Women?s Day: Gender Lens Casts Media In A New Light

As South African’s celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the march by women against the pass laws  on 9 August, a group of men and women from all walks of life will be busy on the ninth module of a gender and media literacy course at the Gender Links offices. Today’s lesson focuses on the use of IT for advocacy and creating one’s own media products.

 

Participants are drawn from the general public and include a geologist, NGO activists, students, artists, home makers and many more. They are part of a team that responded to an advertisement on the Internet and in newspapers for anyone interested in learning to read, listen to and view the news from a gender perspective to join the ten module, 28 hour course running over a three month period. 

 

An avalanche of responses led to the first ever gender and media literacy course being conducted on a pilot basis in Johannesburg using a manual called “Watching the watch dogs” developed by Gender Links with the support of the Open Society Foundation of South Africa.

 

The course follows findings in various research studies that women constitute a quarter of news sources; that they are represented in a much more narrow range of roles than men (most often as victims of violence or sex objects); that gender constitutes less than three percent of overall coverage and that news it skewed much more towards topics that are of interest to men than to women.

 

Within the media, a study on glass ceilings unveiled by the South African National Editors Forum on the eve of Women’s Day reveals that women are still grossly under represented in decision-making in South Africa and in the “hard” beats like political, crime and economic reporting.  The report, based on responses by men and women within the South African media, shows that sexist attitudes and sexual harassment are still rife in many of the institutions that should be leading transformation in our new democracy.

 

The gender and media literacy course is based on the general principles of media literacy: that any citizen in today’s information era needs to know not just how to read, count and write but also how to interpret what they are told by the media.

 

The course involves media monitoring; audience surveys; interacting with the media through letters to the editor and talk shows; taking up complaints through regulatory authorities; being empowered to create ones own media products, campaigns and petitions and in general becoming a critical media consumer.

 

Trainers include the staff of Gender Links; of the Gender and Media Southern Africa Network (GEMSA) and experts from the field including the former director of the Media Diversity and Development Authority (MDDA).

For participants, the course has been an eye opener: as one of the participants, Telele Grace Mathinjwa put it “You just don’t read [media] and take it as it is, you become very critical, you ask questions like why are women not being taken seriously, why are we seeing their bodies more than their intelligence…”

 

Participants in the course will receive certificates at the second Gender and Media (GEM) Summit being organised by Gender Links, the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) and GEMSA from 7-8 September under the theme: Media Diversity and Sustainability: Good for business, Good for Democracy.

 

For more information on the Gender and Media Literacy toolkit please visit: https://www.genderlinks.org.za/page.php?p_id=242 or email research@genderlinks.org.za

 

For more information on the second GEM Summit visit www.gemsa.org.za