Twenty years after the Windhoek Declaration on press freedom

Hostage to gender prejudice:
None but ourselves can free our minds
By Colleen Lowe Morna
Colleen Lowe Morna, CEO of Gender
Links, is editor of <strong>the</strong> three studies
mentioned in this article, which can
be accessed on www.genderlinks.org.
za, as well as several books, reports,
and media articles on gender and
development in Sou<strong>the</strong>rn Africa.
150 | Media in Africa - 2011
When Agnes Callamard, Executive
Director of ARTICLE 19 coined <strong>the</strong>
phrase “gender censorship” at <strong>the</strong>
launch of <strong>the</strong> third Global Media
Monitoring Project in 2005, <strong>the</strong>
Fleet Street audience in London
stopped just short of pummelling
her with tomatoes.
Time has marched on, but not much
has changed. Since <strong>the</strong> first global
study in 1995, to <strong>the</strong> latest in 2010,
<strong>the</strong> proportion of women sources
in <strong>the</strong> media has risen from 17%
to 25% globally, and from 16% to
19% in Africa. Yet censorship is still
viewed through <strong>the</strong> narrow lens of
politically-barred content, ra<strong>the</strong>r
than <strong>the</strong> broader societal lens of
exclusion.
Three studies over <strong>the</strong> last two
<strong>years</strong> initiated by Gender Links with
various partners have provided
stark data of <strong>the</strong> gender gaps in <strong>the</strong>
media.
• The Gender in Media Education
Audit shows that <strong>the</strong>re are more
women than men enrolled in
media studies, but many more
male than female lecturers.
• Glass Ceilings in Sou<strong>the</strong>rn
African media shows that
women constitute 41% of
media employees (32% if South
Africa is excluded), but less than
a quarter of managers and only
a handful of board members
and top executives.
• The 2010 Gender and Media
Progress Study (GMPS), a
follow-up to <strong>the</strong> baseline study
in 2003, confirms <strong>the</strong> global
findings that on average women
now constitute a mere 19%
of news sources in <strong>the</strong> Africa
region. This study broke new
ground by asking some pointed
questions about basic media
practice — finding, for example,
that a startling 67% percent of
news stories are based on single
sources.
What are <strong>the</strong> chances, in our society,
that if only one source is consulted,
that source will be a man? And how
free are societies in which half <strong>the</strong>
population is effectively silenced,
without us even aware this is so?
Some more questions:
• Do we think twice when a report
on a South African TV station
tells us about an award for
African soccer players at which
none of <strong>the</strong> players showed up,
when in fact <strong>the</strong> top African
woman soccer player did show
up?
• Or an article in a Zambian
newspaper about elections
titled “Peoples views on <strong>the</strong>
elections” in which only men
are quoted, and <strong>the</strong> final
caption reads “<strong>the</strong> best man
for <strong>the</strong> job” (even though two
women candidates stood in
that particular election).
It is this gender blindness that
has prompted activists to demand
that a <strong>Windhoek</strong>+ declaration