Section 2: Background
On 16th February 2005, hundreds of men and women in 76 countries once again monitored the representation of women and men in the news on television, radio and in newspapers as part of the third ever Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP). Organized by the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC), GMMP constitutes the most extensive global research of gender in news media ever undertaken and as such is a vital contribution to the empowerment of women and the promotion of gender equality in and through the media.
As in 1995 and 2000, the international day of monitoring was marked by incredible solidarity amongst participating groups worldwide. One group, participating in GMMP for the first time, e-mailed to say they would never ‘watch, read or listen to the media with the same eyes and ears again’.
The data from GMMP 2005 suggests that very little has changed since the 1995 and 2000 studies. GMMP 2005 is unfortunately likely to show that the marginalization of women in news media is still very much a reality.
It is for this reason that GMMP 2005, for the first time, includes a second – advocacy focused – stage. As a tool for change, the strength of GMMP lies in the fact that it provides hard facts and figures, the staple food of journalists and programme makers. In discussions about what is wrong with, or missing from, the pictures of the world we get from media content, hard data – together with concrete examples – reaches media professionals with an immediacy never achieved by theory or abstract argument.
The second phase of GMMP 2005 is designed to facilitate the advocacy activities of gender and media activists worldwide in their national and regional contexts with the ultimate aim of promoting the fair and balanced representation of women and men in the news. WACC will facilitate these activities in the following four ways.
Production of an Advocacy Toolkit
Who Makes the News? Three Weeks of Global Action on Gender and the Media
Production of Content
The production of a global GMMP 2005 report containing the global, regional and national quantitative results of the media monitoring provides gender and media activists with hard data to highlight to media professionals the problems that exist in portrayals of women and men in news media. The extensive qualitative analysis that is also contained in the global GMMP 2005 report will further support the gender sensitization of news media by providing examples of good and bad practice. The global report will be available in February 2006 in English and in March 2006 in Spanish, French and Portuguese and is available to download as a PDF file. A number of groups at the national level are also producing national GMMP 2005 reports which will also be available to download.
Production of an Advocacy Toolkit
WACC has produced a Gender and Media Advocacy Toolkit to facilitate the advocacy activities of gender and media groups worldwide. The toolkit is informed by the experience of existing WACC partners’ experience in the field of training and by the extensive knowledge of many of the GMMP 2005 participants in gender sensitization of the media. The advocacy toolkit provides a series of ‘how to’ materials on the key elements of an advocacy campaign concerned with promoting gender equality in the media. It is available to download from http://www.whomakesthenews.org
Advocacy Training Workshops
In order to ensure the most effective use of the Gender and Media Advocacy Toolkit, WACC plans to organise eight regional advocacy-training workshops at which gender and media groups will be trained in how to use the toolkit. The training workshops will facilitate exchange of experience among groups in each region and will stimulate the development of networks and opportunities for collaboration at the national and regional level. The workshops will take place in the following regions: Latin America; the Caribbean; Central and Eastern Europe; Francophone Africa; Anglophone Africa; the Middle East; Asia; and the Pacific.
Who Makes the News? Three Weeks of Global Action on Gender and the Media
From 16th February – 8th March 2006, WACC will organise Who Makes the News? Three Weeks of Global Action on Gender and the Media. Endorsed by both UNIFEM and UNESCO, the three weeks of action will begin with the international launch of the global GMMP 2005 report in London. The launch will take the form of a press conference and roundtable featuring leading figures from the international news media, organised in conjunction with Amnesty International, Article 19, the International Federation of Journalists, TVE and many more. During the three weeks of action, the global WACC and GMMP networks and many other gender and media organisations worldwide will undertake activities using the global, regional and national GMMP results as part of a process to establish a dialogue with news media on media representations of women and men. The weeks of action will end on 8th March – International Women’s Day – with the UNESCO led initiative ‘Women Make the News’.
Who Makes the News? Website
The Who Makes the News? website will contain the GMMP 2005 monitoring methodology and global and national GMMP 2005 reports along with the WACC Gender and Media Advocacy Toolkit. The website will also provide a forum for exchange of ideas and experience on gender and media monitoring and advocacy between the global GMMP network and others involved in similar work. It will also feature all the activities taking place around the world as part of Who Makes the News? Three Weeks of Global Action on Gender and the Media. The website is currently being built and will be l aunched end of January 2006.
Related Info
In these blogs, you can discuss the good or bad practices of Gender representation on the Media.
Here you are able to be part of each activity that takes place during the Three Weeks of Global Action (15 February – 8 March 2006)
