| Women: PACIFIC MEDIA EXECS DEVISE ACTION PLAN |
Helping women get a better deal
If you take 17 influential media men and women from around the Pacific and put them in a room together for two days, what do you get?
 |
Interview time... newspaper editor Claire Chunlaud, of French Polynesia, interviews Wallis and Futuna TV journalist Ana Vakalepu about women’s status in the French territory. (Pic: Julie Middleton)
|
Well, a lot of noise, for starters—there is nothing shy and retiring about this lot. However, when 17 chief executives, directors, editors and senior journalists gathered in Nadi in late September, two days of discussion produced a blueprint to ensure women get a better deal from mass media.
The Pacific Women in Media Action Plan, developed by some of the most influential media leaders in both the English and French-speaking Pacific, aims to not only improve the portrayal of women in the mass media but to assist talented women rise in media organisations.
Veteran American Samoa journalist Monica Miller, news director of radio station 93 KHJ and former president of the Pacific Islands News Association, described the plan as “very practical” and called on her colleagues to adapt it to their own environments.
So what’s the point? According to co-organiser Julie Middleton, communications officer in the Pacific Women’s Bureau at the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, “women can be poorly served by mass media—they are often reduced to stereotypes, or portrayed as sex objects.
They can be invisible when the discussion is on society and development.”
She adds there are relatively few women in decision-making roles in the often tough world of media, “which tends to work against women being heard in the news, and as staff members.”
However, says Middleton, the symposium wasn’t about playing the “blame game and giving the guys a hard time. We all recognise the power of the media to shape the way we see the world, and this plan helps decision-makers do something practical towards greater equality in the Pacific.”
The mass media tends to reflect a male view of the world. According to last year’s Global Media Monitoring Project, which analysed almost 13,000 news items in 76 countries, women made up only 21 percent of people featured in the news, although they constitute 52 percent of the world’s population. Coverage rarely challenged gender inequality.
The plan the delegates put together is based on Section J of the internationally-recognised Beijing Platform for Action, which calls for realistic depictions of women and for decision-making by women working in the media.
Among the delegates was Francis Herman, chief executive of the Fiji Broadcasting Corporation. He told ISLANDS BUSINESS the symposium was just a start: “The real work starts now with formulation of real action plans in the workplace.”
Herman was quick out of the blocks. Days after the symposium, he briefed his human resources team to come up with a gender policy for presentation at the company’s October board meeting. He will table the Pacific Women in Media Action Plan at the Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union meeting in China in November, a move which will help extend its influence.
Through an email network set up after the event, other delegates have told of presenting the plan to staff, seeking feedback, formulating projects of their own—and influencing the next generation of journalists.
Here’s what Michael McManus, a journalism teacher at the Madang-based Divine Word University in Papua New Guinea, said: “I am now challenging students to elevate gender issues up the scale of values they use in the construction of their articles.”
The symposium was organised by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community and UNESCO’s Apia office, with financial support from the London-based Commonwealth Broadcasting Association.
|
So what does it say?
The Pacific Women in Media Action Plan calls on newspapers, radio and television organisations to act to promote gender equality.
Among its recommendations are calls for media organisations to avoid using material that encourages or condones violence, and to resist rather than reinforce negative stereotyping --stereotyping being the presentation of people in narrow clichés, such as the bikini-clad babe on the car bonnet.
Other calls are for media organisations to promote human rights education, for sexual harassment in the workplace to be banned—Anglophone delegates highlighted this as a major issue—and for offenders to be dealt with swiftly.
Strategies included increasing media content that allows public discussion on “taboo” issues such as violence and women’s vulnerability to HIV/AIDS, and to train staff in gender-inclusive language.
The plan also includes a call for the Pacific Islands New Association, which runs news agency Pacnews, to develop a gender policy for adoption at the next biennial conference, slated for May 2007.
• Download the Pacific in Media Action Plan at www.spc.int/women |
|
|
