Pacific Region: Re-affirming media’s role in the struggle for gender equality

The World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) co-organized the workshop with femLINKPACIFIC: media initiatives for women, in Fiji in October, 2007.

Established in 2000, femLINKPACIFIC develops and implements a range of women's media initiatives, such as taking a small mobile radio unit out to women and the communities, femLINKPACIFIC offers a "safe space" for women to articulate and exchange their viewpoints.

The workshop brought together representatives of the National Councils of Women of Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea and Samoa, as well as women’s media practitioners from Bougainville, Fiji, Solomon Islands and Tonga, Fiji Media Watch and the Pacific Foundation for the Advancement of Women (PACFAW).

According to femLINKPACIFIC Coordinator Sharon Bhagwan Rolls, this was the appropriate time to strengthen partnerships in order to realize the commitments of Section J of the Beijing Platform for Action (BPA) focusing on women and the media. Such a collective effort had become an imperative following the successful incorporation of the Media and ICTs/Section J of the BPA into a revised Pacific Platform for Action, and the mobilization of Fiji Media Watch to participate in the 2005 GMMP.

In addition, the Pacific Plan’s acknowledgement of the role of women’s community media as a tool for the empowerment of rural and remote communities, as well as the formulation and adoption of the Pacific Women in Media Action Plan by representatives of Pacific media organizations, had boosted the need for forging coalitions and strengthening partnerships.

Advocacy and lobbying remain valuable tools in creating awareness and enhancing understanding about gender and media issues of concern to women’s groups. Specifically, advocacy in the region would entail increasing awareness of the results of GMMP and highlighting why the quantity and quality of representation of women in the media matters. Results of the GMMP 2005 from the region indicated that women comprised only 26% of newsmakers whilst 74% of news subjects were men.

Initiatives highlighted by participants included:

·Vois Blong Mere Solomon, a women’s media NGO which evolved from a Pacific YWCA project, currently works across the Solomon Islands and produces two weekly radio programmes.

·Sistas Toktok in Vanuatu produces a weekly page for the Daily Post Newspaper.

·Tonga Women’s Action for Change produces and disseminates regular media updates and alerts.

·HELP Centre Papua New Guinea

- Health-Education-Livelihood-Participation (HELP) Resources, is one of the two most media-active NGOs in Papua New Guinea; HELP Resources produces programmes for radio (30 minutes fortnightly on NBC Radio East Sepik), press releases for newspapers, articles for regional and international development newsletters and journals, articles for posting on the internet, and videos (with technical expertise sourced from the Family Life Media Unit, Goroka). It also hopes to start a newsletter. HELP is available to provide commentary on local issues for news and current affairs programmes on Radio Australia.

Community radio remains an important strategic tool in advancing commitments to gender equality and strengthening community empowerment efforts in the region. Nevertheless, whilst several Pacific women’s and community media initiatives and NGOs have gradually been established, limited technical and financial resources, as well as organizational and institutional challenges remain a major constraint to their expansion.

An outcomes document adopted at the end of the workshop reaffirmed the need to improve and strengthen women’s networks across the region.