GENDERED NARRATIVES IN WOMEN-ORIENTED MICRO-SHORT PLAYS: A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY

Abstract

Women-oriented micro-short plays have emerged as a distinctive audiovisual form within contemporary digital media networks, particularly in relation to women’s experiences, emotional negotiation, and identity formation. This paper examines gendered narratives in women-oriented micro-short plays from a cross-cultural perspective, focusing on how such narratives shape female audience identification and reflect broader socio-cultural conditions. Adopting a qualitative-dominant mixed-methods design, the study draws on questionnaire responses, textual and narrative analysis of selected micro-short plays, and an illustrative case study of a representative women-oriented micro-short series distributed on a major short-video platform. The findings indicate that narratives centred on women’s self-development, emotional negotiation, workplace experience, and social identity are central to audience engagement. The compressed narrative structure and heightened emotional pacing of micro-short plays strengthen affective resonance and facilitate audience identification. The cross-cultural comparison reveals both shared and culturally specific patterns of gender representation. Domestic productions tend to emphasise family values and relational negotiation, while international examples more frequently foreground personal autonomy, self-realisation, and boundary-setting. This paper contributes to media and communication studies by positioning women-oriented micro-short plays as a gendered media form and by highlighting their cultural significance within contemporary short-form digital storytelling.