adminLungile Tshuma Sunday News Correspondent
MEDIA houses in the country have been urged to adopt the Zimpapers’ Gender Policy which matches international standards and is in line with the country’s constitution. The call was made by Federation for African Media Women in Zimbabwe in its latest report after finding that women’s voices were still not being heard in the media, as most media houses in the country do not have gender policies.
“The review situates the template gender policy within international and regional good practices on gender mainstreaming. The template policy for Zimpapers moves beyond just attainment of numbers in the participation of women and further addresses some of the factors that prevent the advancement of women,” reads the report.
“The policy seeks to transform the environment and create one that is enabling women to participate. It thus includes provisions that are aimed at reviewing the policy on flexi time, creating childcare facilities or considering childcare allowances and providing mechanisms to accommodate breastfeeding requirements.”
The report states that Alpha Media Holdings, The Midlands Observer, NewZiana, Risper Media, The Source, The Worker and ZiFM stereo do not have gender policies at all.
The highly praised template is in line with legislation championing gender equality, which calls for equal participation of women in all spheres of society such as Section 56 (2) of the country’s constitution, the Beijing Declaration Platform for Action in Objective J1 and the SADC Protocol for Gender and Development.
The study discovered that media houses were continually marginalising women through their sourcing and news gathering processes.
According to the research findings, 73 percent of stories analysed showed that men were still the dominant sources of news as compared to women who only informed 27 percent of the news.
As a result of the overwhelming reliance on men’s opinions in news gathering processes, the report says the media “relegates issues affecting women to the periphery, which keeps them marginalised and denies them justice”.
Some of the salient issues raised by the report are that women are not sourced for comment on economic issues but they frequently feature in news when they are commenting on entertainment issues and other soft beats such as gender equality, gender violence, sex and sexuality.
“In Zimbabwe’s print media, there is clearly a gender bias in the reportage of sports, with fewer stories on women’s sport resulting in serious under-reporting and under-representation of females in this domain. Most stories for sportswomen are less detailed than those about men, and are often in the bottom section of the page,” reads the report.
Recommendations that were put forward to improve gender equality include the need for editors and editorial staff of all media houses to make an effort through editorial policy to assure respect of equality based on gender and gender principles.
The media was urged to network with tertiary institutions, media unions and training institutions as well as editors, to advocate gender-sensitive policies.
Online Reporter