Gender segregation in metro environmental advertising images; The semiotics of images, it is forbidden for men to enter the women's carriage!

علوم اجتماعی دانشگاه فردوسی مشهد

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available Online from 15 February 2024   

Document Type: Research

DOI: 10.22067/social.2024.80953.1307

Author

seyedeh zahra hoseinifar

Iran

Abstract

Metro environmental advertising plays a role as an active means of communication, which results in significant effectiveness for a large number of people. Because on the one hand, due to the daily traffic of millions of people in a metropolis like Tehran, they are in direct contact with the audience, and their message is displayed in the form of a chain of media in front of the eyes of passengers who are waiting or in the process of leaving for their destination. In the meantime, the images related to the message that men are forbidden to enter the carriage of women are among the most important visual messages with gender issues, which provide an important tool for the socio-cultural study of everyday life in the city. Methodical investigation as an interdisciplinary subject in the realm of social sciences and with a gender approach in women's studies reveals new angles of power relations, gender roles, and the relations between the two sexes.

This research was conducted using the method of social semiotics and based on the three axes of representational, interactive and combined meaning, it analyzes 9 images with the relevant topic in a comprehensive manner. The images have a self-expressive aspect. In general, powerful and transgressive men and weaker women, with small and weak bodies, are drawn as passive and silent in front of male power that has distorted the gender order of the space can be defined along gender stereotyping.

Keywords

Illustration; women; environmental advertising; gender discrimination; hijab

References