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This is from the NGO FORUM DAILY 05/09, a publication being
put out during the World conference on women in Beijing.


From: apcwomen Sally Burch <apcwomen@wcw.apc.org>

A call for a gender sensitive media
By Rina Jimenez David

Networking was the key word at the workshop Sunday on "Making
Mainstream Media More Gender Sensitive".

	Coordinated by the Women and Media Network for Asia and
the Pacific (WMNAP), the Pacific Media Task Force and PILIPINA,
the workshop featured an exchange of views among feminists
working in the mainstream media and women activists seeking to
influence media coverage of women's issues.

	Margaret Thomas, deputy editor of the Business Times of
Singapore, revealed that even if she helped found AWARE, one of
the leading women's organizations in her country, as a business
journalist she found "very little news value for us on what the
women's movement does."

	She urged women activists to study how best they could
make their issues attractive to different types of media. A
business paper like hers, she said, may find more use for stories
such as the economic value of women's work, the "glass ceiling"
for women executives, or inequality in wages between men and women.
	
"Get to know individuals in the mainstream media," Thomas added.
"See them as people who care passionately about their work, too.
And get them to see your issues from their perspective."

	The value of networking among women in media themselves
was illustrated by Bernadette Rounds Ganilau, a broadcaster from
Fiji who organized the Pacific Media Task Force to stimulate and
coordinate information activities leading to the Women's
Conference.

	 Much of the task force's work, said Rounds-Ganilau was
done on the basis of friendships, and has grown to the extent
that they eventually covered 21 countries in the Pacific.

	"We're now growing in intensity, and gaining more
recognition," Rounds-Ganilau added. Another radio journalist from
the Pacific, Delta Pasingan of Papua New Guinea, said women in
media used to "get a lot of criticism from NGOs."

	But, she pointed out, "if women want to promote women's
activities, they must involve people in the media."

	Apart from networking, it's also necessary for feminists
in the media to strategize, said Aisha Ali, women's desk editor
of the New Straits Times of Malaysia.

	After a seminar on sensitizing media to women's issues
"changed" her, Ali said she began a conscious campaign to
reorient her pages and to tap the women's movement in her country
to bring crucial issues to her readers' attention.

	"NGOs must have media on their agenda," she stressed.

	And when she felt there was an issue of particular import
to women, Ali said she tapped women friends in other newspapers
and media organizations to carry the same issue and thus help
create public opinion. She cited the campaign they launched
regarding the offensive ads for "Bufori," Malaysia's first sports
car.
	The workshop also featured poetry readings by women poets
Grace Mera of Vanuatu, Mada Tora, and Jahida Khanur of
Bangladesh, as well as a video presentation on the Philippine
advertising campaign for the Beijing conference.


Forwarded by:

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