General
Source: Swazi Observer
Panos Institute Southern Africa (PSAf) is calling on media houses to put in place measures to address the limited participation of women in the news cycle, and ensure gender balance in media content.
PASf Executive Director Lilian Kiefer said the starting point for achieving this would be to ensure balance and fair representation of both women and men in positions of influence in the media. She said as an organisation they believed that the current gender imbalances in the newsrooms, where men dominate at all levels, was to a great extent the root cause of the imbalanced content.
Kiefer said media houses should have specially designed interventions to promote gender equality in media operations. She emphasised that this should be at all levels in the structure of a media houses, from the most junior of position, right up to the apex of the organisational structure.
She observed that gender balance within the newsroom would in turn lead to a diversity of voices and opinions. She stressed that the commitment to reaching gender equality in the media by 2030 could only be achieved if media houses and media practitioners lead from the front.
"This year, UNESCO and our partners in the Global Alliance on Media and Gender are implementing the Women Make the News 2015 initiative,under the theme "Yes we must! Reaching Gender Equality in the Media by 2030". This theme is premised on the importance of having a balanced and fair representation of both women and men in the media, as well as diversity of voices and opinions, in order for the media to fulfill their democratic responsibility," she said.
Adding, Kiefer said; "As an organisation that mainstreams gender equality in all its programming, PSAf believes that the UNESCO goal of reaching gender equality in the media by 2030 is achievable. In order to achieve gender equality in the media by 2030, in 15 years' time, work must start now."
A recent study conducted by Swaziland Rural Women Assembly (SRWA) found stories of violence against women took up a lot of space in local newspapers. SRWA Director Hlobsile Dlamini-Shongwe explained that they monitored newspaper coverage of women and girls stories over a two-year period.
"The study looked at the portrayal of women in Swazi media. We sampled 100 articles from local newspapers during the first year and another 100 the following year. We then analysed the articles and found that during the first year most of the stories reported about women, were actually not reported by women but by male journalists," she said.
Dlamini-Shongwe noted that there was also usage of names such as 'victim', 'survivor', saying there was need to relook at the appropriate term to be used. She went on to say that violence against women took up a lot of space in local newspapers. Adding, Dlamini-Shongwe said: "These are the lives of Swazi women. We are losing a lot of women at the hands of those they love." During the first year of the study, 31percent of the stories covered was violence against women and the number rose to 47 percent (almost half) during the second year. The director said the media had reported enough on these stories, adding that as agenda setters, it was time the media sent a different message.