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.