Exploring the linkage between TV shows and women's empowerment in a metropolitan city of Pakistan

In Pakistan, Television (TV) morning shows attained a lot of popularity among urban women over time due to the presentation of women centric content. This study has attempted to analyze the content of TV morning shows and assessed its linkage with women's empowerment (WE) by considering a case of Lahore - a metropolitan city of Pakistan. The study relied on qualitative information from 66 episodes of selected five leading morning shows and survey data of 260 urban women viewers of TV morning shows. Content analysis of morning shows revealed that around 38-77 % episodes (varying across TV morning shows) presented the content on WE, and 44-60 % episodes invited women celebrities to portray their success journey to influence the learning behaviour of women viewers. Surveyed women perceived that the learnings from TV morning shows, particularly from the success stories of celebrities, have been effective for influencing different aspects of their empowerment such as their mobility and participation in social networking, their awareness on financial matters, choice of career and participation in household level decision making. Econometric analysis also validated the positive relationship between TV morning shows and women empowerment. Based on findings, it can be concluded that TV morning shows mainly have positive influence on women's learning behaviour and informally sensitize them on different aspects of their empowerment. Based on findings, the study highlights that well-planned TV morning shows may trigger a change in the behaviour of the public on a larger scale to achieve national objectives on women's empowerment and gender equality.