Wearing Gender Responsive Media Lenses: Towards Gender Balanced Management, Coverage And Portrayal In The Kenyan Media

Abstract

This Manual is a second edition to the first published in 1997. This publication is the outcome of a collaborative project between NCSW and DANIDA, the launching pad of which was a two-day workshop which was held in Nairobi in July 1996 on the theme: Gender Sensitization of the Media, with a view to sensitizing media practitioners on gender issues, so as to improve the quality and quantity of media coverage of the gender question. For NCSW, the mission ofthis project is part of its larger mission of Gender Sensitization, Civic Education, and at removing of barriers to the economic and political empowerment of women, for democratic development. Within the framework of this objective, the workshop participants, comprising of senior journalists and media managers from both the print and electronic media, discussed the role of the media in shaping, propagating and positively changing societal attitudes towards gender relations. The participants generally agreed that the media has contributed to the negative attitudes held by society towards women, through negative portrayal and trivialisation of gender issues. In this regard, the participants reviewed the ways in which the media has been discriminatory against women in its coverage and reporting, and how this has led to women's marginalisation and subordination. Participants, the majority of whom are opinion-shapers and decision-makers within the media hierarchy, discussed ways through which the media could change their attitudes and approaches towards coverage of issues and events to make them more gender-sensitive. They also suggested ways of improving gender relations and strategies for harnessing the power of the media through better quantitative and qualitative coverage of gender issues, both in the print and the electronic media in a manner that advance the status of women. To that extent, the project benefitted immensely from the participating media workers and managers well informed and practical points of view on media operations, practices and processes. Indeed, the decision to involve at the outset, key media players, practitioners and media managers, who are the key stakeholders at policy and decision-making levels, provided a strategic opportunity not only to gender sensitize the media generally, but also to give them incentive to utilize their influence, to facilitate the multiplier effect of gender sensitization and democratization of the Kenyan society through the media...