Mavic Cabrera-Balleza related the concern expressed by many NGOs regarding the non-inclusion of Women and Media in the series of online discussions organized by UN DAW. The reason cited by UN DAW was that there was no UN agency that stepped in to organize a discussion on women and media. While there was some initial argument as to whether or not this topic had been sidelined as part of a deliberate design, it was agreed that DAW’s reasoning was inadequate. Mavic raised the point on why UNESCO did not organize it when it was the UN agency that has media in its purview and it is the one that organized the Women and Media conference in preparation for the Beijing Conference. She also asked why UN DAW itself did not organize a women and media online discussion when it organized a similar women and media discussion in 2002 in preparation for the 2003 CSW session and in the lead up to the 2003 World Summit on the Information Society. She said that one of the suggestions so far is for women’s media and information and communication groups to write to Carolyn Hannan, Chief of UN DAW to raise this concern and remind the UN and governments of their commitments in the Women and Media section of the Beijing Platform for Action.

Sharon Bhagwan Rolls put forward the idea of sending UNESCO a letter to protest the ‘step-sisterly’ treatment that was being meted out to the issue of ‘women and media.’ She said this was especially important because it had ramifications at country-level because it would be hard to advocate for change that was not supported at the international level. Seconding her suggestion, Joan Ross Frankson said that it was important to remind UNESCO that though ‘women and media’ had obviously faded from UNESCO’s agenda in recent years, the advocacy UNESCO had shown towards the issue had earned it a place as Section J in the Beijing +10 Platform for Action. Therefore, it was UNESCO’s responsibility to make sure the issue got the attention in deserved.

A three-member team composed of Mavic Cabrera-Balleza, Sharon Bhagwan Rolls and Jenny Radloff was formed to draft this letter.

Maria Suarez, Joan Ross Frankson, Joanne Omang and Vicki Semler volunteered to meet with the UNESCO representative to CSW to raise the issue and urge them to underscore the need to keep women and media in the Beijing + 10 agenda in the intervention they will be making during the 49th CSW.

Joan added that it was important to advocate from an understanding that community media should not remain a non-issue.

Maria Suarez said that there was a need to negotiate with the feminist movement to position ‘women and media’ and to remain conscious about globalization and how it plays into the issue, heightens it or makes it invisible. She said that women tend to see media as a powerful tool, but not as an issue that requires advocacy.

The discussion shifted slightly when Vicki Semler asked if people think that the media policies included in Section J have made a difference to policy-making 10 years down the line.

Sharon said that the Fiji government had not taken on Section J in its country’s platform for action till last year when it had come up as an important issue at the policy level for the first time. However, she emphasized that steps still needed to be taken to move the government’s policies forward.

Mavic said that only four countries including Australia and Estonia had committed to implement Section J. She related that in Australia, the government allocated a substantial amount for the setting up of a Women’s Unit in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and producing a radio and TV talk show titled Women Out Loud. However, she emphasized that 10 years later, the government decided that gender mainstreaming was considered complete and no more funds were allocated to the Women’s Unit and to Women Out Loud and these were eventually shut down .

Colleen Lowe Morna pointed out the importance of remembering that governments don’t have all the answers and those they often use the excuse of not interfering with the freedom of press to escape the demands of Section J. She also said that media has many classifications – public, private, alternative, community – and government regulatory frameworks have worked to transform public and private media in some countries, at least in bringing some sort of gender balance in organizational structure and the gender balance of people employed.

Vicki remarked that a measure of the extent to which the issue was sidelined could be seen at the WSIS conference in 2003 where language on gender kept getting dropped.

Valerie Evans said that the 2003 CSW statement on gender and ICTs had been “magnificent” but nothing had happened after that. She wanted to know why gender mainstreaming had not pervaded the WSIS process.

Maria Suarez discussed the Women’s Media Pool and demonstrated how it functions and how members of the 41 organizations (some of whom were in the room) who had signed as members could post articles and links on the site. It was decided that members of the pool would send the articles they posted with the clause that readers, journalists and other organizations were welcome to use the information but would have to send an email to the writer so that the use of the content could be tracked.

It was decided that members of NGOs present at the meeting would come in to the IWTC office on different days of the week to help Maria, who would remain the coordinator, to update the media pool. The IWTC office was designated as the base of operations for the pool.

Colleen Lowe Morna described Cyber Dialogues, how it had come about and the dates (March 2, 3 & 4 and March 7, 8, 9, 10 from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.) on which they were taking place and could be accessed. Her colleague Kubi Rama described the other CSW resources their organization was making possible, including a daily newspaper, GemNews, which was available in .pdf format on their website along with a fact sheet for each day.

Vicki Semler initiated the discussion on the diminishing resources/funding for women’s media and information/communication projects. She said that gender mainstreaming had backfired and we were now witnessing a dismantling of it. She said media groups had to find a way to respond to these changes.

Joan said there were difficulties across the board with many women’s organizations, especially those with the single-agenda of helping women, experiencing a paucity of funds.

Maria Suarez agreed with her saying that organizations which combined work on women’s human rights or CEDAW (for example) were doing much better on the funding front. She talked about the past Netherlands government which used to fund women’s organizations in other countries with the philosophy that whatever is good for women in their country was good for women in other parts of the world. A shadow report she had read detailed the radically different policies of the present, conservative government which has dismantled its women’s office etc. She said it was important to examine what is happening in countries that used to be the major donors.

Joan said that the Netherlands government had also cut its funding to UNIFEM. She emphasized the fragility of the power and rights that had been won for women in decades of struggle.

Joanne said she sometimes wished for a crisis that would push the issue of women’s rights to the forefront again, i.e. remind younger women who have no idea about the struggle to emancipate women how fragile those rights really are.

Sharon observed that another reason for the paucity of funding was the weakening of civil society, within which women’s issues exist, where governments who want to control the inflow of money to their countries influence donor organizations.

Maria offered three hypotheses for the paucity of funding for women’s organizations:

The problem is multilayered because women have always tried to bring their gains, their strengths to the fore, rather than talk about what had been lost. Thus, these losses have been glossed over and there is an aura of achievement that provides a sense that the job has been done.

A reduction of autonomous spaces

Monopoly of mainstream media and a reduction of alternative/autonomous media, resulting in the silencing of voices.

Joan spoke about the WEDO report, “Beijing Betrayed” to highlight her point that there’s a sense that quite a bit has been done but not much of a sense that more is needed. She also stressed that women have to become “mean again” to get what is needed and that more unity was required among women communicators and within the rest of the movement.

Colleen suggested that while she agreed with Maria’s points and Joan’s comments, it was important to quantify this drying up of funds, if it was going to be used as a point around which to organize.

Maria suggested that women’s NGOs in donor countries be asked to provide the figures to support this hypothesis.

It was decided that the next meeting would be held on March 2, Wednesday, at 6.15 pm.