Namibia: Media 'Must Change Gender Stereotypes'

"Ordinary women's voices are still not heard in the Namibian media," said Gender Equality Minister Marlene Mungunda.

The media has an important role to play in combating violence against women, speakers said at the Editor's Forum workshop on gender-based violence in Windhoek.

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NAMIBIA - Media 'Must Change Gender Stereotypes'

The Namibian (Windhoek)
April 2, 2007

By Denver Isaacs

If violence is said to be a greater health threat than traffic accidents and malaria combined, and just as serious a cause of death and incapacity among women of reproductive age as cancer, then why is society's response to gender violence not as drastic as in these cases? This was the conundrum Emily Brown, the head of the Media Technology Department of the Polytechnic of Namibia, found herself grappling with when addressing media representatives in Windhoek at the end of last week.

Brown quoted these findings from the World Development Report of 1993 during an Editor's Forum workshop on gender-based violence arranged by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Child Welfare.

Violence against women negatively affects development, fuels the spread of HIV and AIDS, and disempowers women, United Nations Resident Co-ordinator Simon Nhongo told participants.

He said there was a need for the media to report on these matters constantly, not only as a means of making sure that the perpetrators of such crimes were punished, but also because the media played an important role in influencing attitudes, perceptions and behaviours in communities.

Researcher and political analyst Christian Keulder revealed the findings of a print media monitoring exercise conducted between July 2006 and February 2007, which showed that both in South Africa and Namibia, only 1,5 per cent of all articles published focused on HIV-AIDS.

In addition, while the South African press most prominently featured government and members of society in these articles, their Namibian counterparts most frequently featured society and foreign protagonists, Keulder said.

This raised the question, he said, of whether the Namibian media regarded HIV as a foreign issue.

The Namibian media, while being a lot more positive than the South Africa media, were also less critical and investigative in their reporting on HIV, he said.

The media needed to make clear to their audiences the difference between sex and gender, participants heard, as this realisation could go a long way in promoting gender equality.

"Gender is a social construction.

It refers to learned behaviour, which can differ across countries.

It can change over time.

It's cultural," said Michael Conteh, Gender Consultant in the Directorate of Gender Equality and International Affairs.

"Sex (on the other hand) is a universally biological difference between men and women.

It distinguishes between people on the basis of morphological, anatomical and psychological differences.

This can be determined at birth," he said.

The trouble with gender, he said, was that certain stereotypes started to develop due to the constant portrayal of men and women in various social roles.

These stereotypes could be enforced through the media, during conversation, in jokes or in books and on television, he said, therefore the media needed to portray men and women in many diverse roles.

Gender Equality Minister Marlene Mungunda said that she disagreed with the notion that gender-based crimes had increased in recent years.

It was simply that these reports were now reported more frequently than before Independence, she said, maintaining that the fight against crime was being won.

"As a reporter, don't just walk by what you see," she old journalists who attended the event.

"As we say, don't walk by sight, but by faith," she said.