MEDIA-AFRICA: Lack Of Women’s Voices In The Media Questioned

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Farai Samhungu

WINDHOEK, NAMIBIA, May 8 2001 (IPS) - Women in the region have questioned the lack of Women’s voices in the media in southern Africa.

“How can we talk of press freedom, if the media do not give a voice to half of the region’s population?” asks Thenjiwe Mtintso of Gender Links, a Johannesburg-based non-governmental organisation (ngo).

Mtintso, who is also assistant secretary-general of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), says the media thrive on challenging everyone and everything but themselves.

Her colleague, Colleen Lowe Morna, who is executive director of Gender Links, agreed. A journalist herself, Lowe Morna, wonders “why is it that the media are silent on the issues of gender in region? How often do we hear women’s voices as sources in the stories that we read, see and listen to on a daily basis?”

Last week Gender Links launched a handbook on mainstreaming gender in the media in southern Africa, ahead of the tenth anniversary of the Windhoek Declaration held in the Namibian capital of Windhoek on May 1-5.

The handbook, titled ‘Whose News? Whose Views? Southern Africa Gender in Media’, was published by Gender Links as part of the activities of the Africa Gender and the Media (GEM) initiative.

The handbook points to gross gender imbalances that exist in the media in Africa and throughout the world.

According to a report released by the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) early this year, only 18 per cent of news subjects are women, while men account for 82 per cent of such subjects.

The proportion of women to men working in the media industry also displays similar imbalances. Only 20 per cent women are reporters, predominantly in the print media, according to a 2000 Media Watch report.

However, the scales tip in favour of women when it comes to presenters. The report notes that 56 per cent of presenters are women. The percentage, based on a global survey, is also high in Africa where 48 per cent of the radio and television presenters are women.

Yet only a few women can influence media content either as subjects, media workers, or owners.

“The media should play an activist role,” says Lucy Oriang, deputy managing editor of Kenya’s Daily Nation. “They should work with civil society, without compromising their professional integrity, to achieve the changes we seek in society.”

Maintainig integrity, she says, is often not easy “in the newsroom, but commitment, coupled with hard and fast policies, will go a long way in achieving it.”

Lowe Morna has acknowledged efforts, especially in the print media, to deal with the lack of a gender perspective by dedicating pages to deal with women’s issues.

But, while the women’s page is necessary, “it’s simply an add- on. What the media need is a transformation of the manner in which they perceive and deal with gender issues,” she notes.

Robert Jamieson of the Chronicle of Malawi says the demand to transform gender should not only focus on women, but also on men. He points to the dangers that often arise within the gender discourse, where assumptions are made that gender is about women, and that women in management are gender-sensitive and that they will contribute to achieving gender equality.

The handbook is a step-by-step guide on mainstreaming gender in the media. One of its notable features is a checklist that can be used by media institutions to come up with a gender policy and a framework for its implementation.

“It’s not prescriptive,” says Lowe Morna, “but provides you with guidelines on the questions you should ask yourself as an institution and how you can begin to address them.”

It also provides readers with both positive and negative examples of stories produced by media across southern Africa.

“By speaking to the publishers and senior editors, the GEM team wants to lay the foundation for a process of transforming the media in southern Africa. Ten years from now, we want to be able to say, this was the status of gender in the media before 2001, and this is how far we have gone,” says Mtinso.

Media expert Kaarle Nordenstreng of Finland applauded the GEM team for coming up with such a useful product. “Coming from Europe, where similar debates are taking place, I am delighted to see a handbook that is targeted at the media in Africa,” he says.

The GEM team, which comprises Inter Press Service