Women under-represented in Southern African media

The Gender and Media Baseline Study, a joint initiative of MISA and Gender Links, a southern African NGO, found that these figures reached 26 percent in Angola, and a low 11 percent in Malawi, irrespective of whether they were in the public or private media.

Women in the media were more likely to be identified as a wife, daughter or mother, than a man was likely to be identified as a husband, son or father.

While women constituted 18 percent of the members of parliament in the region, their voices as politicians were not heard in the same proportion. South Africa, Mozambique and Tanzania had the highest representation of women in parliament, yet they also had the lowest proportion of women politicians being accessed as news sources.

Older women's voices were almost unheard, while women in certain occupational categories were vitually silent.

"The only occupational categories in which female views dominated were beauty contestants, sex workers and homemakers. Male voices predominated even in agriculture, where women perform most of the work," the report noted.

Men's voices dominated in the hard news categories of economics, politics and sport, and the only topic on which women's voices outnumbered those of men was gender equality.

The highest level of representation of women in the media was as TV presenters, but they have to be young - preferably between the ages of 20 and 34, the report said.

"In essence, women stand their best chance in the electronic (and especially tv presenter category) of the media, but have a limited 'shelf life'. All this highlights the fact that the main factor for women's success in the visual media is looks rather than ability."

Women are least represented in the print media and constitute only 22 percent of those who write news stories. They are also under-represented in the critical images, cartoons, opinion and commentary categories.

Their absence was "especially marked" on the economics, politics, sports, mining and agricultural beats. The only areas where they came close to achieving gender parity were health and HIV/AIDS, human rights, gender equality, gender violence, media and entertainment.

However, the growing number of men producing stories on gender issues was an important trend that should be "built on through training", the report advised.

One of the challenges was the "gender blindness" of failing to report women's involvement in everyday situations, such as the power dynamics at play in the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the different impacts of the national budget on women.

One organisation addressing the imbalances is the Africa Women Media Centre. Director Amie Joof-Cole told IRIN her organisation was aiming to help women journalists in Africa occupy leadership positions.

"We have trained women radio journalists in Southern Africa and in Nigeria on how they should report about HIV/AIDS, and giving it a human face, looking at more interesting angles to the story," Joof-Cole said.

This was not just a once-off campaign, but a systematic approach to developing the capacity of the media, and campaign materials to address public health issues, she emphasised.