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Virginia Muwanigwa
This is the 13th in a series of articles analysing progress on gender equality and women’s empowerment 20 years post-Beijing. Zimbabwe joined the rest of the world in commemorating World Press Freedom Day on May 3.There is general consensus that the media provides an effective opportunity to address conservative norms and standards that have made meeting the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA) targets difficult.

There is need for action at five levels – transformation of attitudes and practices, adoption of enabling policies, public awareness on the policies, formation of partnerships at all levels and research and monitoring.

This was said by the UNWomen Executive Director, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, during the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) conference in New York in March. Speaking at a meeting co-organised by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), during the conference, she noted the need to have shared narratives that focus on areas of commonality among women and men using the media.

The media’s role, according to her, is to transform beliefs and attitudes and discourse through a gender sensitive narrative. This is, however, not as easy as delivery of basic services as qualitative issues need to be transformative. Mlambo-Ngcuka urged a narrative that changes culture and social mores by instilling the confidence among people that we can achieve gender equality in the next 15 years, for example.

The meeting applauded the formation, through the UNESCO, of the Gender and Media Agenda (GAMAG) as a welcome development that seeks to ensure that women make the news.

As part of the BPFA review, she urged the adoption by the media of “game changing initiatives” that have learnt from feedback contained in 168 country reports. The reports showed that women who faced intersecting challenges had least benefited except where conscious targeting was done.

Mlambo-Ngcuka said while the legislative and normative landscape had changed dramatically in all countries, there had been inadequate implementation due to lack of investment and funding. This resulted in legislation and mandates for gender machinery but no money. The UNWomen chief also noted that the equal opportunity discourse was stronger but not well resourced and the relevant ministries were relatively junior compared to their peers in government.

Colleen Lowe-Morna, Chief Executive of Gender Links, who is also the founding president of GAMAG, reflects on Beijing, where as a young journalist, she had no email. Twenty years later, changes include easy access to email.

“What has not changed is that the existence of conservative forces that are determined to roll back the gains is still evident. Despite the BPFA in Section J relating to media, in the current post-Beijing discourse, there is barely any reference on media and no reference at all on gender and media,” she observes.

Lowe-Morna notes that this is despite statistics that show that silent censorship still happens in the media all the time. “When half of the population is effectively silenced that is definitely censorship,” she declares. Her proposal to ensure that women make the news is, among others, to strip the back page and replace it with content that also celebrates women in all their diversity. She also believes that the media can be fair, challenge stereotypes and challenge the gaps in the agenda.

GAMAG is made up of 500 organisations globally, including media, civil society organisations and journalism schools. A position paper by GAMAG calls for a stand-alone goal on media and ICTs in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This, according to the organisation, is a prerequisite to ensure gender equality and dismantle patriarchy through changing mindsets.

Gender equality is key and there is need for equal participation by women in front of or behind the camera, according to Eygló Harðardóttir, of the Nordic Council of Ministers. Speaking on behalf of the gender equality ministerial council, she shared that they have been financing gender equality in the media – journalism, film, computer games and advertising.

In her country, Iceland, despite gender equality indices for many years, they are still not doing well as only 15 percent of film producers are women, for example. She stressed the need to have deliberate programming, beyond talking about, to doing something

Matt Winkler, Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of Bloomberg, shares that five years ago, their corporation did a gender audit which showed that in markets, companies and even voices, these were overwhelmingly men. This was despite that some of the most authoritative voices on issues happened to be women but they were silenced in acknowledgement. Although recruitment had improved, leadership was still overwhelmingly male.

He shares that they adopted an economic and business rather than ideological and social imperative to drive the gender equality agenda. This involves identifying all women who are influential newsmakers in every field; insisting on women’s voice in reporting; and setting specific targets every year to increase the number of women leaders in newsrooms, to address women in leadership void.

As a result, according to Winkler, today most of the head count of Bloomberg reports to a woman, sought the best coaches to mentor the women who were succeeding and failure is unacceptable, as the outlet is going to ensure they succeed. Bloomberg has also doubled the number of women team leaders in four years. “A long way to go but committing ourselves by policy as a business and economic venture is set to benefit both women and men,” he says.

Gender representation in the media has a phenomenal effect on framing attitudes, particularly for kids, says Geena Davis, academy award-winning actress, who was part of the panel. Davis, as founder and Chair of Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, has started a programme to transform the film and acting industry to be more gender sensitive.

She shared that her interest was sparked by the realisation that no one had studied the phenomenon of the effect of media on children being told when she started that “that problem has been fixed”. Hyper sexualisation and stereotyping of female characters is a message being sent to children that women and girls do not take up certain roles, that they are less than equal, she says.

Davis believes that legislation, implementation and representation of women would remove unconscious biases and their phenomenal impact on attitudes. She posits that at the current rate of representation, it would take 700 years “if we added female characters to achieve equality”. Despite the sombre statistics, Davis believes it can be as little as seven years if goals are set for ending discrimination against women. And film is one area where change could quickly become reality as images could already fix the biases fuelling inequality.

Annette Young, of France24, who moderated the gender and media meeting, notes that although 70 percent of journalism graduates are women, why is this not reflected in leadership. Winkler believes that it is due to a leadership void in the media as everywhere else. He expands this by suggesting that beyond scouting for everybody who is talented and the need to ensure best stories are produced, there is an even greater need to integrate women who are experienced and can deliver on key products in the media.

“It takes more than the right attitude to move media houses to policy, principles and goals,” he observes.