininity is increasingly portrayed as a bodily property rather than a socially Gill (2007) argues that in this process some standards would be created that would againg marginalize women. Women shown on TV seem happy, powerful, and fit which conveys the message that women should be like that and this is no different from the dress codes that were imposed on women in the past.

Representation
Representation, as Hall (1997: 15)  Regarding the representation of women there has been a shift throughout the years. Gill (2007) argues that the femininity of women before meant "caring or nurturing or motherhood" and these characteristics were central to what femininity meant. However, nowadays women having attractive bodies, always taking care of their bodies and spending money constantly on products, is the central of femininity (p.6).

Advertising
Advertising is a tool of marketing (Nagi 2014).
Nagi defines marketing as "The process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives" (2014: 75). So marketing is a process of finding a market for whatever product that one has and this marketing should be catered to the taste of the one or the ones interested in the product. As Ali and Shahwar (2011) assert that adverting is a way to communicate with customers and convey to them that the product or the service you have is worthy of their attention and they should spend money on it (p.152).

Representation of Women in
Advertising Kang (2002) as cited in (Nagi 2014)

2.4.3Personal Information
The

Work Experience
The directors' experiences in media vary; one

Production Work in Kurdistan
In the directors' answers about the question "What is the level of production work in