Globalisation of the media and its implications for women’s expression

Meena M Shivdas

The women, media and development relationship has been analysed by media activists and academics in the Asian region since the 1970s. The focus then was on highlighting unacceptable stereotyped portrayals of women in the media. Subsequently, calls were made for more women journalists in media organisations to initiate change. The shift in focus since addresses such issues as the unequal flow of information, gender biases in media policy, media’s treatment of violence against women, questions on pornography, implications of satellite and telecommunications technology including issues of Internet usage and pornography on the net. These issues have added more complex layers to the women and media relationship. The following article raises questions on some of the contradictions and conformations encountered when feminists have analysed and assessed the impact of globalisation of the media in women’s lives.

The overarching process of globalisation of economies and the changing socio-economic realities in countries as a result of it are of particular interest to feminists analysing women and media issues. This is because the globalisation process has implications for the media portrayal of women and men and women’s access to new technologies. Despite some headway made in changing the women and media relationship, many issues continue to remain on the feminist agenda even as new issues have emerged. Issues surrounding representation and portrayal continue to challenge women media activists and concerns are raised about the promotion of a homogenous culture and the media’s trivialisation of violence against women. Other issues engaging media activists are the ambiguity of media accountability mechanisms and the mega-mergers of media conglomerates. However, women’s varied and diverse responses to the globalisation of the media through their role as active creators and consumers of the media have not been fully explored.

By illustrating some of the Asian experiences with the media, this article attempts to unpack the complexities shaping the women and media relationship with a view to pointing to the conformations and contradictions in the perceptions and experiences of the media by women in the region. While a detailed analysis of the effects of globalisation of the media in women’s lives in the Asian region is beyond the scope of this article, it offers a brief overview of the various factors that currently shape the women and media relationship. An attempt is also made to record women’s responses to new technologies and the globalisation of media images. It concludes by referring to some of the concerns raised by media activists and practitioners in the global review of the implementation of Section J of the Beijing Platform for Action and points to factors to consider for a sharper analysis and understanding of the issues at stake in the women and media relationship.

Media issues of concern to women

Feminist analyses of the media point to the following trends in various countries:

• Corporate ownership of media that has forged powerful political and business links and sets limits on freedom of expression;
• Foreign ownership of media that has implications for accountability issues;
• The creation and interpretation of news that are shaped and influenced by factors associated with the control of media by governments, advertisers and business groups;
• Existing media codes that do not have a gender concern or address issues such as the portrayal of violence against women;
• Persistent stereotyped portrayals of women and marginalisation of women’s perceptions and experiences by the media that continue to negate women’s roles and contributions as equal partners in development;
• Absence or minimal representation of women in senior positions and posts of authority in media organisations;
• The presence of transnational media corporations and the consequent beaming of homogenous media images and perceptions of women;
• Influx of pornographic material and data banks on women through the Internet, video tapes and VCD and also through the print media;
• Influx of computer and video games that violate women’s images and reinforce violence against women.
• Through the efforts of feminists, women’s groups, academics, media practitioners and research and training institutions, there have been innovative and creative use of the media to change stereotyped portrayals of women and present women’s perceptions and life experiences. There have also been initiatives instituted at the policy and organisational levels to initiate change. Although many changes to the women and media situation have been instituted by forging strategic alliances between women activists and women media practitioners, crucial areas remain. For example, the need to lobby for policy changes, sustain programmes on training, increase awareness raising on media issues and engage the public in media monitoring to mobilise their power as media consumers.
  

Conformations and contradictions in perceptions and interpretations

Theoretically, the globalisation of the media can and should mean that the diverse voices, images and opinions from around the world are heard and seen by everyone. In actual fact, this is not so. Current trends in communication and information world-wide conform to the larger trend in globalisation. Gallagher (1995a) opines that, although the presence of women working within the media has increased, real power is still a male monopoly. The power to shape and influence media therefore continues to elude women. Further, media mergers have concentrated power in a select few mega corporations and more importantly, blurred the old boundaries between information, entertainment, production and distribution, and other aspects of global information/communication processes and culture (Gallagher, 1995b). Media conglomerates present a worldview that not only reinforces their power in the global system but also reflects that system (Schiller, 1989). As a consequence, the dominant news agenda often does not include the perceptions and experiences of women and marginalised and disadvantaged groups. Therefore any analysis of the media including the considerations for gender portrayal has to consider the larger issues of the political economy of communication.

A crucial aspect of globalisation of media which has implications for the women, media and development relationship is the blurring of national boundaries and, thereby accountability. Butalia and Chakravarti (1996) report that in many places, the state no longer sees itself as accountable and it does not bind private enterprise including media conglomerates to any sort of responsibility. Women have recognised that within the current media environment any kind of external regulation or control of media is virtually impossible particularly in the case of satellite imaging. Further, Internet technology, given its very nature, eludes monitoring and regulation and poses more complex problems for the women and media question.

Another complex dimension is added to the analysis and understanding of the impact of the media on women’s lives through the differing views held by feminists on the issue of pornography and its regulation. While some feminists opine that the call for more stringent regulation could become a threat to freedom of expression, others perceive pornography as a form of violence against women that cannot go unchecked. The dilemma for many feminists becomes critical. While a call to check pornography runs the risk of colluding with the moral majority that lobbies for censorship in all areas of expression, issuing no call of any form leaves women vulnerable given the rapid growth of the pornographic industry.

The question of the media’s treatment of violence against women also sees competing discourses - some feminists contend that there may be a connection between the depiction of violence and sexuality in the media and violence in women’s everyday lives. However, other feminists argue that the reportage of violence in women’s lives is presented as a bizarre phenomenon and the work of aberrant individuals whereas women are often physically and sexually assaulted by men they know.

Other issues that continue to pose problems in interpretations and responses by women media activists are women’s media images and their representation in media organisations, the contradictions with seemingly positive images and ideologies, and the perceived threats to cultures from the beaming of homogenous images of women. Analyses of the global media processes and their connection with the national scenarios point to the promotion of a homogenous culture which raises questions of cultural imperialism, the threat to diverse media images and the potential impact of the media on women’s lives (Sreberny, 1995; Bhasin, 1994; Hermano, 1990). However, counter arguments suggest that there is scope offered by the globalisation of media for creating heterogenous images through providing new sources for creativity (Abu Lughod, 1991; Davies, 1991).

Feminists in South Asia have drawn a connection between globalisation of the media and the
religious backlash they face and have rejected sexist/passive homogenous foreign images of women. Butalia (1997) asserts that in India, the influx of foreign images of women (blonde, blue-eyed), has enabled Hindu right wing groups to also claim that foreign programmes are corrupting Indian traditions and morals. We therefore have a situation where both feminists and right wing groups in India are against the beaming of foreign images but for different reasons. In contrast, the women in Central Asia appreciate foreign images of women that reinforce stereotypes. As Azhgikina (1995) points out, women’s images from the Soviet era never reflected existing realities and were seen as an imposition of a particular political ideology with the result that now, Central Asian women want to reclaim the femininity denied to them by the
Soviet regime.

From the issues and concerns raised about the women and media relationship, the differing positions of feminists on these issues and the responses of various groups (eg., women media consumers, general public, right wing groups), it is evident that there has to be a deeper understanding of the connections we make between globalisation and women’s portrayal and representation at the local levels. For a sharper analyses and understanding of the women and media relationship, the questions to raise should focus on how women can advance their interests as a gender through the media given the differing political, ideological, religious, socio-cultural and economic factors shaping and influencing their lives?

Five years after the 4th World Conference on Women took place in Beijing, the UN held a review in June 2000 to evaluate the implementation of the Platform for Action (recommendations and strategies for women’s advancement agreed upon by member states). Women’s groups presented assessments of the implementation of Section J on Women and Media. The following section offers excerpts from the global alternative review compiled by women media activists and media practitioners.

The picture after five years

There are continuing concerns reflected in the global review of the Media Section of the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA). Section J of the BPFA highlighted five key points in the women, media and development relationship. These are:

• The advances made in information technology, particularly the scope for communication networks to transcend national borders, that have benefits and disadvantages for women;
• The increase in the numbers of women who work in the communications sector, however, this has not translated in increased access to power and decision-making in media organisations; women are also not able to influence media policy;
• The lack of gender sensitivity in media policies and programmes; increased promotion of consumerism; and the need to create self-regulatory mechanisms for the media;
• The continued stereotyped portrayal of women in the media and the increase in violent and pornographic images of women;
• The obstacles to women’s ability to access the expanding electronic information highways; and the need to involve women in the development and dissemination of new information technologies.
• The alternative report showed that five years after governments adopted the BPFA and committed themselves to implementing the recommendations, many of the concerns expressed in Section J remain while new ones have emerged. Information from the various regional reports indicate that although some progress has been made in implementing recommendations from section J, a lot of this has to do with the sustained monitoring, networking and lobbying efforts of women’s organisations and media watch groups. This is indicated in NGO as well as government reviews and analyses.
  

Both official (UN) reviews and NGO reports indicate that there has been an increase in the numbers of women entering media organisations at the professional level and there is an increase in the percentage of women students graduating from journalism and mass communications courses. The women and media situations in both Asia Pacific and the Latin America and the Caribbean conform to this trend. However, there is a continued negative portrayal and representation of women that may be linked to the lack of implementation of national media codes and, in some cases, even to the lack of existence of such codes. Women continue to have limited access and participation in decision-making in the media industries and governing authorities and bodies that oversee formulation and implementation of media policies. From the foregoing it can be said that more still needs to be done by GOs, media organisations and NGOs to achieve the two strategic objectives outlined in Section J.

Even as Section J captured some of the concerns of women activists, researchers and women media practitioners in its analysis of the women and media situation, not all dimensions of the women and media relationship are explored. The economic and political realities within which transnational media corporations perpetuate inequalities and inequities are not addressed and women’s vulnerabilities as traditional keepers of indigenous knowledge within this environment are not acknowledged. Women media activists therefore expressed their concern with the absence of analysis of the globalisation of media, particularly mergers of transnational media corporations and changes in media ownership at national levels that have a bearing on media content and intent.

Activists from the Asia Pacific region asserted that the strangleholds of transnational media corporations were edging out nationally owned media enterprises leaving even less space for women in both the mainstream and alternative media. In addition, globalisation of the media was paving the way for increased commercialisation, consumerism and more importantly, homogenisation of cultures resulting in the marginalisation of the voices of minority and indigenous cultures and peoples. In Latin America and the Caribbean, women activists were concerned that giant multimedia organisations controlled different kinds of media resulting in unequal representation of all social actors. Such crucial issues as freedom of expression and information, and mechanisms for accountability with increased use of ICTs (information and communications technologies) engaged women activists in Europe and North America.
Women in Latin American and Caribbean noted that the weak democracies in most of the countries in the region functioned within inflexible structural adjustment programmes imposed on them leaving their institutions, the media among them, vulnerable to vested economic interests. This has implications for media’s role in mobilising civil society and promoting democratisation and political participation. The report called for a deeper understanding of the connections made between globalisation and women’s media portrayal and access to expression and decision making in all media including ICTs (Global Alternative Review of Section J, 2000).

Conclusion

The points raised in the review of implementation of Section J of BPFA reveal the complex layers and dimensions that need to be deconstructed and understood and call for relevant analytic frameworks that include the socio-political and economic realities of women’s lives. While it is important to strategise and apply pressure for changes to the women and media situation with our reading and understanding of portrayal and representation, it is equally important to understand the implications of global processes of deregulation and developments in new technology. This is in order for us to locate interventions within the framework of globalisation and new technology that have given new dimensions to freedom of expression as we understand it and its potential to virtualise human experience.


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Meena M Shivdas is currently a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Development Studies, UK. This paper was originally written for a regional congress on gender and media policy organised by WACC and Isis International in 1997. The author elaborates further on the analysis of globalisation of the media in this article and has added a review of the implementation of Section J of the Beijing Platform for Action.