NCJ Number
200631
Journal
Violence Against Women Volume: 9 Issue: 6 Dated: June 2003 Pages: 698-722
Editor(s)
Claire M. Renzetti
Date Published
June 2003
Length
25 pages
Annotation
This article uses three media representations of a 1991case of a Filipino domestic worker in Singapore sentenced to death for the supposed murder of a young boy to show how violence against overseas domestic workers is understood transnationally.
Abstract
In 1995, a Filipino domestic worker named When Flor Contemplacion, was arrested, tried, and executed in Singapore for the murder of a young boy. In this article, negotiation of gender discourse in media meanings of violence with respect to the Contemplacion case is adopted which in turn brings a different approach to both media and cultural analysis of the case itself, contributing to the substance of media analyses of gender and violence. This article attempts to show how the media and nationalist discourses are inextricably interwoven and felt politically in the lives of Contemplacion, the victim, family and friends, and other overseas domestic contract workers in Singapore and their employers, and media audiences. Three Singapore press articles provided the starting point of a semiotic analysis, with their totally different versions of the case, which then broadened into a cultural critique of the violence by mapping the relationship between women, citizenship, and the state. In each step of analysis, gender, ethnicity, and class were found to be intertwined. Notes, references