8 March 2006
IFEX MEMBERS MARK INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY
On 8 March, International Women's Day, IFEX members around the world are celebrating the achievements of women journalists and calling for more action to address gender inequality.
Media Institute for Southern Africa
In Southern Africa, the Media Institute for Southern Africa (MISA), in partnership with Gender Links and the Gender and Media Southern Africa Network (GEMSA), has released a new study analysing media consumption patterns in the region and public perceptions of the news.
Covering 13 Southern African countries, the Gender and Media Audience Study is the first ever comprehensive regional study of how male and female audiences view the news. It is a companion to the 2002 Gender and Media Baseline Study, which provided statistical evidence that women in Southern Africa are both under-represented and stereotypically portrayed in the news.
World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters
The Women's International Network of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) is celebrating International Women's Day with 16 hours of radio broadcasting dedicated to women and gender issues.
Community radio producers from Asia-Pacific, Africa, Europe, North America and Latin America and the Caribbean will discuss the various challenges women face around the world, such as domestic violence against women in India, the murders of women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, the situation of indigenous women through out the world and the challenges of integrating women with disabilities in the feminist movement in Quebec.
The broadcast will also highlight the tremendous work accomplished by women over the years for the recognition of women?s rights in countries including the United States, South Korea and Liberia. (Visit: http://www.win.amarc.org)
ARTICLE 19, International Federation of Journalists
In Europe, ARTICLE 19 and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) have partnered with several organisations to launch the 2005 Global Media Monitoring Project report.
Coordinated by the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC), the report provides a snapshot of how women and men were represented and portrayed in the news in 76 countries on a single day in February.
The report indicates that while women make up 52 per cent of the world's population, they only represent 21 per cent of news subjects. It also shows that women's points of views are rarely heard in the topics that dominate the news agenda and women experts barely feature in news stories.
The IFJ's Gender Rights Campaign Officer, Pamela Morinière, says media organisations and journalists' unions remain male dominated despite an increase in the number of women joining the journalism profession.
"One cannot expect media to give a balanced picture of the world population when half of it is subject to willful discrimination, stereotype or institutional neglect," she says.
The IFJ says journalists' unions have a key role to play in prioritising gender representation in their agendas. "This subject should not be seen as a female topic but rather form part of mainstream discussions on quality journalism which involve both women and men," the group argues.
The EFJ has been working with other organisations to develop a video toolkit about gender stereotypes of women politicians and experts on television. The toolkit will be used by journalists' schools and in trainings to educate journalists about the need to provide a more balanced portrayal of women politicians in the news.
ARTICLE 19 Executive Director Agnès Callamard says the media has a crucial role to play in preventing and counter-acting
discrimination, including gender-based discrimination.
"Public service broadcasters should be obliged under law to make a positive contribution to the fight against discrimination and intolerance, including gender-based, while other media organisations, media enterprises and media workers have a moral and social obligation to do so," she says.
ARTICLE 19 has produced a set of recommendations for media organisations to take up, including designing media training programmes that promote a better understanding of issues relating to sexism and discrimination.
The group also offers recommendations for governments, including adopting policies aimed at improving women?s access to all forms of media and Internet communications technologies (ICTs).
Reporters Without Borders
Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF) is marking International Women's Day by highlighting the plight of eight journalists who are imprisoned in various countries. They include Jill Carroll and Rim Zeid, who are being held hostage in Iraq.
Since the start of the war in Iraq in March 2003, eight women journalists have been kidnapped, according to RSF. One of them, Raeda Wazzan, was killed by her captors in February 2005.
RSF is paying tribute to the family of Atwar Bahjat, a reporter for "Al-Arabiya" who was murdered on 22 February 2006 in Samarra, north of Baghdad. RSF also pays tribute to Lebanese journalist May Chidiac, who was badly injured in a car bombing in Beirut in September 2005.
Globally, RSF says 46 women journalists have been killed while doing their job since 1992.
Visit these links for more information:
- Gender and Media Audience Study: See: http://www.genderlinks.org.za/page.php?p_id=44
- MISA: http://www.misa.org/gender.html
- Gender and Media in Southern Africa: http://gemsa.org.za
- Gender Links: http://www.genderlinks.org.za
- AMARC: http://www.win.amarc.org
- ARTICLE 19 Recommendations for Media: http://www.article19.org/pdfs/publications/women-s-day-paper-2006.pdf
- IFJ: http://www.ifj.org/default.asp?Index=3763&Language=EN
- RSF: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=16683
- Global Media Monitoring Project: http://www.whomakesthenews.org
- Women Make the News: http://www.unesco.org/march8
- UN International Women's Day Site: http://www.un.org/events/women/iwd/2006/
- Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Women's_Day
- International Association of Women in Radio and Television: http://www.iawrt.org
- International Women's Media Foundation: http://www.iwmf.org
- Women's Human Rights Net: http://www.whrnet.org/
- WACC: http://www.wacc.org.uk
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