Still a man's world when it comes to the media
February 19, 2006
By Colleen Lowe Morna
Benedict Vilakazi, the Orlando Pirates soccer captain, is charged with the rape of a minor.
A tabloid runs the story under the headline: "Bucs captain on rape rap!" The "popular skipper" is reported in capital letters to have "denied the allegations against him".
The image used is a calendar pin-up of Vilakazi with a model. The only source in the story about the "shock charge" is Orlando Pirates announcing that he has been suspended as captain. Far from detracting from the soccer star's image, the overriding impression is that there is something quite macho about the alleged incident.
A television report on the same day, covering the same story, had a different take. Under the headline "He's scheduled to play tonight, but women's groups cry foul", the reporter quotes People Opposing Women Abuse (Powa) calling for Vilakazi to be suspended from playing pending the outcome of the case, as this would send home a strong message about the seriousness of the allegations.
A spokesperson for the club is quoted as saying: "Pirates could not do anything which suggests that we prejudge the case." In random street interviews, a man agrees with the position taken by the club; a woman says it would be proper for Vilakazi to step down.
By any journalistic standards, the second story would not only rank as more balanced and fair, but also more interesting, because of the diversity of viewpoints.
In the monitoring that took place on February 16 last year as part of the third Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), the first would have been logged as having one source (male), and the second two female and two male sources. The first story would also have been tagged as "reinforcing" and the second as "challenging" stereotypes on gender violence.
This is the everyday media face of the raw statistics produced by the study that covered 13 000 news items in 76 countries and has been conducted every five years since the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995.
Globally over that period, the proportion of women sources in the news has increased by a mere 4 percent (from 17 percent to 21 percent). South Africa has gone up from 19 percent to 26 percent - the highest percentage in southern Africa (the regional average is 19 percent) but is lower than in other countries such as Belgium (31 percent), Sweden (30 percent) and Rwanda (29 percent).
The study launched in London this week, and a more in-depth regional analysis released by Gender Links, shows that there has been some improvement in women's voices being heard in "hard" news categories such as politics and sports.
But contrary to the oft-heard excuse by journalists that there are no women to be found in these categories, the study shows that women's voices are not heard in proportion to their strengths in occupational categories. For example, in South Africa, women comprise one third of parliamentarians and nearly half of cabinet ministers, but only 22 percent of those were quoted in the political category.
A further look at sources shows that women are least likely to be the subject of the story, a spokesperson or an expert, but rather the focus of human-interest stories, eyewitnesses and participants in snap, popular-opinion surveys or vox pops. The last category (in which women comprise 46 percent of the total) is a "quick fix" for editors to give women greater visibility.
Seeking out female opinion remains a major challenge. The report cites many examples of how even when women exist, they are ignored, such as in the case of a textile factory closing down in which a male minister but none of the female workers are interviewed.
Another instance concerned the annual awards of the Confederation of African Football (CAF). The African Woman Footballer of the Year, Perpetua Nkwocha from Nigeria, was the only award winner to show up. Yet only three of eight television channels monitored even referred to the woman footballer award.
In South Africa, a reporter covering the event held here concluded: "The glittering gala will unfortunately be remembered for those recipients who won awards, but never showed up." The presence of Nkwocha was not even acknowledged.
Other than the missing voices of women, the report has a number of interesting measures on how women are portrayed. In South Africa, 5 percent of stories were classified as reinforcing gender stereotypes, compared with 3 percent challenging stereotypes (the comparative global figures are 6 percent and 3 percent).
Twenty-two percent of women sources were identified as victims, compared with 10 percent of men. Twenty-eight percent of women sources were identified by their family status compared with 14 percent of men (like one headline in this week's news: "Mother of four is third female concourt justice".
Globally the proportion of news reported by women has increased steadily to its current level of 37 percent (38 percent in South Africa). The report shows that women reporters are more likely to consult female opinion (in South Africa, women journalists cited 25 percent of women sources compared with 18 percent in the case of male journalists.) But no country, media house or journalist has quite come around to reporting the world as it is: roughly equal proportions of women and men.
The southern Africa analysis concludes that the challenge of achieving gender balance in the news is inextricably linked to the broader challenges of improving media professionalism as well as developing more critical media consumers as part of efforts to deepen democracy.
This will be the focus of the second gender and media summit to be held in Johannesburg in September under the banner "Media diversity: good for business, good for democracy".
Colleen Lowe Morna is executive director of Gender Links and chairperson of the Gender and Media Southern Africa Network. The southern African analysis of the GMMP can be found on www.genderlinks.org.za
Temporarily available at: http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=1043&fArticleId=3119918 and http://www.genderlinks.org.za/article.php?a_id=525
Source: The Sunday Independent & Independent Online (South Africa)
