Media and ICTs for Monday Breakfast
Monday 07 March 2005
It is just over two weeks ago that the international day of monitoring for the Global Media Monitoring Project 2005 took place. Many of the participating organisations and countries are in the process of completing their coding of the media from that day. According in Anna Turley of WACC-London who has been steering the global monitoring initiative, 102 countries took part in the international day of monitoring. For some it was the first time they had participated in GMMP. One national co-ordinator wrote to say that after doing the monitoring "We believe we will never watch, listen, or read the news with same eyes".
Anna Turley also advises that on the day, February 16, it was interesting to see that the story of Michael Jackson's trial, the funeral of the Lebanese former Prime Minister Mr Rafiq Hariri and the Kyoto agreement dominated the news in many countries. Many “media monitors’ also reported that even at first glance it was easy to see that women did not appear in many of the main news stories. And even though the mainstream media continues to neglect women’s perspective in mainstream news and perpetuates a traditionally-stereotypical role of women, women’s media advocates cannot afford to ignore the mainstream media in our strategies.
Today, at the International Women’s Tribune Centre’s final “Bagels and Books” morning dialogue session, Media and ICTs (information communication technologies) started our morning with presentations from Colleen Lowe Morna of Gender Links South Africa and Chat Garcia Ramilo, Coordinator of the Association for Progressive Communications Women's Networking Support Programme, (APC WNSP).
Morna, the former CEO of the Commission of Gender Equality in South Africa and the former African Coordinator of the Women’s Feature Service, has been a strong advocate of the role of media in promoting gender equality, highlighting that there is no singular exclusive process, media advocacy requires a number of approaches, which women’s NGOs have been involved in. These including training and empowering women in the media, undertaking media watch and media monitoring projects through consumer activism and of course the response by women’s media NGOs who have responded to the gaps in the “man-stream” by developing, producing and distributing their own media initiatives.
At this morning’s presentation Morna served up the work that has resulted in two publications which were on display this morning – “Getting it Right – Gender and Media in Southern Africa” and “My Views on the News – the first report on the South African Gender and Media Audience Survey.”
Gender Links attempts to address the perpetuation of gender stereotypes has included qualitative and quantitative research, in order to argue and engage with media executives:
“Don’t get angry get smart,” she told us this morning, in fact the research initiative was undertaken in partnership with the Media Institute in Southern Africa and covered 14 countries, which meant analysing over 25,000 news articles.
Other Gender Link media advocacy strategies have included:
advocacy strategies, such as workshops with media decision makers
working closely with gender activists to position gender equality campaigns with a positive media position
media policy advocacy within the institutional context
monitoring and evaluation
establishing gender and media networks.
For Gender Links, while the research results were fairly depressing, with women only making 17% of news stories, what is of greater concern is the more subtle stereotypes in news stories which are more dangerous. This, she said, exemplifies how women’s maternal roles are more often conveyed in news stories compared to the role of men who dominate the public sphere. According to Gender Links, gender aware or balanced reporting is about getting a balance of perspectives in a story, after all men and women can differ in their opinions and this should be covered accordingly:
“How can you talk about a free press if a major proportion of the population (i.e. women) is negatively skewed?” she asked.
At the same time, Gender Links believes there is a crucial role to be played through media-consumer activism, and another of the organisation’s research consider how southern African audiences respond to news content, and the type of news media men and women consume and their primary and secondary sources of news. While connectivity issues are a costly reality for the southern African region, Gender Links has found that in Asia which was compared in the research, women whose work provided them with computer and internet access, such as in Mauritius, sourced their news first from the Internet, this undoubtedly underscores their need to be able to access information and news while at work, because once they get home many working women would not have a chance to read the newspaper let alone follow the news on the radio or television.
In 2000, the Millennium Declaration reconfirmed the urgency of ensuring the benefits of new technologies, especially of ICTs stating that “all Member States were committed to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women as effective ways to combat poverty, hunger and disease and to stimulate development that is truly sustainable, as well as ensuring that the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communication technologies were available to all.”
And this morning, Chat Garcia Ramilo, Coordinator of the Association for Progressive Communications Women's Networking Support Programme, (APC WNSP highlighted the GEMS that APC has developed.
Gender Evaluation Methodology (presently available on their website) is a wonderful checklist for anyone who wants to ensure that women’s access to ICTs is a positive process rather than one that further marginalises women especially if you only think that tele-work automatically gives women access to economic benefits. Spare a thought to the women whose work is actually doubled because even though access to computer technology results in increased income for the women, it actually doubles the burden of their work – they still have to do the housework at the end of the day:
“So the gender evaluation indicators should be used to be able to ensure there is a connection made between women’s equality and empowerment and the development of ICT tools, programmes and policies.”
So as women’s media and ICT activists, advocates and practitioners continue to lobby for the critical need to keep women, media, and ICT issues on the agenda of the Beijing + 10 – as a tool for empowerment and not merely a strategy…. I wonder how International Women’s Day events and celebrations will be covered in our (Pacific) region.
Ends/femLINKpacific/SBr
A femTALK Update from the 49th session of the Commission of the Status of Women (CSW) opens at the United Nations Headquarters in New York by Sharon Bhagwan Rolls femLINKpacific: Media Initiatives for Women / AMARC-Women’s International Network
c/- The International Women’s Tribune Centre Ph 1-212-687-8633