Symbolic violence and the effort to silencing women in their positions as leaders (critics of the women leaders’ habitus in advertising agencies)

¹ Ph.D. Candidate in Communication Science Department, Universitas Indonesia
² Senior Lecturer in Communication Science Department, Universitas Indonesia

^* Corresponding author: fitria.angeliqa.17@gmail.com

Abstract

The objective of this study perceives how the advertising agencies assign women to the position of the company leader as a patriarchal effort (as "the right hand" of the capitalists) to “muted” women in "comfortable" place. This research applies Pierre Bourdieu's Habitus-Field-Capital theory and its implications in the form of symbolic violence. This descriptive research applies constructivism paradigm. Obtained by conducting in-depth interviews with women leaders of advertising agencies, the data are examined using hermeneutic phenomenology. As a result, it becomes more and more difficult for female CEOs in advertising agencies--as a part of the media text producer--to recognize the acts of that violence. They rather duplicate and mimicking the symbolic violence in the texts they produce. Involving women in the agencies does not necessarily yield to the gender-perspective texts as the automatic reflection of their thoughts, habits, and acts. It occurs because each social field is always full of subjective-contestation discourse which potentially generates dominating behaviors among the actors.