FRIDAY FILE: In the struggle for gender equality, the media should be a powerful ally. Unfortunately it strongly reinforces the status quo, particularly in the Global South.
By Kathambi Kinoti
Fifteen years after the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA) was adopted, women’s voices are still largely absent from the mainstream media. Recognising the powerful role of the media in shaping perspectives, the BPfA makes comprehensive recommendations to improve the visibility and voice of women and promote balanced and non-stereotypical portrayals of women. Some of the recommendations are:
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To change the continued projection of negative and degrading images of women in programming.
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To enhance women’s skills, knowledge and access to information technology in order to improve their ability to combat negative portrayals of women.
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To mainstream gender in media programming and policy.
Slow progress
A media monitoring study carried out in twelve southern African countries found that stereotypes abound and are actively promoted by the media. The report’s authors write: “Potentially having a huge role to play in this ‘liberation of the mind,’ the media has more often than not been part of the problem rather than of the solution.” Women are typically portrayed by the press as sex objects, temptresses, mothers or wives. When newspapers, radio or television stations need an expert on a subject, they are less likely to call upon a woman. The study found that women politicians, who on average formed 18 percent of the region’s parliaments, were rarely news sources, being quoted only 8 percent of the time.
Although governments signed on to the BPfA, their media houses are no better than private commercial ventures, and in fact, according to the report, often fare much worse. Gender equality is simply not regarded as being newsworthy, and there is very little mention of women’s rights or the instruments that guarantee these rights. The report on the southern Africa study reproduces a cartoon carried in a Tanzanian newspaper. The image promotes negative stereotypes about women’s rights advocates who attended the Beijing Conference, ironically the first major global forum that comprehensively addressed media and gender representation.
Women have not benefitted from a proportionate share of the expanded freedoms that have come to the field of information and communication in the past decade. The southern African media monitoring report laments: “In all countries of the region and of the world, media practitioners - male and female - are subject to a form of self - censorship that they may not even be aware of because it is so deeply ingrained in the way we are raised.”
Gender equality is still seen as “women’s business.” While it rarely gets mentioned in the media, on the few occasions that it does, it is likely that the reporter filing the story is a woman - except in Asia according to the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP). The media in Latin America and the Caribbean do an increasingly better job of reporting on gender equality issues. Encouragingly, the GMMP reports that there have been dramatic improvements in Latin America – from 4 percent of news items in 2005 to 47 percent in 2010, and in the Caribbean – up from 5 percent in 2005 to 28 percent in 2010. The preliminary report suggests “developments in Latin America during the past five years that have positively impacted women’s participation in high political office may in part explain the spectacular rise in the tendency of reporters to highlight issues on gender (in) equality in their news coverage.”
All over the world, the media reinforces stereotypes, but the worst culprits are in the Middle East where 98 percent of stories uphold gender stereotypes. Only 4 percent of stories from the Pacific challenge stereotypes. Latin America’s media leads again in challenging stereotypes; 14 percent of stories actively do so but a still relatively high 24 percent reinforce stereotypes.
The majority of workers in the media at all levels are still men whether they be reporters or decision makers. The only area in which women achieve a level of parity is as television presenters - but they have an expiry date; they are usually aged 34 or below. Women over the age of 35 become invisible in the media according to the southern Africa study and the GMMP findings. This reinforces stereotypes about young women’s desirability and older women’s lack of it, something that does not affect male presenters on the same levels.
The voice and visibility of female journalists has improved somewhat since the BPfA. However they are more likely to be assigned “soft” news reporting: the arts, entertainment and lifestyle, while “hard” news - politics, the economy, government - remains a largely male domain. The figures reported by the GMMP make a solid case for increasing the numbers and influence of women in the media. Female journalists are more likely to feature female subjects and to rely on female experts than are male journalists. They are also more likely to consider a gender dimension to stories that would otherwise be gender-blind.
Hope for transformation?
Despite the overall discouraging trends in the representation of women in the media in the global South, media monitoring studies show that there are some positive developments. There is a growing committed cadre of volunteers who monitor the media and hold it accountable to women. Their influence needs to be strengthened.
Latin America leads the way in doing things differently and a South-South exchange between women’s organisations in the region and those in Africa, Asia , the Caribbean, the Middle East and the Pacific would provide valuable lessons across the board. Asia can provide lessons in getting gender equality out of the “women’s corner” and into the mainstream by having both male and female journalists reporting on gender issues. The Middle East leads the rest of the world in reporting on women’s rights instruments, knowledge which should be in the mainstream of news and events information as well as analysis and features.
The GMMP report makes a number of recommendations that urge a greater leading role for civil society in promoting positive representations of women in the media. Some of these are:
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Compile regional directories of women experts on diverse thematic issues. Women are typically portrayed as being experts only on gender equality, beauty, fashion and home-making, but in reality, they are present in all other fields of human endeavour and should be recognised as such.
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Create gender and media curricula in journalism schools. Gender and women’s rights awareness should be infused into all aspects of journalists’ work, so that women’s empowerment is not only covered in special interest stories but is an issue that is understood thoroughly and is actively promoted.
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Media decision-makers should receive gender-awareness training that challenges the deeply ingrained – and often unconscious – biases against women.
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Adopt and apply policies on gender parity in the media. There needs to be an equal presence of men and women at all levels from reporters to management.
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Support women in the media by offering them training and visibility.
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Establish gender-sensitive media codes of practice that hold media houses accountable for their reporting. It is unethical for them to continue to peddle skewed representations of women.
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Encourage media monitoring by civil society organisations.
While current media monitoring initiatives report a bleak picture they also provide a roadmap for the way ahead. A fundamental step in this journey is to get the media to realise its ethical responsibility. The GMMP report quotes Aidan White, the General Secretary of the International Federation of Journalists as saying: “Fair gender portrayal is a professional and ethical aspiration, similar to respect for accuracy, fairness and honesty.” Journalistic ethics need to be updated to include fair gender representation as a central principle.