LOCAL media must take greater care to depict women in a fairer and more accurate way was the message of a workshop for journalists held on Friday by the Mediterranean Institute of Gender Studies (MIGS).
Co-presenter Garjan Sterk said that “as far as we can see”, women are presented in the Cypriot media mostly in their role as mothers.
“We see this at the moment in the coverage of the H1N1 flu issue. Women are also presented in soft news, like human interest. Female celebrities are shown in the ups and downs in their relationships, love life, and marriage. And women are often pictured as victims of violence, but very few are presented as successful entrepreneurs,” said Sterk, a researcher and consultant in the field of media and diversity who previously worked for the Dutch Public Broadcasting Corporation.
Co-presenter Marga Miltenburg – a former journalist who now heads the ZijSpreekt (SheSpeaks) organisation in Holland – said that “women account for half of society, but this is not reflected in the media. It is often said that news provides a mirror on the world. But it doesn’t. The world we see in the news is a world in which women are virtually invisible. Women are dramatically under-represented in the news and women’s points of view are rarely heard in the topics that dominate the news agenda.”
Miltenburg said that “all this is caused by prejudice and lack of interest” in finding out the facts, but can also reflect the exclusion of women in some social respects. Quoting statistics given in Joni Seager’s Atlas of Women in the World (Earthscan, 2009), she said that women in Cyprus comprise 76 per cent of university students, 54 per cent of paid workers, but only 14 hold elected government positions.
As far as the presenters were concerned, this state of affairs is often justified by excuses like ‘we can’t find qualified women’. “Qualified women do exist; but first of all you have to be aware that you need them in your team, and after that you have to search for them seriously,” Sterk said.
From both a theoretical and practical point of view, “the media shape our view of the world; they are co-creators of our perceived reality.” However, Miltenburg said that in general, “the media do not reflect the changing roles of women and men in society”, often minimising the role played by women.
“Gender portrayal in the news is the result of many aspects of journalistic practice. From the story angle and the choice of interview questions, to the use of language and the choice of images – all these have a bearing on the messages that emerge in the news.”
MIGS researcher Maria Angeli gave a specific example of the stereotypical depiction of women in the Cypriot press, drawn from a MIGS study of the depiction of women candidates in the 2009 Euro-elections. Angeli said that a report by one leading newspaper treated DIKO candidate Antigone Papadopoulou’s presence at a pre-election event “flippantly”, focusing on the fact that she was dressed in red and saying she “sweetened” DIKO members by offering them cake.
Miltenburg said that this and similar examples raise a democratic issue: if journalists are not more careful about the choices they make in presenting a story, the “voice of women” is excluded. “Journalists are there to be critical about social structures, social systems and social processes,” she said, so conscious choices to represent the female perspective accurately and fully are “essential for the proper functioning of a democracy”.
This means that journalists should take care to include a female perspective, which “is more objective, gives more complete information, is more truthful”, and to pay attention to women’s issues in a way that results in “an inclusive presentation of social reality, opening new debates between citizens”.
Different approaches to journalism emerged during the discussion which followed the presentations. Currently, there is a debate in Holland over the role and function of journalism, focusing on the notion of “civil journalism”, which would express a point of view which informs and educates citizens in a way that produces a general benefit or specific positive outcome for society.
One participant said that in Cyprus, the media tends to filter most issues through the prism of the Cyprus problem, with the result that “real, everyday Cyprus problems” like sex-trafficking, drugs-use and violence against women are overshadowed, or even ignored in mainstream reporting.
