GFMG: Policies are vital for sustainability of gender mainstreaming

Bangkok, 6 December: Public service broadcasters gathered here this week concluded that effective implementation of gender policies in media houses is the first step towards creating an environment for gender equality to flourish.

The 2009 Gender Links Glass Ceilings Study shows that women hardly set foot in boardrooms and have virtually no presence in ownership and management. Women in Southern Africa constitute 41% of those working in the media and only 28% of those in management. Women continue cover soft beats and light entertainment programmes, whilst men take on hard news, politics, business and sport. The Gender and Media Progress Study also found that stories on gender-based violence (GBV) constitute only 4% of all coverage in SADC media, despite the high levels of GBV.

Speaking in the roundtable discussion, Director of Thai Public Broadcasting Service (TBS), Anothai Udomslip, urged media houses to revisit the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. “It is about time we closely look at all these recommendations and what kind of actions the media are really doing.”

Udomslip also noted that TBS is taking the lead in covering of gender and women’s issues and the organisation sees female employees as equally capable of carrying out all duties. “Codes of conduct of the organisation say we have to respect human dignity and this includes gender.”

Jamal Naji, General Director of the High Authority of Audio Visual Communication in Morocco notes that, “Having women in stereotypical roles does not do any good for women. To fight discrimination we need to raise awareness. We also need to have good governance practices and employment rights. As journalists we have to guard the social diversity that exists.”

Executive Assistant of the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union, Natalie Llieva agreed, noting that organisational policies have to be in place for gender mainstreaming in the media. “If all good intentions are not put in a serious policy that goes through all the organisational levels then they will not sustain gender equality in the work force,” explained Llieva.

Corletha Olivierre, General Manager of the St Vincent National Broadcasting Corporation Radio Station said that gender policies, gender sensitive editorial guidelines and language glossaries for news and current affairs create an enabling environment to ensure gender equality is achieved in and through the media.

“We provide gender sensitive human resource policies as most of our employees are female…We also have union agreements which provide for this sort of support. We have both paternity and maternity leave as we realise this is not just about women but about the entire staff, “explained Olivierre.

The implementation of the gender policies, sexual harassment policies and gender sensitive editorial guidelines in media houses is crucial for tackling the disparities between women and men in both the newsroom and content. Media houses must enforce gender aware and gender sensitive coverage as a requirement for balanced and ethical journalism.

Gender Links (GL) is working with 108 gender and media Centres of Excellence (COEs) in 12 Southern African countries. GL provided on-the-job gender training for the media and has encouraged 47 media institutions representing 90 newsrooms in SADC to draw up and implement gender policies. A self-monitoring exercise conducted in 76 of these COEs also shows that the proportion of women sources in the media has gone up by five percentage points from 19% in the Gender and Media Baseline Study (GMBS) to 22%.

It is clear that media houses in Southern Africa are beginning to take gender mainstreaming seriously. If media houses across the globe show the same commitment, the world will be much closer to achieving gender equality.

Tarisai Nyamweda is the Media Programme Officer at Gender Links. This article is part of the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service, bringing you fresh views on everyday news.