WACC Partner Project: ‘Portrayal and participation of women in the media, by Women’s Media Centre (WMC), Cambodia

The project implemented in 2007 by the Women’s Media Centre (WMC) in Cambodia was spurred by concerns about negative stereotyping and degrading depictions of women in print media.

It is indisputable that mainstream media worldwide show little concern for gender balanced reporting, as evidenced by the results of the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) in 2005. It was against this background and in view of similar patterns of reporting in Cambodian media that WMC embarked on the project.

The project aimed to use a combination of media monitoring, forum discussions with journalists and lobby dinners with editors,amongst others as approaches to improving the coverage of women in the Cambodian media. In summary, WMC monitored eight popular magazines, held media monitoring group meetings, ran an internship programme, organised forum discussions for media and civil society groups, hosted lobby dinners for media and welcomed student tours to their studio.

In the past, invitations to male journalists to participate in forum discussions on gender and the media had met with some resistance. Surprisingly, the two discussion forums attracted 107 journalists from both the print and broadcast media. Participants included the heads of journalism associations in the country, the editor-in-chief of a popular newspaper, and the Secretary of State at the Ministry of Information.

The discussion forum provided an opportunity for journalists to share their experiences concerning the mainstreaming of gender in media. The meetings concluded with many participants resolving to enhance the representation of women in their media. The editor-in-chief of Kampuchea newspaper who also heads the Cambodian Club of Journalists appealed to journalists to desist from publishing pornographic images of women in their media.

Such was the success of the forum that it was widely covered by newspapers and television stations in Cambodia, ensuring that the organisation’s message reached wideraudiences.

The WMC’s subsequent lobby dinner with editors-in-chief also resulted in the editor-in-chief of Apsara Television agreeing to broadcast WMC’s programmes at no cost to WMC, whilst the editor of an entertainment magazine promised to gradually phase out pornographic images of women in his magazine. Programmes produced by the WMC are currently broadcast on its Mobile Broadcasting Units as well as on some TV stations.

Perhaps the most impressive outcome of this multi-strategy project was the act by ordinary Cambodian women to directly challenge media onnegative portrayals of women, in their record over 100 ‘letters to the editor’ , 44 of which were selected for publication in Raksmey Newspaper.

To increase the number of young women working in the media and enable young people to gain work experience, the centre selected three female students from universities to intern with the organisation and arranged a visit to the centre for 100 students from four high schools. The visits and internships allowed participants to gain insights into work undertaken by the Centre.

With sustained advocacy by the WMC using multiple strategies, the portrayal of women in the Cambodian media has slowly improved. The Centre instituted the Gender Equality Media Awards in 2004 to encourage more accurate and responsible representation of women in the Cambodian media.

While media owners still argue that a shift towards gender-responsive reportage is constrained by financial survival exigencies, what WMC has undoubtedly achieved is stirring debate on hitherto accepted as ‘normal’, biased gender representations in media.