women

Women in ‘developing' nations are finding that whatever their gains in the traditional media, such as print and broadcasting, a lack of training opportunities in new technologies and difficulty in accessing expensive equipment increases marginalization of women in the new electronic media.

Women are said to be more active on social networking sites

The ICT arena is characterized by the strategic control exercised by powerful corporations and nations - monopolies built upon the intellectual property regime, increasing surveillance of the Interned and an undermining of its democratic substance, and exploitation of the powerless by capitalist imperialism, sexism and racism.  Within the ICT arena women have relatively little ownership of and influence on the decision-making processes being underrepresented in the private sector and government bodies which control this arena.

Statistics around the way women are portrayed in the media reflect a dismal story.  In 1995 women made up 17% of news subjects, five years later the Global Media Monitoring Project 200, which involved teams collecting data across the world, revealed that this figure increased to only 18%.  This was despite considerable intervention, including the adoption of the Beijing Platform of Action.

Our approach to gender and ICT work involves an understanding of power relations in society. This recognition includes an awareness of the unequal power relations between women and men, North and South, rich and poor, urban and rural, connected and unconnected-in local communities, in sovereign countries, and globally.

Women can benefit from ICT policies that encourage growth in the sector, provided these policies remain gender neutral.  Gender-sensitivity among those working in regulatory agencies and multilateral initiations helps ensure that gender-neutral policies do not become gender-blind during implementation.

Slowly, but effectively, the Internet is empowering women in Africa to follow events as they have never witnessed before. The latest case in point is the women in Somalia who have been following their country's peace talks in neighbouring Kenya via Internet usage.

"The power of the media to make and unmake the image of women, to hasten or retard the progress of women in society, cannot be denied or underestimated" (Ogundipe-Leslie, nd:55). However, since the 1980's, when the roles of African women have been undergoing a fundamental change to increased participation in the political, social and economic sectors of society, the tendency of the media has been to ignore or distort these significant events. In fact, in the first United Nation's document recognising the media as a "critical area of concern" for women, the media are listed as one of ten major obstacles to women's advancement" (Ziyambi,1997:1).

In highlighting this rather polemic insight, this essay attempts to go further and grapple with defining and understanding the underlying relationship between the media and gender issues, primarily in Africa. The study will include gender formation, media content and portrayal of women, employment patterns, SADC media policy on gender and, suggestions for the media on gender reporting.

At the outset, it is necessary to provide a theoretical framework for the discussion by listing and discussing the three various types of media including mainstream, alternative and folk media, in terms of their relationship to gender issues. The concepts of sex and gender, which are critical to such a research, will then be outlined.

The Action Plan relies on this policy framework; it is not designed to replace the gender mainstreaming strategy, but rather to advance its implementation.  The Plan defines a concrete four-year road map to intensify the implementation of the gender mainstreaming strategy in the economic sectors.  Execution of this roadmap would give gender issues more traction institutionally and would position the Bank to be a global leader on the issue of women's economic empowerment.