Women of all ages stand with their arms linked together on the frontlines of a protest against Aleksandr Lukashenka – sometimes called ‘Europe’s last dictator’, who has been president of Belarus since 1994. In many of these already iconic images, the women are dressed in red and white and carrying flowers.
The role of women in these historic protests – which began after a national election on 9 August that Lukashenka says he won with 80% of the vote, an unbelievable result that has been widely disputed and condemned by international observers – has captured widespread media attention from the US to Ukraine.
What’s remarkable is that positive images and stories of women protestors have appeared on diverse news sites from left-wing outlets to evangelical Christian blogs – while some of the same mainstream media articles that have celebrated women’s role in the protests, and reported critically on Lukashenka’s misogyny, have also repeated and amplified sexist stereotypes in their own language and framing.
