‘Gender & Media Advocacy’: From WACC’s ‘Mission Possible’: A Gender & Media Advocacy Toolkit

Gender and media advocacy includes lobbying, campaigning, research, training, media monitoring, communication and alliance-building activities which seek to advance women’s rights and gender equality in and through the media.

There are two angles to gender and media advocacy:

1. Media as target audience: Planned and consistent advocacy for gender equality in the media’s workplace policies and conditions of service, as well as in editorial and advertising content.

2. Media as partner and tool for getting across messages on gender equality: The strategic use of the media as a tool for advancing gender equality in all sectors, especially public policy, and to bring gender justice to the public’s attention.

At first glance, it may seem as if two different gender and media advocacy strategies are called for to address these two issues. But, by taking on the media as institutions within which the struggle for gender equality is situated, activists will create also the opportunities for priming the media to be a credible voice when it reports on and covers gender equality issues.

Often gender and media activists are tackling both of these angles at the same time. The media cannot be used as an effective and credible tool to advance messages on gender equality if the messages it sends daily through reports on events and issues are gender-blind or negative about women’s roles and contribution in a society. Likewise, the media cannot challenge the lack of women in decision-making in governance structures, if there is a paucity of women in leadership positions within the media.

In targeting the media to bring about more gender sensitivity and awareness to the editorial content and to ensure equal opportunity and equal access for women in media work spaces, gender and media activists are at the same time opening the space to engage more effectively with the media in getting across messages on gender equality.

Approaches: Various strategies are in use throughout the world to promote gender equality in the media. No single approach will suffice given the complexity of the media and the national media landscapes with their own specificities.

To be at their most effective, gender and media activists should not be antagonistic towards the media and those working within.

Taking time to learn how the media works, how and why journalists choose the sources they do, how sub-editors do their jobs, and who are the key players in media decision-making (such as chief editors and increasingly advertising executives and media owners), can provide activists with much needed insight into where opportunities for intervention and lobbying lie within the media.

Gender and media activists often use a combination of strategies. These include the following:

·The creation of gender and media networks and associations which push for change through dialogues, discussions, research and media monitoring. Examples include the Gender and Media Southern Africa (GEMSA) Network (http://www.gemsa.org.za), Sur Profesionales in Latin America ( http://www.sitiosur.cl/organizacion.asp) and the Asian Network of Women in Communication, among others.

·Women have created alternative media in the form of newsletters, journals, radio, video productions, and now on-line publications.

One of the most important contributions of women’s alternative media is to provide a space for serious reflection about the nature of women’s exclusion from the mainstream.

Examples of women’s alternative media include the Women’s Feature Service (WFS) based in New Delhi (wfsnews.org/), FIRE radio in Latin America ( www.fire.or.cr/) and the Africa Women and Child Feature Service, based in Nairobi (www.awcfs.org).

·Gender activists have developed tools to monitor the media on its coverage of violence against women, women in politics, women as sources, the portrayal of women, among other areas of concern.

These exercises provide specific data and analysis that could be presented to the media which highlight professional gaps in news and other forms of reporting, as well as examples of how the media violates its own principles of accuracy, fairness and balance.