PRESENTED AT THE FIRST FORUM ON MEDIA AND INFORMATION LITERACY (Fez, Morocco, June 2011).
In the past couple of years the concepts of information literacy and
gender have taken a centre stage in interrogating how intelligent and effective
are consumers of information, especially women, able to critically analyse the information
they across, particularly that got in the media and other institutions involved
in information generation.
Similarly, as democratic space widens in many countries, the media has
emerged as one of the key drivers of this democratisation processes; a platform
where the citizens freely express their views on various issues ranging from
political, economic, and social issues. But the question has been, who is
benefiting from this expanded democracy enjoyed by the media in particular and
the society in general. The most recent findings of the Global Media Monitoring
Programme 2010 show only 21 % of
those who interviewed or whose views appeared in the media were women.
Failure by women to utilize the media is caused by many factors, the
major one being lack of information literacy: the ability to locate and use
effectively the information in the media. Only handful of them are information
and media literate. So what is information literacy and media literacy?
American Library Association defines information literacy or an
information literate person as a person able to recognise information when it
is needed, and has the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the
needed information.
Jane Tallim from the USA
defines media literacy as the ability to sift through and analyze the messages
that inform, entertain and sell to us every day. It’s the ability to bring
critical thinking skills to bear on all media. It’s about asking pertinent
questions about what’s there, and noticing what’s not there.
Majority of the women rarely do this. It is also emerging that the
negative portrayal of women in the media has left them feeling alienated and
unwilling to interact the media and ask some of these questions.
Acknowledging that Media and Information Literacy (MIL) is critical in
a democracy and helping people make sound economic, social, and political
decisions, this paper interrogates the following issues from a gender
perspective;
Ø The potential of MIL to enhance women’s
development, empowerment and economic success
Ø The role of MIL in women’s participation and
survival in an increasing changing world.
Ø MIL and its impact on changing women portrayal in
the media.
Ø Recommendations on how MIL can enhance gender
equality within the continent
Background
“ Most educators today understand that with the revolutionary changes
in communication that have occurred in the last half a century, media literacy
has become as essential a skill as the ability to read the printed word” – Marjorie Heins and Christina
Cho, in Media Literacy: An Alternative to Censorship.
The words by Marjorie Heins and Christina Cho
underscore the role of the media as a special watchdog in developing democracies
in Africa and other parts of the world. This
means that the independence of the media—freedom of speech and freedom of
information is sacrosanct.
Looking back to 20
years ago when the media industry adopted the ‘Windhoek Declaration on press freedom,’ the very
nature of press freedom and Freedom of Information has remained excluded from
the constitutions of many African countries even though few countries have
passed laws on the right to information.
When the declaration
was adopted in 1991, it focused only on the press. How effective the users of
this information could benefit from the information was not addressed. Until
recently, majority of the people in developing countries have been grappling
with the concept of information literacy in general and media literacy in
particular.
There are valid
arguments that the Windhoek Declaration needs to be engendered so that issues
of information literacy among women and how to respond to the problem of
information illiteracy are addressed in the declaration.
In relation to ICTs,
the new technology has also revolutionised the way news is gathered, packaged
and published. But these opportunities have not be seized by or benefited the
women. Many of them have been hampered by the problem of low information literacy,
connectivity, and access.
This high information
literacy has made it difficult for women to question how media covers them and
their issues, and by so doing they can help in deconstructing the way news are
covered and produced. Compounding the situation is that many media houses in
the region do not have gender policies to guide their editorial practice. This
is with the exception of Southern Africa,
where Gender Links has managed to develop gender policies in number of media
houses in the countries within the sub-region.
But
the issue before us here today is not the argument of whether or not freedom of
information can empower society but also whether media and information literacy
can enhance women’s participation in what is called information superhighway. I
am going to speak to these issues in the following sections.
The potential of MIL to bridge the digital and
gender divide to enhance women’s development, empowerment and economic success
Dr Musimbi
Kanyaro, the current head of Global Fund for Women once said; “Information for
what and for whom? Why are we collecting this information and what difference
is it making in the lives of women? What do we do with the information once it
is collected?”
Her
argument is that unless the information collected is used for social and
economic change to make the lives of women, better, we would have failed. But
how do we make women effective users of the information transmitted by media
and other institutions? This can only happen by empowering them to be
information and media literate.
With
information literacy, women can understand opportunities in the market, where
to get jobs, and where to invest whatever little resources they have. They can
share best practices on lessons learnt. But women can only do these issues if the following
barriers are addressed; illiteracy, language, time, cost, facilities, gender
roles, among others.
How the media can help in bridging the
information and the digital divide
The information age
has witnessed the breaking up of society into cultural groups
(demassification). The media has responded to information age by concentrating,
that is monopolizing in order to manage competition. There’s an agreement that
power is no longer wielded through the barrel of the gun but by those who
control information.
The media has realized
the potential of new technology especially the Internet. For example, most
media organizations now have on-line editions, which they have used to tap in the
global market.
But
the media has also been fearful of consumers using the same technologies to
question it. This is what one of the leading and respected journalists in the USA, Bob Mayor
describes as the plantation’s mentality: how the plantations owners feared the
freedom of information to their workers more than anything else. This can be
used to illustrate the power of the media and information and how leaders in Africa have curtailed the freedom of the media because
they fear a literate populace who can use information to question certain
things and issues.
And
the media more has been accomplice. Mayor’s claim that the big media is slowly
becoming irrelevant on issues that affect the ordinary people can be said to be
true to the majority of women. He posed the following questions; “So if we need
to know what is happening and the Big Media won’t tell us; if we need to know
why it matters, and the Big Media won’t tell us; if we need to know what to do
about it and the Big Media won’t tell us … we have to tell the story
ourselves.”
One
of the biggest problems is that the media in Africa
has not put in place policies and mechanism to address the serious information
gaps that exist in the society. The huge number of men views in the media, that
have left the media to be labeled male dominated, are as result for this
failures.
Many
of the media houses across the continent lack gender policies that would among
other things address issues of women participation in the information society.
A gender policy would ensure that women views are sort by the media, women are
educated on how to the media, and women take advantage of the information
technologies to air their views to the policy makers. In so doing women would
be able to influence decision made by the government and other actors of
matters touching their wellbeing.
Using
the gender policies, media is able to appreciate the diversity of its
newsmakers and to take steps that ensure they participate effectively in the
production of the news and in the national discourse.
For
media to bridge the information illiteracy among women, it has to restore its
original feisty, robust, fearless mission, offering journalism you can afford
and can trust, public affairs of which you are a part, and a wide range of
civic and cultural discourse that leaves no one out. We’ve got to get
alternative content out there to the women who have been relying on the wrong
information for many years with an aim bridging the digital divide.
For us gender advocates
who believe in the right to information for women is so critical to survival of
women, the concept of a “fifth estate” is valid and relevant. Using the “fifth
estate” paradigm, one can argue that the coverage of any issues must be “consistent with freedom of expression,”
by doing the following;
Ø
Giving equal voice and air-time to everyone
irrespective whether they are women,
men, leaders and children
Ø
By media bringing out multiple roles of women and
men in society, which is intrinsic to freedom of speech and expression. We
argue that the media cannot claim to be a mirror of society when it gives
skewed attention to only one gender.
MIL and it’s important for women’s participation
and survival
The
former Prime Minister of Malaysia Mahathir Mohammed once said; “there is no
country that is rich which is information poor and there is no country that is
information poor which is rich.”
The accessibility of information through
affordable technology empowers people’s ability to be economically viable,
hence enhancing the economic growth for countries in Africa.
This
is clearly captured in MIL curriculum developed by UNESCO which defines the essential
competencies and skills that are need to equip citizens in the 21st century to
engage with media and information systems effectively and to develop critical
thinking and life-long learning skills to socialize and become active citizens.
And in East Africa, the Acacia
project which was funded by the IDRC presents a model that is a clear example
on how MIL is important for women’s participation and survival. It says MIL
helps women to circumvent marginalisation and exploitation. These two documents
eloquently show the relevance and power of MIL in the emancipation of women.
MIL and women portrayal in terms of images and
perceptions and how this in the end impact on women’s media and information
literacy
The media-the tenth
critical area of concern in the Beijing Platform for Action- is one of the most
important yet challenging areas of work for advancing gender equality and
women’s political participation.
As “formal” or legislated discrimination
against women falls away, the key challenge confronting us is how to change
mindsets hardened by centuries of socialization and cemented by custom, culture
and religion.
Potentially having a
huge role to play in this “liberation of the mind”, the media has more often
than not been part of the problem rather than of the solution. Across the globe, women are both
under-represented in and portrayed in a narrow range of roles in the mainstream
media: most often either as victims of violence or as sex objects.
Women are represented only us objects of
beauty or victims of violence? Eighty percent of the food in Africa
is grown and produced by women, but these stories never get into the pages of
the media. When last did you hear a woman farmer being interviewed on
agricultural prices?
Do the media simply reflect society, with all
its imperfections, or does it also set agendas? If our reporting is guided by a
human rights ethos, if we agree that the media has a role to play in
challenging gender disparity, surely we must also agree that it has a role to
play in challenging sexism?
The sexism and negative portrayal of women has
resulted in a serious disconnect between the media and women, who consider the
news in media as unfair to them or not covering their issues at all. The media
has continued to do this with impunity because it knows with low media literacy;
the women will not question it.
What media needs to do to turnaround the
situation is do the right things: run their newsrooms in a gender sensitive
manner. What does this mean in practice? It means when journalists ask about
political manifestos, they need to ask to what extent these reflect concerns
like gender violence, teenage pregnancies, the high rate of unemployment and
lower economic status of women. Indeed, it means asking why, in our present set
up, women vote for men rather than women.
This is not only gender mainstreaming, it is
also good editorial and business policy. What we need to see as news is that
women comprise a mere 18 percent of all parliamentarians in East and Southern Africa, yet constitute 52 percent of our
population. These are issues media need to cover on consistent basis.
Approaches
There have been several
different approaches to the issue of gender and the media and increasing
information literacy among women. These include:
Ø Empowering women journalists (the route taken
by media women’s associations that have been especially strong in East Africa).
Ø Creating alternative media for women’s voices
to be heard, especially with the advent of IT that reduces costs and creates
multiplier effects.
Ø Training NGOs working on gender issues in
understanding the media (AWC case)
Ø Media encounters between journalists and women
in communities.
Ø Consumer protests and boycotts, especially
against offensive advertising.
Ø Seeking to bring about gender balance in the
institution of the media as well as in its editorial content.
Language
In a patriarchal society, men have more authority
and access to more resources, putting then in a position to articulate their
experiences, values and ideas. Male experiences are therefore validated in the
media, while women are viewed as ‘outsiders’.
This is particularly pronounced in the use of
language in the media and particularly where the words, ‘he’, ‘mankind’ and ‘The
man on the street’ are used to refer to all people.
Language excludes women because women do not have
the same linguistic conventions. It is important for media practitioners to be
made aware of the fact that language has the power to exclude and as with
stereotypes to reinforce patterns of power in society.
Images
The images chosen to accompany stories, whether
in print or audio visual, play a major role, albeit unwittingly in conveying
gender stereotypes. A conscious effort needs to be made not just to find
appropriate images, but images that convey the role of women in our society in a
more positive way.
Violence Against Women
In reporting on violence against women, the
problem of stereotyping and biased reporting become particularly acute. The
manner in which cases are reported helps to shape public opinion on violence
against women, which in turn affects the way in which society responds to this
violence.
For example stereotyping in cases involving rape
and sexual violence often draws on prejudices about women and their sexuality
and creates a hierarchy of what constitutes a ‘good’ believable victim.
Language used can also obscure the nature the nature of crime. In other cases,
media has been shown to seek only the views of men on matters of violence
against women, in most cases managing to give the man a platform to argue and
convince the society that the woman deserved it.
Women in Politics
Reporting on women in politics is another area
where media stereotyping is damaging. There is also a tendency by the media to
gloss over gender issues and undervalue women’s issues. The media therefore
need to have a gender policy on how to report women in politics.
Therefore the media can mainstream gender issues
by doing the following:
- Giving equal voice and air-time to women and
representing women in their multiple roles in society. - By exercising good governance. Gender equality
is integral to all the indicators of good governance- legitimacy,
accountability, competence, human rights and the rule of law. - The media has a role not just to follow-but
to lead; to report not just what is, but what could be. Good journalism
dictates that we should ask why only men are in power, what women think
about the policies espoused by men in power; what visions and dreams they
aspire to. - Seek views of women on war, economy, service
provision, politics, and all other issues that affect them. - Break the silence on Gender-based violence by
reporting what for a long time has been considered a private matter. - Gender aware reporting will challenge
journalists and editors to go beyond the all too common event-driven
reporting to the issue based reporting. It will constantly ask seek the
views of women on all topical issues.
Recommendations on how MIL can enhance gender
equality within the continent
Ø Need to put in place mechanisms that ensure women
have access to content selected, created and disseminated by media
professionals.
Ø Developing gender policies to guide editorial and
structural decisions within media houses.
Ø There is need to come up with a strategy to push
for the adoption of the MIL curriculum developed by UNESCO by media houses, governments
and regulatory authorities to ensure gender equality is advanced in and through
the media.
Ø Negotiate with the media to include gender
reporting in their in-house training curriculum.
Ø Develop a programme to continuously sensitize the
media on poor coverage of women and women issues.
Ø Select a team of top managers, editors and
journalists to work with on gender issues.
Conclusion
Having
women who are media literate is critical for us to achieve their economic,
social and political empowerment. If information literate, the women will be able
to locate information and use it to access new businesses through the use
e-business. Being information literate is critical if the women are to exploit
the opportunities offered by ICT facilities. Civil society organization working
on gender issues need to empower women in the use of ICT tools for advocacy,
organizing, awareness building, accessing information and services. Training
around MIL therefore has got huge potential in enhancing the participation of
women in the information society.
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By Rosemary Okello-Orlale Executive Director
African Woman and Child
Features www.awcfs.org