Keynote speech by Joanne Sandler, UNIFEM

Presented at WACC's Congress in Cape Town, 2008.

Imagine media that promotes gender justice. We have to imagine it because it needs to proliferate at all levels: in the mainstream media, in the blogosphere, in alternative media. It needs to exist because gender justice is critical in its own right, central to the achievement of justice in general and inter-dependent with the achievement of social and economic justice.

The media has huge and largely untapped power to promote and protect gender justice. The concept of gender justice is complex, but we certainly know gender injustice when we see it. Around the world, the distortion by media of women‟s voice and women‟s lives is increasingly being recognized, but the response has been inadequate. This is an issue of accountability.

UNIFEM just issued its biannual publication, Progress of the World’s Women, which focuses on gender and accountability and asks the question: Who Answers to Women. We identify two dimensions of accountability from a gender justice perspective.

The first is answerability – that is, the ability of women and men to call for answers for the policies, programmes and resources that power-holders make available to promote and protect women‟s rights.

The second is corrective action – that is, power-holders, once confronted with the need for answers, must take corrective action to ensure redress.

In relation to gender justice and the media, the media‟s answerability and willingness to take corrective action depends to a large extent on the push that women‟s rights defenders provide, the extent to which women and men together use their power of choice to show a preference for media that promotes gender justice, and the generation of high quality content for social justice media produced by women‟s human rights defenders.

One of the key assets that women are bringing – along with other social justice groups – is a purposeful use of the media to achieve broader social justice and gender justice aims, to challenge discriminatory gender norms, and make visible solutions that lead to change.

Fundamental institutional transformation in the media is imperative if we are to have a media that actively promotes gender justice. There are four areas of work ahead of us that I think are crucial and receiving too little attention.

1. The first goes back to accountability: Commercially-owned media understands its accountability in the context of shareholders and profit; state-owned and public media has not been much better on gender justice. So, how do we understand and strengthen their accountability?

Progress of the World’s Women makes the point that there are two pathways that women are using to demand greater accountability from power-holders: voice and choice. That is using the power of organizing and monitoring and their power as consumers or voters. We need to strengthen media monitoring to build media literacy so that both women and men are demanding media that promotes – rather than erodes – gender justice and that they have the capacity to call for corrective action when the opposite is taking place.

2. We need to produce gender and social justice content with high production values. Too often, the media that social justice groups produce cannot compete with the production quality that mainstream media offers. There needs to be a huge increase in skills, resources and partnerships so that gender just media gets produced and can compete in the marketplace.

3. We need to link media with action and solutions, to go beyond broad-based awareness raising and offer people opportunities to make a difference. New media give us that opportunity. This is purposeful media that uses the full power of the media to inform, connect, change minds and act to achieve gender and social justice.

4. Partnerships are crucial. Neither women, nor men, nor faithbased groups nor even states can do it alone. If communication is peace, then partnerships are the pathway to peace.

You can’t be what you can’t see (Marion Wright Edelman). Neglecting to work with the media to challenge gender discrimination and gender norms that limit both women and men from exercising their rights and securing justice results in a missed opportunity to use the full power of the media.

This is especially true in the 21st century when media‟s reach has expanded exponentially. We have to work with the media to trouble the assumption that sexual violence is an inevitable consequence of war. We have to work with the media to question why those who make war are the ones invited to negotiate peace, while those who have an interest in peace are prevented from having a voice. We cannot imagine gender justice without media and communications to help us see it.

She or he who tells the story rules the world (a Native American adage). It is important to see or hear media that show dialogue across lines of conflict to advance gender justice. But it is not enough just to have a growing a number of good examples of social justice media. We have to work on transforming media itself and democratizing ownership and leadership. Only then will stories that promote and protect gender justice regularly make it on to the nightly news