Prevalence of Violence against Women in Televised Dramas of Pakistan and its Pro-social Effects

Bakht Rawan* and Muhammad Amjad²

¹Department of Mass Communication, Allama Iqbal Open University, Islamabad, Pakistan

²Independent Researcher, Lahore, Pakistan

*Corresponding Author: [email protected]

Abstract

Mass media, irrespective of its type and content, is also heavily loaded with violence against women (VAW) and ubiquity of this phenomenon has prompted researchers to investigate the effects of such mediated violence on society. Nevertheless, the focus of such investigations is restricted largely to negative effects. The present study deviates from the previous investigations by focusing on the prosocial effects of media violence against. For this purpose, the researchers analysed the prevalence of violence against women in prime-time television dramas of Pakistan and investigated its prosocial effects.. The study hypothesized that VAW would prevail equally in prime-time television dramas of the leading entertainment channels of Pakistan. It assumed that female audience of these dramas would have more prosocial effects of exposure to dramatized VAW than their male counterparts. The study also hypothesized that higher exposure to VAW in Pakistani television dramas would have more prosocial effects on the audience. The researchers used content analysis as well as survey methods. The construct "violence” was categorized into physical violence, verbal violence, symbolic violence, sexual violence, economic violence, and psychological violence, and each type of violence was operationalized. Similarly, prosocial effects were categorized into empathy, altruism, volunteerism, advice, and avoidance/prevention. Each effect (prosocial) was operationalized by using different questionnaire items. It was found that all sampled entertainment television channels (ARY Digital, Hum TV and Har Pal Geo) contained violence against women in all most all episodes of the selected dramas but at varying degrees. Verbal and psychological violences were more prevalent as compared to sexual, economic, physical, and symbolic violences. It was also found that there was no significance difference among male and female audience in terms of prosocial effects. However, the extent of viewing television dramas had significant positive relationships with empathy, altruism, volunteerism, and avoidance.

Keywords: Violence against women, prevalence, Pakistani media, pro-social effects

Introduction

Violence against women (VAW), a negative but the most prevalent phenomenon in most of the countries around the world. Irrespective of the level of development (North or South) women are being subjected to various forms of violence globally. One-third of women across the world have been subjected to physical and/ or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence (UN Women, 2023). The perpetrator of violence against women are usually their own family members, relatives, partners, co-workers, neighbours, etc, and the most broader common types of violence against women are domestic, femicide, sexual violence, women trafficking, child marriage, and digital violence (United Nations [UN], 2020). Like other parts of the world, violence against women is an omnipresent phenomenon in the Pakistani society. According to Ahmed (2022) the menace is surging. He reported that during 2019-2021 over 3,987 women were murdered across the country, while 10517 cases of rape against women were registered. Physical and sexual violence, honour killings and forced marriages make Pakistan one of the worst countries in terms of the gender gap (Naveed, 2019). Abdullah et al. (2015) while examining the causes of domestic VAW found that women were victim of domestic violence in both rural and urban areas of however, the ratio of prevalence of the violence in rural areas was more than urban areas. Their study showed that the combined physical violence was 18.5 per cent, while psychological violence was 99.8 in the selected area (Muzaffarabad).

Violence against women does not exist in society, in its actual form, only rather mass media, whether it is news mass media or entertainment media, also carrying violence ridden content in every society. Media contains violence in one form or another against the disadvantageous segments of society, particularly against women. In movies and television dramas violence against women (VAW) is more prevalent. Every genre of television content, from news to cartoons, to dramas, to documentaries, to advertisements, to movies etc is filled with violence. Besides entertainment media content, news/ views, and even advertisements of both national and international media are bursting with violence as well.

Nevertheless, keeping in view the nature of news and entertainment content, the presence of violence in news mass media and entertainment media have different perspectives. The news mass media report crime news of different nature including the one related to violence against women. Although news media besides reporting the hard facts also present them/ frame them in some favourable/ unfavourable way as well, but their main task is to report the event only. Whereas in the case of violent entertainment content, media is part of the game as the content is not only disseminated by the media rather it is also produced by the media.

An important aspect of media reporting and production is to influence the audience in a certain way. Exposure to violent media content have varying effects on the audience. The present study was designed to explore prevalence of violence against women in television dramas of Pakistan and to find out the dominant type of violence against women in these entertainment content. Furthermore, the study examined the prosocial effects/ the positive lessons especially empathy, altruism, volunteerism, advice, and prevention from any sexual/ physical/ psychological assault.

Literature Review

Although entertainment is one of the basic functions of mass media however, this function of media especially, that of movies and television dramas, is somehow got associated with violence ever since it started. Violence figures prominently in mass media, and television is no exception.

According to Levy (2017) most of the television programmes contain violence, and children are exposed to around 10,000 violent act per year. This may be due to the fact that violent material on television is much popular among audience. It is a well thought opinion that viewing violence produces negative impacts among viewers as Anderson et al. (2003) claim that media violence increases the possibility of aggression in the audience.

According to Huesmann and Taylor (2006), they found that violence in media, in whichever form it may be i.e., fictional TV or film, TV news, video games, leads to an increase in real-life violence and aggression among audience. The contribution of media is both in the short term and across the life span because audience imitate and copy media content. Moreover, the connection between portrayal of violence in media and real-world violence is moderated by the nature of media content and social influences on the audience. Nevertheless, overall size of the effect is large enough that pose threats to public health.

Pakistani cinema is also full of VAW. While exploring VAW in Urdu feature films released in 2013 by Pakistani cinema (Lollywood), Ali and Ayesha (2015) found 49 scenes of verbal violence, 26 scenes of emotional violence and 16 scenes of psychological violence in all four selected movies. Pakistani movies were also found to be portraying women negatively by showing their bold and vulgar dances. Awais et al. (2021) examined the presence of VAW as well as its categories like physical, emotional, and sexual violence in popular Pakistani TV dramas of Urdu language. The researchers collected data by content analysis of dramas of three most popular TV channels. It was found that the violence against women was being portrayed in TV dramas in different forms and categories.

According to Khan (2021), television dramas in Pakistan conform to patriarchal mores and hence are inclined more towards male domination and stereotypical depiction of women to bear violence in the name of honour and respect of the family. These dramas are not creating awareness regarding violence against women by encouraging legal protection. Zaheer (2020) in his master's thesis titled "women, labor and television: a critical analysis of women portrayed in Pakistani drama serials” found that the representation of Pakistani women in Pakistani television dramas was more patriarchal and hegemonic. He concluded that these dramas did not encourage women emancipation.

Popular soap operas produced and presented by entertainment television channels contain a high degree of VAW. The most common type of VAW in these dramas were physical, emotional, and sexual violence (Awais et al., 2021). Similarly, Roshan et al. (2009) in their study regarding prevalence of violence against women in prime-time dramas of Pakistan Television (PTV found that PTV broadcasted 332 violent scenes of verbal, physical, psychological and symbolic violence against women in its prime-time drams during the specified period of the study. Their study substantiated the results Karim's (2008) investigation which concluded that PTV dramas were full of violence against women.

Besides the state-run television channels, PTV, private entertainment channels also contain violence against women. Faiz et al. (2020) while exploring the content of dramas of leading private entertainment channels of Pakistan found that these dramas were negatively portraying women and the use of foul language against women was abundant in the Pakistani dramas. Moreover, these dramas are depicting Pakistani women as submissive, helpless, and dependent. Such portrayal is reinforcing the status quo in Pakistani society (Ibrahim et al., 2019)

The mainstream news mass media is also brimming with violence against women. Shumaila (2014) in her research while exploring news coverage given to women issues in Pakistan by news networks television channels examined "Dawn News” and "Express News” for a period of four months (January to April, 2013). She found that both Dawn News and Express News broadcasted 600 news stories relating to women issues, especially sexual harassment, physical torture, honour killing, child marriage, and house burns in their news bulletins.

Raza and Hussain (2016) in their research study on coverage of physical violence against women analyzed two of the leading Urdu newspapers of Pakistan (daily Jang and daily Khabrain) for a period of six months (1^st October, 2012 to 30^th March 2013). The researchers analyzed selected only Tuesday of each week during the specified period for analysis of physical violence against women in daily Jang and daily Khabrain. They found that daily Jang carried 45 news stories while daily Khabrain published 100 news stories on the topic during the specified period on selected day of the week. The researchers in this study categorized VAW into six categories (honor killing, domestic violence, sexual harassment, rape and sexual assault, forced prostitution and acid throwing). Category system of VAW of the study does not seem mutually exclusive. Moreover, the researchers did not mention that which edition of daily "Jang” and daily "Khabrain” were analysed. Daily Jang is being published from Karachi, Lahore, Multan, Rawalpindi, Peshawar and London. Similarly, daily Khabrain is simultaneously published from Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Muzaffarabad, Multan, Lahore, Islamabad, and Peshawar.

Asif (2010) in his study on "violence against women in Pakistan: role of police and media” after analysis of 13 daily newspapers (five English language and eight Urdu language) for a period of two months (June and July, 2010) found that the selected newspapers ran 479 stories on violence against women. However, he believed that the actual cases of violence against women were much higher than the reported ones.

Effects of VAW

The above lines show the prevalence of violence against women in mass media of Pakistan. Media content, especially that of the news mass media, regarding violence against women may be aimed to let the world aware about agony of women at homes and/or workplace at the hands of members of their primary, secondary or tertiary groups, while in the case of entertainment media its purpose may be to sensitise the society. Nevertheless, the effects of these contents may be positive and may be negative. Researchers have mainly explored the negative effects of media violence and violence against women in Pakistani society.

Khan et al. (2020) explored the relationships between exposure to violent media and psychological effects, especially desensitization, aggressive behaviour, anxiety, and sleep disorder mong the audience. The researchers conducted a survey at national level from colleges and universities. The results of their study showed that exposure to violent media content had significant relationships with desensitization, aggressive behavior, sleep disturbance, and anxiety. They also found that these relationships were not affected by differences in age and gender of the respondents. Latif et al. (2020) in their study on the effect of violent media content on children's aggressive behaviour in Multan, Punjab. The researchers mapped perceptions of parents regarding the relationship between exposure to violent media content (cartoons). Their results revealed a significant relationship between the time spent in viewing negative/ violent cartoons and aggressive behaviour of the children. Qadir and Jullandhry (2019) conducted a study on the impact of violent television content and aggressive behaviour of youth. Their results showed a significant positive relationship between the two variables. Bhatti and Hassan (2014) examined psychological effects (desensitization, fear, arousal and catharsis) of television news violence in Multan. Their results showed that violence in television news content was causing desensitization, fear, and aggression. The respondents also reported relaxation after being exposed to television violence (catharsis).

Saleem et al. (2021) while exploring the perceived effects of violence against women portrayed in Pakistani television dramas (Hum TV dramas) found that majority of their respondents perceived that violence against women in television dramas was causing fear, depression and insecurity among the audience. The respondents also viewed that women were portrayed negatively in Pakistani dramas. Zainab et al. (2021) in their investigation on "effects of Pakistani TV dramas on social behaviour of women” found that crime and VAW in the Pakistani dramas had positive effects on their women audience. They get themselves aware regarding various crimes such as Child abuse, harassment, gender discrimination, honor killing, black magic, and domestic violence. Similarly, Sultana et al. (2021) in their study found that portrayal of forced marriages in Pakistani television dramas are creating awareness regarding the phenomenon prevalent in Pakistani society among the viewers, female university students. their study has just explored the phenomenon and due their sampling technique (convenient) results of the study cannot be generalized.

Literature review shows that like other parts of the world (Cuklanz & Moorti, 2006; Custers & Bulck, 2012; Das, 2012; Dutta & Gangopadhyay, 2011; Lampman et al., 2002; Phillips, 2015; Potter & Smith, 2000; Sapolsky & Kaye, 2005) media violence, especially content related to violence against women prevail in the Pakistani mass media (both news and entertainment). However, the previous studies conducted on Pakistani news/ entertainment mass media have either limited only to prevalence of VAW (Awais, et al., 2021; Faiz et al., 2020; Hussain, 2016; Ibrahim et al., 2019; Khan, 2021; Raza & Asif, 2010; Roshan et al., 2009; Zaheer, 2020 ) or they focused only on negative effects (Ali & Ayesha, 2015; Khan et al., 2020; Latif et al., 2020; Qadir & Jullandhry, 2019; Saleem et al., 2021) or they have some methodological problems (Raza & Hussain, 2016). Only a handful of studies focused on positive effects of VAW (Sultana et al., 2021; Zainab et al., 2021), and they were limited just to awareness regarding VAW. The present study intends to fill these gaps by employing both content analysis and survey techniques to explore the prevalence of VAW in television dramas of the leading entertainment channels of Pakistan as we as to find out relationships between the extent of viewing these dramatized VAW and its presumed prosocial effects. Moreover, the present study has focused on the pro-social effects such as empathy, altruism, volunteerism, advice, and avoidance/prevention, which were not investigated previously in Pakistan.

Research Method

Keeping in view the nature of the study, the researchers employed both content analysis and survey methods. Content analysis was used for analysis of prevalence of VAW in the Pakistani dramas while survey method was employed to find out the effects (pro-social) of the VAW on women.

Content Analysis

The researchers employed content analysis technique for analysis of top-rated dramas broadcasted during 2018-2019 by the most popular three entertainment (drama) channels of Pakistan (Hum TV, ARY Digital and Geo Entertainment/ Har Pal Geo). These were the top-rated entertainment channels in all cities of Pakistan were Hum TV, ARY Digital and Har Pal Geo with a collective 80 percent viewership. Dramas of these three TV channels broadcasted from July 2018 till October 2019 were selected for analysis. These dramas were further shortlisted to only top seven dramas of each of the three selected channels. Thus, overall, 21 dramas, which started and ended during the time period were selected. By using systematic random sampling technique, the researcher chose 118 episodes of the 21 drama serials. Unit of analysis was incidence of violence against women. The researchers used a well-defined code sheet for data collection. The construct "violence against women” was categorized into physical violence (Beating with something, Pulling / Pushing, fire / Acid Burning, Killing), verbal violence (Harsh Words, Verbal Abuses, shouting), symbolic violence (gazing, facial expression, anger), sexual violence (rape, sexual wording, sexual touching, sexual looks), economic violence (not giving money, not allowing Job, snatching / depriving of money) and psychological violence (ignoring, causing depression, causing mental torture).

Based on the literature review the study hypothesized as:

H1. There is greater likelihood that VAW will prevail equally in dramas of all the three entertainment television channels (Hum TV, ARY Digital, and Geo Entertainment/ Har Pal Geo).

H01: Violence against women will not equally prevail in dramas of all the three entertainment television channels (Hum TV, ARY Digital, and Har Pal Geo).

Table1

List Of Selected Dramas of Hum TV, ARY Digital and Har Pal Geo Presented During July 2018-October 2019

Survey Method

To explore pro-social effects of VAW in television dramas on women the researchers selected viewers of television dramas based in Lahore as their survey population. By using Sample size calculator (Qualtrics) for a known population of 12,188,000 with confidence level of 95% and margin error 5%, a sample size of 385 was chosen. Fifty-five questionnaires were distributed in the seven Towns (Shalimar Town, Aziz Bhatti Town, Data Gunj Buksh Town, Gulberg Town, Samanabad Town, Allama Iqbal Town and Nishtar Town) of Lahore city while the other two towns i.e., Ravi Town and Wagha Town and Cantonment area were excluded. Ravi Town and Wagha towns were excluded because besides accessibility issues they were more rural than urban while Cantonment areas were not included in the population due to difficulty in access to the respondents. Voters lists were used as sampling frame. A total of 245 questionnaires were returned. Hence the return rate was almost 64 percent. Four questionnaires were discarded. Hence the researchers entered a total of 221 questionnaires into SPSS for analysis.

The prosocial effects (empathy, altruism, avoidance of violence, advice, volunteerism) were operationalised through a well-structured questionnaire. The questionnaire contained four items each for measurement of empathy, altruism, avoidance of violence, and "advice” while "volunteerism as a prosocial effect was operationalized through a three items scale. Reliability value of the tool was high (Cronbach alpha = .94).

The researchers hypothesized the prosocial effects of VAW in television dramas of Pakistan entertainment television channels as under:

H2. It is more likely that exposure to violence against women in Pakistani televised dramas will have more prosocial effects on female audience as compared to male audience.

M1 < M2

H02. Exposure to VAW in Pakistani televised dramas will have the same effects on both male and female viewers.

M1=M2

Where M1 is the mean score on dependent variable of males and M2 is the mean score on dependent variable of females

H3. Higher the exposure to VAW in Pakistani televised dramas, the greater will be the prosocial effects on the audience.

M1 < M2 < M3

H03. There will be no difference in the mean prosocial effects of exposure to VAW in Pakistani televised dramas among the audience having different levels of exposure to these dramas.

H03. M1 = M2 = M3

Where M1 is the mean score on dependent variable (pro-social effects) of first group of respondents who watch television dramas 1-2 days a week, M2 is the mean score on dependent variable (pro-social effects) of second group of respondents who watch television dramas 3-4 days a week, and M3 is the mean score on dependent variable (pro-social effects) of the third group of respondents who watch television dramas five days or more per week.

Results

The collected data was analysed for prevalence of violence against women in the dramas presented by the three entertainment channels (Hum TV, ARY Digital and Har Pal Geo) contained VAW. As shown in Table 2 given below it was found that dramas of the three TV channels contained VAW albeit the extent of VAW was not the same. The F-value (F = 12.63***) shows that H1 is not supported.

Table 2

Mean, Standard Division, and One-way ANOVA in Prevalence of VAW in TV Channels

Note. p =.000

Table 3

Frequency of Type of VAW across the TV Channels

The type of violence against women presented by the selected channels was also not the same. It was found (Table 3) that verbal violence (N =392) and psychological violence (N=233) were the most prevalent types of violence in the selected dramas of the three entertainment channels during the study period. In contrast to verbal and psychological violence these dramas contained very little sexual violence (N=32) and economic violence (N =51). It was also found that ARY Digital was showing more VAW (56.58%) than Hum TV (29.62%) and Har Pal Geo (13.80%).

Table 4

Gender-based Comparisons of Pro-social Effects Dramatized VAW

Analysis of the survey data (as given in Table 4) found that there was significant difference among male and female respondents in terms of prosocial effects (empathy (t = -1.42, p = .15), altruism (t = -.30, p =.76), avoidance (t =.585, p = .55), advice (t = -.288, p =.77) and volunteerism (t = 1, p =.32) of the televised violence against women. Analysis of the collected data revealed that the difference between the means of prosocial effects of VAW portrayed in the selected dramas of the three popular entertainment channels of Pakistan (Hum TV, ARY Digital and Har Pal Geo) on male and female viewers was not significant, which means that H02 (M1 = M2) was supported televised VAW and H2 was not supported.

Table 5

Mean, Standard Division, and One-way ANOVA in Pro-social Effects across Number of Days of Watching Dramas per Week

Table 5 shows the F values and standard deviations for pro-social effects i.e., empathy, altruism, avoidance, advice and volunteerism for the three groups of respondents based on their television dramas viewing per week (one-two days, three-four days, and five days and above). As the F value (9.28***) indicates that there was a significant difference across the three groups of drama viewers, which shows that the pro-social "empathy” effect was related with the number of days the respondent watch television dramas. The value of eta square (η2=.08) indicates a small effect size.

Second row of Table 5 shows that there was a significant variance (F =4.99**) between the means of the three groups of days of television viewing per week (M1<M2<M3). The observed effect size (η2 =.04) employs that although television drama viewing per week was related to "altruism” but the effect size was small.

The F-value given in the third row (F=6.92**) and the Post-Hoc test (1<2<3), which shows that means of the three groups were not the same, imply there was a significant difference between the different groups formed on the basis of television viewing per week and "avoidance” effect of violent situation. Nevertheless, the eta square value (η2=.05) implies that the effect size was small.

The F-value (F=1.51, p>.05) indicates that the relationship between differential television drama viewing days per week was not significant. Contrary to this result, last row of the table 5 shows that there was significant relationship between the different groups of drama viewers and "volunteerism” as a pro-social effect of televised VAW. Nevertheless, the effect size was small.

The table exhibits that there were significant relationships between viewing dramatized VAW and prosocial effects (empathy, altruism, avoidance, and volunteerism). Table 5 shows that H3 is supported and hence H03 is rejected.

Discussion

As far as results of the present study regarding prevalence of VAW in television dramas are concerned (Table2), they are consistent with the previous studies conducted at national or international levels. Pakistani dramas, which are presumed to be a source of entertainment for the audience, contain VAW. Nevertheless, there was a significant difference in broadcasting VAW in dramas of the three television channels. Dramas of ARY Digital contained more VAW than the other two channels. This indicates absence of any formal policy regarding broadcasting VAW by the government or the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA).

The dominant type of VAW was "verbal violence followed by psychological violence whereas content related to sexual violence was the least one (Table 3). Instead of PEMRA, the social system of the Pakistan, where portrayal of explicit sex, depiction of extramarital relations, and content related to homonormativity are discouraged, plays a vital role here. On the other hand, being a patriarchal society shouting on women folk or verbally abusing them and even physically manhandling of wives and daughters/ daughters-in-law, sisters/ sisters-in-law and intimidating them by grandfather, father, father-in-law, husband, brother, brother-in-law are considered traditional manly qualities, and a good control over the family. Hence, television dramas, depict the same social system of the Pakistani society.

The study confirms that media violence can influence the audience positively as well. They can learn many things vicariously and help themselves avoid any untoward situation. However, the effect of media violence also depends on the way it is framed.

Depiction of VAW which negates women's rights and encourages violence against women is merely a reflection of status quo and a blatant negation of social change through the mass media. Results of Table 5 indicates that extent of viewing television dramas has a positive relationship with pro-social effects of VAW on the viewers. This result is consistent with Gerber's cultivation theory. The result also confirms that VAW may not have only negative effects on the viewers. It points to the fact that audience can get different pro-social effects from exposure to VAW.

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