There was a scintillating
talk on “Gender and Media”, delivered by
the well-known journalist and author, Ms. Ammu Joseph
at Bangalore International centre on 25th April, 2007
at 6 PM. The session was presided over by Dr. Sreelakshmi
Gururaja, another well-known Bangalorean who is well-known
for her illustrious career in UNICEF for well over 23
years.
After a brief welcome by the Director of the Centre
and a few introductory comments by Dr. Sreelakshmi about
the dimensions of the topic to be discussed, Ms. Ammu
Joseph delivered her talk. She pointed out that there
are several facets to the topic, like representation
of women and men in media or women’s access to
media as media professionals or citizens and audiences
or the impact of laws and policies relating to the media
and communication on women. She dwelt mostly with the
representation of women in news media and news coverage
in her talk.
In a hard-hitting talk, delivered in soft tones, Ammu
pointed out that gender is not exclusively a woman’s
issue. “The ways in which men are portrayed in
the media place expectations and limitations on them
that adversely affect their lives and those of the women
and children in their lives as well as other people
and society in general”. She highlighted the significant
role being played by the media in recent years in disseminating
information and knowledge, in shaping values and norms,
in moulding attitudes and behaviour and influencing
the very process of living. She also underscored the
increasing commercialization of media, as an inevitable
corollary to media globalisation, whichis crucially
affecting the “public sphere” where important
public issues are discussed and debated. In this whole
process, women in general are not proportionately or
properly represented in the media currently. Even within
the limited representation, small categories of women
(page 3 types/film stars etc) tend to be over-represented
while a vast majority of women, particularly the disadvantaged
ones, remain either unrepresented or under-represented.
Thus there is near-marginalisation of women in media.
Ammu drew examples from the recent media reportings
on the Union Budget to show how the angularities in
attitudes and perceptions in such reportings lead to
an over-all distorted vision. She also commented about
how the concept of “gender budgeting” is
consistently misunderstood and misconstrued in the media.
Mainstream media, Ammu pointed out, continues to reflect
a masculine view of the world, and, that too, of the
upper class, upper caste and urban sector. As a result,
issues crucial to women are often not considered to
be newsworthy. “When women do appear in the media’s
radar, they tend to do so as desirable consumers rather
than as full-fledged citizens…..”. This
trend is increasingly becoming more dominant in the
recent years. The increasing market orientation and
globalization of the media is also leading to packaging
of even news as entertainment. As a result, celebrity
and life-style journalism is gradually replacing items
of concerns and realities of ordinary citizens. Thus,
while women are no longer missing from the Indian media,
those who get covered are mostly “movie and TV
stars, beauty queens and models, fashion designers and
impressarios, successful entrepreneurs and professionals,
controversial or glamorous politicians, well-heeled
philanthropists, stylish sportswomen, and sundry entertainers
and socialites – with a few celebrity writers,
artists, performers and journalists thrown in for good
measure”. The concept of packaging items of entertainment
and marketability can also be seen manifested in advertiser-sponsored
supplements highlighting tips on beauty, fitness, health
and travel which appear beside corresponding advertisements.
Same phenomenon can be seen in the adoption of International
Women’s Day, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s
Day etc. which have largely become an occasion for,
what Ammu so pithily described as, “celebrating
consumption”.
Ammu noted with a touch of regret that there are occasions
when women make it to the newspages and bulletins as
victims of crime or conflict, disasters or atrocities,
but their stories tend to be oversimplified, sensationalized,
and often dramatized. Even basic professional norms,
such as protecting the identity of the victims, of sexual
crimes in particular, are all too frequently flouted
by the media while reporting such stories. On a positive
note, Ammu acknowledged that significant sections of
the Indian media have helped, particularly in the last
quarter of a century, in the spread of information and
ideas about the status of women in society and the need
to improve it. This has assisted in a perceptible increase
in gender consciousness in general and also within the
media itself. Public awareness of the multiple problems
facing women has also helped in the evolution of strategies
to overcome at least a few of the less complicated and
less contentions problems.
Ammu illustrated her talk with a touching real life
story of some poor, illiterate, rural women from Dalit
communities in Andhra Pradesh. They had practically
no access to the media, either as listeners or viewers.
They were, however, members of voluntary, village-level
women’s collectives (called sanghams), associated
with the Deccan Development Society. In 1997, Sangham
women from 75 villages decided to create their own media.
They got seven women trained up in a ten month video
training course and have since then made over 100 films
on issues like food and agriculture, natural recources
and displacement, genetic engineering and livelihoods
– issues which touch their everyday life. Now
they are making films for other similar organizations
and also training rural women in other countries as
well. The interesting thing is that the women continue
with their original occupations, primarily in agriculture
and animal husbandry, when they are not wielding their
cameras. Similarly, dalit women in chittoor district
of Andhra Pradesh have been regularly publishing a rural
magazine to highlight the talents and achievements,
work and activism of ordinary women and helping to boost
their self-esteem.
Ammu urged in the course of her talk the need for
the citizen to be critically aware of the media and
actively participate in the development of a media reform
movement. She ended with two pithy quotes: “What,
in the end, could be more central to free speech than
that every segment fo society should have a voice?”
“When every voice counts, we can stop counting
the voices.”
This was easily one of the best lectures delivered
at Bangalore International Centre over the last one
year.
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