“I’m going to break your nose,” “I’ll shatter your legs,” “Have you looked at yourself in the mirror? You want to go out looking like that? What will my friends say?”, “You’re not allowed to go to your parents’ house, you can only go when I tell you.” These statements are used every day on Armenian television shows. Women are degraded and subjected to psychological and physical pressure on television. Men express their will in authoritative tones, but when women ever defy them, they are subjected to disrespect and violence. The writers of these episodes claim that these are scenes based on reality. Experts fighting against domestic violence find that such scenes unconsciously promote violence.
“Television shows not only reflect gender stereotypes and gender-based violence, but they also reproduce them,” Zara Hovhannisyan, the coordinator of the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Women, told Aravot Daily. According to her, these shows quietly encourage domestic violence.
Zara Hovhannisyan said that even outside of television, there is a lot of discrimination against women in Armenian society, and instead of trying to break these stereotypes, they are reinforced and reproduce on a daily basis. “This is very dangerous. Instead of trying to get rid of dangerous elements within our society, we are reinforcing them, and we lose our values of education by introducing dangerous habits to our society.”
She believes that it’s not only television shows that promote violence. There are also news articles that are about domestic violence and femicide. The women in these articles are labeled- they must have done something to cause the men to harm them, which provides an opportunity for the men’s behavior to be justified and to not be considered homicide. According to Hovhannisyan, the state’s role is not only to fine the people who write these articles, but to also educate society. “The same journalists receive their education in our universities. These same children are educated in schools where the correct policies are not in place.”
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As far as why television shows that contain such violent scenes have such high ratings and why they are in demand, the activist said that she does not believe that society has such demands. According to her, the problem is that television shows can be easily produced and they have lots of views, unlike other, more serious programs.
The National Commission of Television and Radio has the right to appeal to different television studios that receive their licensing from this commission. “The commission also has a monitoring department, which has the ability to check the contents of each show. If they cannot fine these studios, then they can at least use different educational programs or observers to appeal to the studios so they can improve the quality and level of their shows.”
Lusine Budaghyan
