How gender norms are created, reinforced and transformed through media, public communication and social institutions
Gender is not only “about women,” nor is it only about inequality between women and men. It is one way to see how power, resources, opportunities, responsibilities and the right to a public voice are distributed in society.
Kantrapunkt examines how gender norms are created and reproduced through media, political and public communication, social institutions and everyday practices. We are interested not only in how women and men are represented, but also in which social roles are treated as “natural,” who is granted the authority to speak and make decisions, and whose experiences remain less visible and less socially significant.
This research area builds on the many years of academic and analytical work by Kantrapunkt founder Iryna Sidorskaya on gender, media and public communication.
Four interconnected areas where gender norms become visible
How media and public communication portray women and men, which models of femininity and masculinity are framed as “proper,” and how gender stereotypes shape perceptions of social roles, professions, family and political participation.
How gender shapes access to resources, decision-making and a public voice; who is recognized as an authoritative expert, political actor or leader — and which gendered expectations influence that legitimacy.
How gender norms and imagery are used in political communication: from the rhetoric of “traditional values” and the construction of threats to the discrediting of political and civic actors.
How inequality is reproduced not only through media representations but also through rules and practices in the family, education, work, politics and other social institutions — and which changes can expand people’s opportunities and choices.
Research on gender and media is one of Iryna Sidorskaya’s longest-standing areas of work
It began long before Kantrapunkt was created and includes academic research on gender representations and stereotypes in the media, analysis of Belarusian journalism, teaching courses on gender and media, and publications on the topic.
In 2014, the textbook Gender and the Media was published. In the years that followed, the research focus gradually expanded: from the question of how media portray women and men to analyzing how gender is connected to power, political communication, propaganda, social institutions and the public sphere.
Today, Kantrapunkt continues this research trajectory
The study examined how Belarusian media represent women and men, which gender roles and stereotypes are reproduced in journalistic content, and how a gender perspective affects the quality of media coverage.
The research focused on the visibility of women and men in the media, expert representation, gender stereotypes, language and headlines, as well as gender-specific patterns in the representation of different social and political issues .
Iryna Sidorskaya was the lead expert on the study, conducted in collaboration with Media IQ in 2021–2024.
The study summarizes two waves of thematic monitoring of Belarusian media conducted in 2023 and analyzes the representation of women and men, gender stereotypes, the gender agenda and gender disinformation.
Read the study ↗Research expertise in this area also informs public analysis of current events, media cases, political decisions and everyday manifestations of gender inequality.
How gender stereotypes appear in the choice of protagonists and expert voices, headlines, language and ways of interpreting events — and how gender-sensitive journalism makes it possible to notice what remains invisible from an ostensibly neutral perspective.
How discussions of family, sexuality, and women’s and men’s roles are turned into political language — and why the “defense of traditional values” becomes part of state propaganda.
In her columns, Iryna Sidorskaya analyzes current events through a gender lens — from political representation and public communication to family, work and state gender policy.
Gender Gap is a regular expert program in which current events serve as a starting point for discussing the broader mechanisms of gender inequality.
Political representation, work and family, demography, social policy, media stereotypes, violence and the distribution of power.
The focus is not only on the position of women, but also on how the gender order shapes the opportunities, expectations and vulnerabilities of both women and men.
Gender analysis can serve not only as a way to describe inequality, but also as a tool for designing policy and institutional solutions.
Iryna Sidorskaya’s expertise in this area includes contributing to the development of the Draft Organic Law of the Republic of Belarus “On Gender Equality” ↗ in collaboration with International IDEA, as well as work with gender impact assessment approaches in the development of public policy and legislation.
Gender roles, family and “traditional values” can become tools of political mobilization, constructing an image of the enemy, and positioning Belarus in opposition to the West.
Migration experiences are shaped not only by age, professional capital and legal status, but also by the gendered distribution of work, care and family responsibilities.
Gender shapes who gains visibility, authority and a voice in politics, media and public debate — and under what conditions.
Gender analysis makes it possible to see inequality where it often appears to be the natural order of things.
In the distribution of work and care, in expectations placed on women and men, in access to power and resources, and in whose voice is treated as authoritative and whose experience becomes socially significant.
For Kantrapunkt studying gender means not studying “women’s issues,” but using gender as one way to examine power, inequality and people’s capacity to act in society
