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By Theodora Dame Adjin-Tettey
Covid-19 has profoundly affected societies. Among the flaws he has exposed is the fact that gender bias remains in media coverage.
A recent special report, The Missing Perspectives of Women in COVID-19 News, shows that very few female experts have been cited about the pandemic in the media. South Africa, Kenya, India, Nigeria, the United States and the United States were analyzed. United.
Designed through the International Media Foundation for Women and commissioned through the Bill Foundation
And that when women gain a platform in stories about the pandemic, they are rarely as authorized experts or as self-employed individuals, but they appear to be victims of the disease.
The effects are consistent with prepandemic studies. For example, one of them showed that women accounted for only 24% of the other people featured in the media as experts in subjects.
The media report poses the challenge in a broader social and economic framework in each country. One of the measures used the fact that women were at the heart of leadership.
This reflected the fact that there were very few women in political leadership positions, including women leaders such as Angela Merkel (Germany), Jacinta Adern (New Zealand) and Tsai Ing-wen (Taiwan), who have shown wonderful leadership in covid management. -19, have led the media to pay more attention to women experts.
The report paints a bleak picture of the stage’s gravity in one of five countries, including Nigeria and India, the worst.
Only 24% of the top 25 players represented in Nigeria’s gender equality policy are women, compared to 28% in India. In these measures, South Africa has a higher representation of women with 56%.
Mute voices from when they report on the Covid-19 crisis, even if they are most affected by the pandemic, marginalizes the most
The effects are because the media has a role to play in achieving gender equality in societies, and they can do so by creating gender-sensitive content and transforming gender and breaking gender stereotypes.
The report makes a number of recommendations that can help correct the situation. For example, editorials deserve to make sure that women are highlighted as information resources. In addition, media organizations deserve to hire more women to achieve greater gender balance in newsrooms.
The report also highlights the role that universities offering media courses can play. The curriculum integration of a gender-awareness module into journalism studies will lead to gender-sensitive journalists. There are many opportunities for improvement in journalism courses in South Africa.
Closing the gaps
In an age of abundance of virtual communication technologies and the resulting data (excessive amounts of challenge data, unreliable), journalism schools strive to equip their graduates with relevant expertise.
This includes making sure they can design web pages, are familiar with the software bureaucracy, and are alert to fake news and misinformation.
What is missing is a foundation forged for gender in media content.
A imaginable answer would be to make gender representation a mandatory seminary course in which students planned gender issues in the news.
The module can also explain how to use non-discriminatory, gender-sensitive language. Ethical reports on gender sensitive issues, gender-sensitive violence and gender representation will also be included in advertising.
Gender indicators in the media of the United Nations Education and Science Organization, developed in collaboration with the International Federation of Journalists, will be a component of journalism training.
It should be noted that Rongo University in Kenya recently revised its communications and media curriculum adopting the Unesco model.
Educators will also need to ensure that practical sessions or task charts reflect gender sensitivity. Gender sensitivity will also need to be an integral component of the course evaluation criteria.
In addition, educational establishments can advertise gender equality in the media through research. Empirical evidence can simply point to prejudice and insensitivity in journalistic practices.
Journalism teachers can also collaborate with media organizations and offer refresher courses on gender-sensitive information.
Addressing the problem
Notable collaborations between universities and industry have led to the creation of databases such as SheSource and WomenAlsoKnowStuff. SheSource is a multidomain database with more than 1,300 expert women that can be used in news for free.
Women Know Stuff was introduced through polytologist Samara Klar and runs through female academics in the United States. It is an expanding database of women experts in political science subdomains. The database comprises approximately 2000 female experts.
In South Africa, underrepresentation of how data resources led communications strata Kathy Magrobi to publish Quote This WomanArray under the mentoring of the Media Accelerator Project Journalism and Media Lab at the University of Wits.
The non-profit initiative aims to create a comprehensive database of experts and opinion leaders in a variety of fields. The database is designed to be used as a resource for journalism experts through a website, newsletter, WhatsApp and social media.
In the early stages of the Covid-19 epidemic in South Africa, Quote This Woman circulated the coordinates of 8 female experts in Covid-19. This number was greater than 90 and had been used 900 times through newshounds and content manufacturers around the world at writing time.
These efforts are commendable. But much remains to be done to minimize the gender gap in the search for information. Gender sensitivity has been known about maintaining the journalist’s own career.
The publication of stories that reflect one of the constituenies ensures that the media remains applicable to society.
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