Zimbabwe Barometer 2013: Chapter 9 Media, information and communication

Key points

• The SGDI score for Zimbabwe is 51% and places the country at number 13 in the region. This illustrates slow progress towards gender equality in and through the media.
• Zimbabwean citizens (68%) have a more progressive perception of the media.
• Zimbabwe media houses are among the 108 gender and media Centres of Excellence (COEs) in 12 SADC countries.
• The self-monitoring exercise conducted in 76 media COEs in 2013 shows that the proportion of women sources in Zimbabwe media has gone up by five percentage points from 17% in the 2010 Gender and Media Progress Study (GMPS) to 22% in 2013.
• Media exposure remains low, with only eight percent of the female respondents and 17 percent of the male respondents in the 2010-2011 Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Survey, having exposure to newspapers, television and radio at least once a week.
• Gender equality and women’s empowerment are slowly becoming issues on the media’s news agenda.
• The Gender and Media Diversity Centre at Gender Links has undertaken research on gender in journalism or media curriculum at three institutions in Zimbabwe: Midlands State University (MSU); National University of Science and Technology (NUST); and Harare Polytechnic.
• Gender and media activism in Zimbabwe is weak.

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