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A Division of Labor: Dividing Maternal Authority from Political Activism in the Kenyan Press

This historical case study explores how a Kenyan-owned newsmagazine, the Nairobi-based Weekly Review, represented female advocacy based on combative motherhood. Maxine Molyneux developed the concept to describe a strategy whereby women draw on their moral authority as mothers to assert their legitimacy in an otherwise male-dominated political arena. This research is based on a textual analysis on all news, features, and editorials about the Mothers of Political Prisoners' 1992 hunger strike for the release of their sons. This article argues that framing emerging from coverage created a split between the fundamental elements of combative motherhood, such that advocates were portrayed either as overly aggressive women ill equipped for public debate or as well-meaning mothers whose advocacy was easily co-opted by opposition politicans. Coverage invoked culturally specific identity discourses about gender and ethnicity as a key means of suggesting these frames.

Journal of Communication Inquiry, Vol. 25, No. 2, 167-183 (2001)
DOI: 10.1177/0196859901025002006


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