Gender and the Media

Desiree Lewis and Barbara Boswell

The recent Know-How Conference, held in Kampala from 23-27 July and entitled
"A Safari into the Cross-Cultural World of Women's Knowledge Exchange", profiled pioneering initiatives for African women's empowerment in male-dominated fields of mass communications.
Together with many presentations at the Women's Worlds Congress, which coincided with the Know-How Conference, papers delivered also highlighted ways in which African women are carefully scrutinising patriarchal media institutions, challenging the widely-disseminated stereotypes that degrade women, and developing new strategies for circulating transformative and progressive knowledge. Confronting a climate where communication for development has been reduced to technological advancement in sectors dominated by elite men, the Know-How Conference raised urgent questions about who determines the content and flow of media information, who dominates the spaces and institutions that produce and disseminate information, and whose interests are served by an industry that has become increasingly technologically sophisticated and influential.

The prominence of recent attention to the media among African gender activists and researchers is a reassuring indication of awareness of the need to transform a terrain where oppressive gender meanings are often insidiously reproduced. At a time when many women's organisations and civil society movements are concertedly working to eradicate oppressive gender relations and practices, ingrained gender biases in newspapers, magazines, radio, television and websites are saturating public and private life and profoundly shaping people's sense of who they are and what their place in the world is. Significantly, two contributions to this newsletter focus critically on trends in South Africa and Uganda, often seen as African countries that offer model policies for guaranteeing gender equality and justice. Both Zubeida Jaffer, writing on South Africa, and Goretti Nassanga, dealing with Uganda, point out that gender equity is far from a reality when it comes to media institutions and representations in these countries.

Interventions into malestream media institutions and representations in Africa are also a timely response to local and global processes of oppression supported by sinister but forceful information dissemination. In the launch issue of Feminist Africa, Ruth Ochieng points to the success of these sorts of interventions when she discusses responses to the sentence of stoning for adultery of Amina Lawal in Nigeria. Indicating that gender-based violence has long been sanctioned through cultures of silence, she shows that publicity and online information played a significant part in lobbying and redress (see http://www.feministafrica.org/2level.html).

When we reflect on how injustices in the context of the present information revolution are perpetrated under cover of carefully orchestrated media propaganda, it is especially important that progressive media initiatives marshal the full array of resources, technologies and strategies that are monopolised by the powerful perpetrators of injustice. Satellite, cable and the Internet provide existing media oligarchies with vast global markets for their products. In particular, pornographic and violent subject-matter flourish in the context of expanding globalised media systems, and present enormous difficulties for monitoring and intervention. In the face of these and other challenges, African women and other marginalised groups are seizing new opportunities for the information dissemination that, in the past, could occur only through oral communication, low-cost publications or radio. The far-reaching ways in which recent mass communication developments affect our cultural landscape, the extent to which the media both presents obstacles for social transformation and opens up new paths for transformative work, are manifold. Some of the most urgent gendered concerns within the media, however, are: how media institutions perpetuate male dominance, gendered media representations and alternative media ventures.

Media Institutions

A 1999 study conducted by the Federation of African Media Workers covering 37 media organisations in southern Africa showed that women comprise about 25.6 percent of media practitioners in the region. According to the Media Institute of Southern Africa, less than five percent of media owners and managers in this region are women, a figure which is particularly disturbing when one considers the worldwide trend of more and more women entering journalism as a profession.

In her article, Zubeida Jaffer offers a personal insight into the challenges facing those few women who do make it into decision-making positions, and explores problems unique to women working in this high-pressure profession, such as sexual harassment and inadequate child-care support. As Goretti Nassanga indicates, mainstream media institutions are ruthlessly masculinist environments that wholly ignore gender-sensitive reporting, and practice extremely hostile forms of gender discrimination. The under-representation of women at the decision-making level both reflects and generates gender inequality and discrimination. There is, of course, no necessary correlation between women's presence in media institutions and the content of the information or entertainment that is produced. But it is undeniable that the sexist and often misogynistic values obtaining within the industry, and the deluge of gendered media products that it creates are an indictment of the dominance of men in the industry.

The image of the successful journalist is, as Nassanga reminds us, a strongly masculinised one of the intrepid and aggressive sleuth who ruthlessly tracks down information. This image presents considerable obstacles for women seeking to enter the industry, and especially for women reluctant to accept the masculinised world that the media industry extols. It is a triumph of women's activism on the continent that organisations such as the African Women's Media Association, the African Federation of Media Workers in Southern Africa, and the Ugandan Women's Media Association have developed concerted ways of supporting - through local, regional and global networks - strategies that encourage women to break down the boundaries of an aggressively male world and to contest, in increasingly successful ways, some of the core values of this world.

But it is disturbing that the entry of women into the industry has often meant that women take up positions in junior and middle-level positions. This is revealing about the growing global and commercial framing of media institutions, increasingly driven by the call for hard news, by competitive demands for sensationalism and stereotyping in information or entertainment, and by a concomitant resistance to gender-sensitive or other transformative agendas. African media exist and operate in a context of globalisation, where it is becoming increasingly difficult for independent media practitioners to survive. Information has become a commodity, and with media ownership being concentrated in the hands of a few, information has increasingly been defined as a traded product with market value, rather than as a right. Against this backdrop, media analyst Margaret Gallagher points out that "the commodification of women in media content is likely to intensify" (see Lowe-Morna, 2001). Images of women in the mainstream media therefore seem destined to become more and more stereotypical, and in this context, women's participatory involvement at the media production and policy-making levels remains an ongoing challenge for promoting gender-sensitive media coverage.

Media Representations

The majority of consumers in Southern Africa are uneducated rural women. They rely mostly on TV or the radio. In Xhosa the TV is called the umabonakude (that which sees afar) and in radio unomathotholo (supernatural voices voices speaking to you) with osiyazi (does not lie). This descriptive language reflects a belief that these tools are beyond reproach. (Thenjiwe Mtintso, 2001)

It is often insisted that 'the public" determines what the media covers. According to this argument, media institutions are neutral and simply reflect "what the people want". The invocation of a homogenised "people" to justify media portrayals that dehumanise vast sections of the public is critically examined in patterns described in Whose News? Whose Views?, a recent handbook on gender and the media in southern Africa. One example describes how, at the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, a Botswanan newspaper ran an article about the AIDS-related death of a woman under the headline, "Have You Had Sex With This Woman?"

Myths about the media simply reflecting "popular interest" or being value-free are hard to dislodge in view of the pivotal and omnipresent role it has come to assume in all African societies' communicative processes. Even those whose exposure to certain media messages may be minimal are affected by messages that circulate in their wider contexts. The impact of circulating meanings about women and men are often subliminal and so all the more dangerous. Unlike overtly forceful forms of domination, gendered representations in the media conceal or mystify power and oppression, with consumers being encouraged to accept the information or entertainment presented as unchanging, inevitable and natural.

Statistics around the way women are portrayed in the media reflect a dismal story. In 1995 women made up 17% of news subjects; five years later the Global Media Monitoring Project 2000, which involved teams collecting data across the world, revealed that this figure increased to only 18%. This was despite considerable intervention, including the adoption of the Beijing Platform of Action. The Global Media Monitoring Project 2000 also found that women were featured primarily in stories involving entertainment, and received little or no coverage in news stories dealing with politics. Women were photographed twice as often than they were asked for comment. Thus, "woman" in the media becomes the object, whether this object takes the form of sexual object, or hard-done-by victim.

It is startling that media representations of men and women are often outrageously reactionary in relation to certain changes prompted by policy-making in the political arena, in education, or in certain workplaces. Ruth Mukama describes some of these representations:

Women are perpetually stereotyped as domesticated, given to leisure, fashion and beauty interests. They are also invariably portrayed as brainless, dependent, indecisive, subservient and sport for men's pleasure. Women are persistently objectified as men's possessions. Educated working women activists are portrayed as audacious insubordinate agitators, while those who opt to remain single are portrayed as prostitutes, social degenerates, and immoral beings who sleep their way to the top. Those who hold high political or administrative positions are branded as incompetent and ineffecient. They are ultimately demonised and isolated as irrational snobs (2002:147).

While the inventory presented here might make the portrayals at work appear to be obviously distorting, it is worth remembering how unrelentingly we are bombarded with these and similar images. The economic and political power underpinning gender stereotyping, and especially the vested economic interests in media validation of various forms of gender-based violence, make scope for intervention extremely difficult. At the same time, we must acknowledge the extent to which alternative media developments, supported by increasingly vocal and powerful women's movements on the continent, are driving crucial interventions.

Alternative Communication

The oldest women's media initiative in Africa is the Ugandan Media Women's Association, which was formed in 1983. Over the years, the Association has worked closely with the Ugandan women's movement to become a prominent force in supporting women's media work, challenging gender stereotypes in the media, producing publications such as With Women in Mind: Towards a Fair Mass Media in Uganda (1998) and Use of the Mass Media: Tips for Women Leaders (1998), and generally pursuing a dual strategy of challenging gender blindness in Uganda's mainstream media as well as introducing new forms. At a continental level, the African Women's Media Centre, which was established in 1997 and is situated in Dakar, offers training and networking programmes for incorporating the voices of African women - as junior or middle-level media workers, producers, managers, executives and media experts. In South Africa, Women's Media Watch, which was started in 1995, is an independent organisation that challenges all forms of discrimination in the Southern African media, and coordinates advocacy, training, research and monitoring. Organisations like these are steadily building an environment that contests traditional male dominance in the media industry as well as the hegemonic representations that trap men and women in stereotypes denying their humanity.

The vigour of recent gender activism is also manifested in the numerous ventures that deploy current technological advances for expanding communications networks. Ruth Ochieng comprehensively reviews these in the following way:

The formation of e-networks in Africa has been an efficient catalyst in the dissemination of information on issues affecting women organised at grassroots, national and international levels. These networks include those with developed listserves such as Gender in Africa Information Network (GAIN), which was formed in 1997 to share information on gender justice in Africa; Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET), established in 2000 to encourage the use of ICTs among women; and the Association for Progressive Communication (APC) for African Women, launched to promote gender equity in the design, implementation and use of ICTs in policy
and the use of ICTs in building women's networks. South African's Women'sNet supports the coordination of the South African women's movement through the continual flow of relevant information and the training of women in the basic skills of using the Internet. Femmes-Afrique, an electronic information service for francophone Africa, is based in Senegal and was set up to circulate information about the health and rights of women throughout Africa. Women's Rights Watch, which is based in Nigeria, campaigns against gender-related persecution and also offers free legal service to affected women. (http://www.feministafrica.org/2level.html)

Another critically important alternative space is Feminist Africa (http://www.feministafrica.org), Africa's first continent-wide online feminist journal, which was launched by the African Gender Institute in October this year, provides a cutting-edge forum for gender research, writing and dialogue. Aimed primarily at a niche market of academics, students and researchers, this initiative is an important alternative media production site, both in content and reach. As Ochieng goes on to point out, however, the use of ICTs for advancing the interests of women, especially uneducated and rural women, must take into account the extent to which ICT access is determined by education and economic resources, as well as ways in which the content generally available on the Internet ignores the information needs of the majority of African people, and, in particular, women. Among many supporters of the information revolution, the optimistic belief in its potential to democratise knowledge and ensure the sharing of information and ideas at a "global" level seriously ignores that the information revolution is occurring in the context of entrenched global power relations. While ICTs present numerous possibilities for African women's progressive networking and information-sharing, they are not value-free, neutral tools, which are freely accessible to all. ICT infrastructure exist and function within a hegemonic world order; most information available on the Internet, for example, relates to and is generated in the United States.

This leads to an issue provocatively raised in Remegio Achia's discussion of rural women's
communication in Uganda and Barbara Boswell's interview with Lebogang Mashile: the question of what independent communicative networks and strategies for problem-solving and information-
gathering have developed among those who either do not have the resources to access ICTs, television, and even radio and newspapers, or who have found these inadequate for their unique information needs.

In her study of women and agriculture, Remigio Achia considers the reliance of rural Ugandan women - despite their access to radio and newspapers - on oral communication for gaining agricultural information. She concludes that independently-established networks provide greater opportunities for women to guarantee their interests, and argues: "It is vital to understand and to work with women's array of interaction points and social networks within particular areas in order to develop appropriate channels for delivering targeted messages".

In a related discussion about the value of interactive and poetic forms of communication, Lebogang Mashile describes her use of poetry among young people for the purposes of raising awareness and encouraging a critical understanding of "self" in relation to a surrounding world. The use of communication strategies that fall outside of the orbit of information and knowledge dissemination generally described by the term, "media" illustrates how African women and other socially marginal groups tactically use available resources to develop networks that best serve their interests, despite the availability or dominance of forms associated with the information revolution.

Mass communication, as a process made possible by technology ranging from the printing press to the micro-chip, facilitates communication across national and regional boundaries and ensures that information is rapidly and efficiently gathered and circulated. In Africa, the scope for development that mass communications offers has led organisations and institutions across the political spectrum - including governments, NGOs, donor agencies and civil society organisations - to focus on developing infrastructure, increasing telecommunication services, financing community newspapers and printing presses, developing radio stations and programmmes, and funding ICTs in, for example, rural schools, community centres or clinics. But the view behind these developments can very easily become an assumption about the dependence of certain groups on technologically-driven communication, and, even more problematically, about their inability to make informed choices about what knowledge serves them best. The resilience of small-scale, community-based, and oral forms of communication in the present is both a testimony of the vibrant communicative strategies used by many African women, and a powerful signal to all who would presume to "liberate" them that many often continue to use independent networks for producing and circulating knowledge for their own empowerment.

References

Lowe-Morna, C. ed. 2001. Whose News? Whose Views? Southern Africa Gender in Media Handbook. Gender Links.

Mukama, R. 2002. "Women Making a Difference in the Media" in Tripp, A and Kwesiga, J. eds. The Women's Movement in Uganda: History, Challenges and Prospects. Kampala: Fountain Publications.

Mtintso, T. 2001. Foreword to Lowe-Morna. ed. Whose News? Whose Views? Southern Africa Gender in Media Handbook. Gender Links.

Ochieng, R. 2002. "Information and Communication Technologies as a Tool for Women's Empowerment and Social Transformation in Africa". Feminist Africa. http://www.feministafrica.org.

Uganda Media Women's Association and Friedrich Ebert Stifting. 1998. With women in Mind: Towards a Fair Mass Media in Uganda. Kampala: UMWA.

Uganda Media Women's Association and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. 1998. Use of the Mass Media: Tips for Women Leaders. Kampala: UMWA.

Federation of African Media Women (SADC). 1999. "Gender Employment Patterns in Media Organisations in the Southern Africa Region".

 

Vol, 11 Dec 2002

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