The Politics of Establishing the Meaning of Woman in Contemporary Gender Conflicts: A Discourse Analysis of the Documentary “What Is a Woman?”

Representation of female identity in contemporary media is an arena for discursive conflicts and the stabilization of meaning. This research aims to explore the political mechanisms of defining “woman” in the documentary "What Is a Woman?" utilizing the critical discourse analysis approach of Fairclough. The main question is how the documentary reproduces the biological definition as the only legitimate truth through linguistic and narrative tools. The research method is qualitative and based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional model, examining text analysis, discursive practice, and social practice within the frameworks of the theories of Hall, Foucault, Laclau, and Mouffe. The findings show that the documentary operates through three analytical levels: at the level of semantic articulation, it locks the floating signifier "woman" into a biological reality using definitive verbal structures and visual metaphors. At the level of truth regime, it creates a hierarchy of knowledge and an alliance between biomedicine and tradition, negating the lived experiences of transgender women and portraying them as “illusion” or “threat.” At the level of naturalization, it reduces conflicts to “common sense,” concealing the essence of this definition and transforming it into an evident matter. This research demonstrates that the documentary is not merely a documentary work, but an active tool for restructuring the field of discursive legitimacy, where the biological discourse stabilizes the binary gender order against the fluidity of modern identity. This analysis aids in understanding how meanings are formed and reproduced by media in the context of gender identities.