Week 13 readings

This week’s readings were extremely interesting with the way they touched on the issues concerning the unequal participation that women have in political matters as well as how certain countries such as Egypt go about portraying themselves to the western media.

Cynthia Enloe focused on Afghanistan and Iraq when discussing women’s participation in political matters. Enloe even questioned how women were hidden away during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, they weren’t talked about as much as they should have been during the historical time.

However, of the two readings I found Paul Amars, Turning the Gendered Politics of the Security State Inside Out, to be the more interesting of the two. Primarily since it touched on western media and the portrayal of Muslim communities. Amar emphasized Egypt and the protests that went on. Egypt’s government has a heavy influence and control over gender roles between the sexes, which to me, I find unique.

Going back to the protests, Amar brought up how groups were hired to put Muslim communities in a bad light, to attract the Western media. My assumption is that this was done in hopes of getting more aid from the United States, or it could have been done to further influence the people of the West, to view Muslims in a bad light. Even this weekend, with the unfortunate attacks in Paris proved even more that the media has a huge influence on how people react to events like this. Unfortunately, the media is focused on one attack rather than the rest of the attacks that happened throughout the world.

Amar brings up a few great points when talking about the media and using Egypt and their governments’ tactics to gain Western sympathy and to put a negative light on to certain groups.