Peeking Through the Looking Glass: A Comparative Analysis of Women, Politics and Media in Lebanon and Bulgaria

Among the challenges women around the world face today, one of the biggest is the masculinization of democracy, as it has been identified in the literature on women’s empowerment and political representation. Expressed in the underlining “manly” face of the democratic transition, this social phenomenon is defined by an increasingly gendered political discourse, which is also ubiquitously masculine in tone and visual manifestation. In emerging democracies, democratization and marketization are, and by definition have been, launched to the detriment of women through an increased separation of the public and private spheres and a polarization of sex roles.