WUNRN
femLINKPACIFIC Media Initiatives for Women
ISIS Manila International
10 March 2008
Contact: sharon@femlinkpacific.org.fj
femLINKPACIFIC: Media Initiatives for Women in partnership with ISIS Manila International announces the Pacific launch of a 600 page publication and Regional Campaign PEOPLES’ COMMUNICATIONS FOR DEVELOPMENT (PC4D)
PC4D is the result of a
three-year research on the use of effective
communication tools
for grassroots women's empowerment in five
countries - India,
Philippines, Thailand, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea.
The three year research
project, coordinated by ISIS Manila International, linked together likeminded
NGOs - Aalochana Centre for Documentation and Research on Women (India), Civil
Media Development Institute (Thailand), FemLINK Pacific: Media Initiatives for
Women (Fiji) & HELP Resources, Inc. (Papua New Guinea) to review how
intermediary groups (NGOs/CSOs)
use communication tools for grassroots women’s empowerment.
According to femLINKPACIFIC Coordinator, Sharon Bhagwan Rolls, the publication and campaign launch links in well with the staging of the annual “My Life, My Issues, My Peace and Security” rural broadcast campaign which commenced in Labasa on March 7 and 8: “The March 11th launch was an interactive presentation that demonstrated the linkage between the use of information and communication technologies which for too long have only been regarded as access to and use of the internet.”
The Peoples Communication 4 Development
Research
Project Reinforces Radio and Face to Face Interaction as Appropriate and
Accessible Info-Communication Tools.
Over the last three years, ISIS Manila has
coordinated and participated in this collaborative research project in
partnership with femLINKPACIFIC in
People’s
Communications for Development is a groundbreaking study that challenges the
notion that access to new information and communication technologies (ICTs)
will lead to the empowerment of women. This notion is axiomatic in the
international development community, which subscribes to the idea that ICTs
will enhance the pace of development and even lead to the empowerment of the
poor and the marginalised. It has been pointed out time and again that there is
a wide gender gap in the access to these ICTs. Much attention has therefore
been given to bridging this “gender digital divide.” Women are organising on
many different levels, in their own organizations and within development
communication organisations, to ensure that women have access to and benefit
from ICTs.
Isis
International is one of the organisations that have played a significant role
in promoting the use of ICTs among women’s and other social movement
organisations, especially among those working with grassroots and marginalised
people. It contributes to this task in many ways, from participation in policy
discussions, to critical analysis of corporate control of ICTs, to capacity
building and training for grassroots and intermediary organisations in the use
of communication technologies.
At
the same time, Isis International is also questioning the primacy of ICTs as
the best medium, always and everywhere, of communication for development. This
critical stance follows Isis International’s solid tradition of questioning
the unquestionable in the realm of development and communications, whether it
is the concept of “integrating women in development” or “mainstreaming gender”
or basic assumptions about development media and communications.
This
study on People’s Communications for Development (PC4D) builds on much previous
work of Isis International. As early as 1985, the editors of the Isis International
publication Women and Media, Analysis , Alternatives and Action, Bina Agarwal
and Kamla Bhasin, admonished us not to lose sight of the fact that people, not
technology, are the main medium of communication.
In
1986, Isis International,in the book Powerful Images, presented articles and
resources from women worldwide, including women from the grassroots, in
creating our own alternative communication media for empowerment. The Women
Empowering Communication Conference (WEC), co-sponsored by Isis International,
the International Women’s Tribune Centre (IWTC) and the World Association for
Christian Communication (WAAC), held in
At
this conference, women also examined how mainstream media are used as tools by
those in power. Since then, Isis International-Manila has deepened its
critical analysis of corporatised media and ICTs, particularly at the World
Social Forums.
This
publication represents a new and major step by Isis International in the
exploration and critical analysis of issues relating to women, communication
and ICTs. It is the culmination of a three-year, five-country collaborative
study conducted by Isis International-Manila with Aalochana Centre for
Documentation and Research on Women of India, Civil Media Development Institute
(CMDI) of Thailand, the FemLINK Pacific: Media Initiatives for Women (FemLINK
Pacific) of Fiji, and Health, Education, sustainable Livelihood and
Participation for all (HELP Resource, Inc.) of Papua New Guinea. It examines
how intermediary groups use new ICTs and traditional communication tools for
grassroots women’s empowerment, how grassroots women’ understand empowerment,
as well as their views of the effectiveness of different communications tools.
As a
result of this study, the five collaborating groups are proposing a People’s
Communications for Development (PC4D) agenda. Isis International will
contribute to carrying forward this agenda in the future, including through
popularising these research results and organizing a People’s Communication for
Development Conference.
Working with organisations involved with
grassroots women across these five countries, the study analyses extensive
interviews and focus group discussions in order to examine the relationships
between communication tools and empowerment within the lives of grassroots
women in the developing South.
Rather than dividing these tools into “new”
and “old” technologies, the project views communication broadly, taking account
of traditional means of communication such as theater and face-to-face
discussion alongside newer tools such as radio and television, as well as new
information-communication technologies such as cellular phones and computers.
For femLINKPACIFIC, the research project
was an opportunity to delve into the realities of why “we do the work we do”
and an important opportunity to link up with women undertaking similar work in
the project countries as well as contribute to a substantive study of the
reality of women and communications.
As
femLINKPACIFIC Coordinator says, the research project has been a critical way
to identify the most appropriate means of information and communication to
support the empowerment of rural communities, with a special focus on women’s
access to information and communication:
“What
is important is that there is greater appreciation of the gender power
relations even in the context of how a woman, especially in our rural
communities, is or is not able to access information and that her own personal
empowerment is closely linked to the availability of such information; is the
information, for example, available in a format that she can understand or
share further. There is also a need to also consider infrastructure issues when
planning developments relating to new ICTs and whether or not communities are
able to contribute to local programming as well.”
This reality also includes the critical
role of interpersonal or face-to-face communication with rural women’s group.
This means the delivery of information directly to women in their communities,
and the development of community media initiatives to document women’s issues,
their stories, such as femLINKPACIFIC’s campaign, “My Life, My Issues, My Peace
and Security”
In
In
general, intermediary groups in
Intermediary
groups in
A
total of the following nine organisations from
Leitana Nehan Women’s
Development Agency (BOUGAINVILLE),
Meri I Kirap Sapotim and
National Catholic Family Life Apostolate (GOROKA),
Kup Women for Peace (HIGHLANDS), Lae Catholic Family Life and Women and Children’s
Support Center (LAE), Community Development Initiative (PORT MORESBY), HELP Resources, 9. Baua Baua Popular Theatre
Foundation (WEWAK)
PNG’s
Key Informant Interviews emphasized dealing with violence against women. In
Many
of the feminist groups also viewed empowerment as deeply connected to
peace-keeping, as
Many
groups, like Kup Women for Peace, also see the interconnections among HIV/AIDS,
violence and wars.
Like
Additionally,
PNG is part of “Sixteen Days of Activism,” an international campaign for
women’s rights. This is because, as Meri I Kirap Sapotim believes, it is
important to also learn about events that are happening in other countries,
connecting them locally.
Most
PNG groups (37%) reported that they have broader services and take on different
issues and concerns not necessarily among grassroots women. Only 25% have
broader target beneficiaries and count grassroots women as only one their many
beneficiaries. Also, 25% reported that they focused on women in general and
only one group catered primarily to grassroots women. Majority of the
organisations (75%) reported varied thrusts, such as promoting health,
agriculture, environment, and sustainable livelihood. Many were also set for
capacity building and training (63%), education and information dissemination
(50%), and networking (40%). Majority of the groups (78%) mentioned that their
strategy in communicating with their beneficiaries is through training and
capacity building. This strategy is followed by advocacy and mobilisation
(33%), education or consciousness raising (33%), and networking, linkages, and
coalition building (33%). As for the uses of communication tools, the top uses
were for training (89%), advocacy and mobilisation (78%), education and
information dissemination (67%), announcements (44%), gender mainstreaming and
service delivery (33%).
Mira Ofreneo, the Head Researcher of the
project agrees that like for femLINKPACIFIC, the research offered an
opportunity for women’s media or community media networks to not only justify the
need for such work and also expand the broader understanding and appreciation
of the need to address the need for community-centred information and media
forms:
“From the point of view of
One key aspect of the research was a review
of related literature, which, not surprisingly, revealed that women or the
gendered aspects of ICTs are not being included in current research, especially
in the Pacific region:
“There is almost nothing about women in
relation to technology,” says Ofreneo, “And that is why when we tried to write
something substantial it was so difficult because people are not doing this
kind of research and those working in the research field don’t seem to be
interested, or are not working with grassroots women, and are not connecting it
with communication, or with technology. So we have research on new ICTs
perhaps, in terms of what kinds of jobs are being generated by technology, by
the computer/internet, but nothing about communities, nothing about NGO or
grassroots people’s organisations and how they use technology. So we found it
very difficult to come up with some kind of baseline data from the five
countries and even the new journals on the new ICTs they tend to just focus on
how many computers per capita, or how many people use the internet and we don’t
really hear about radio or television and newspapers or the other modes of
communicating, it is almost as if everything else has stopped.”
The research was also an opportunity to
address ICT accessibility issues for women with disabilities, although Ofreneo
admits, that this was not necessarily a deliberate effort of the research:
“That was an issue particularly raised in
Tesa de Vela, the Associate Director of
ISIS Manila, clarifies that there was also a range of interpretations of the
term “grassroots women” by the different research partners: “(we found) It was
about women who are marginalized not necessarily in terms of class. So in
According to de Vela, what emerges from the
study is the urgent need to return to the fundamental principle behind gender
and communications advocacy; the concerns of the people traversing multiple
“information societies”. This is all
contained in a 600 page publication “PC4D – People’s Communications for
Development”: “We need to counter this development paradigm that has come out
as ICT4D (ICT for Development) with something that will return back to the
people; let’s go back to the basics, let’s go back to our centre and go back to
what people are saying on the ground (which is) ‘new ICTs are great but the traditional forms of communication are still
the ones we are using to communicate with each other directly and with our
immediate concerns, our every day concerns’”
However, de Vela points out that the
research also shows the need for new ICTs especially to enhance advocacy for
change, beyond the local level: “Let’s face it, there is a limit to the change
we can make at the local level if we are not going to go into social
transformation at national, regional and international levels, and so the
research is actually calling for convergences (which is a point often raised by
femLINKPACIFIC)”.
Convergence
is a combined use of traditional communication tools with the new ICTs:
“The research is also talking about social
movement building on this. That we are not just talking about communication
tools as tools, we are talking about them having a politics within themselves
and therefore it also touches on policies, and making policy changes,” adds de
Vela
While the research ends with implications
on policies, the concretization of those policies, according to de Vela, will
be nuanced for the specific countries: “So the country specific policy
implications and principles are up to each country.”
For more information about the People’s
Communication 4 Development Launch please contact Sharon Bhagwan Rolls on (679)
9244871 or email sharon@femlinkpacific.org.fj
================================================================
To leave the list, send your request by email to:
wunrn_listserve-request@lists.wunrn.com. Thank you.