WUNRN
Sweden - Kvinna Till Kvinna
MEDIA, PEACE &
GENDER
Women in conflict
reporting
Men war and women cry This is the normal media image of war and conflict. Images of active women striving to impact developments are seldom seen. But what does it look like in reality? Women are hit hard by war and conflict, both as a part of civil society and in their capacity as women, that is a fact. But men and women both have a number of roles, in war as well as peacetime, that are not included in the given gender template. Women are activists, legislators and decision-makers, experts, family breadwinners and soldiers. Actors to report about and interview, regardless of whether they hold a position of power or are civil society representatives. Even when women do not take part in the actually fighting, they are nevertheless actors who live in, have opinions about and influence the conflict.
Women are vulnerable in conflicts, something the media should naturally report about. But the reality of war has many other realities that should also be covered. There are women's organisations working for peace and conciliation. Women who are experts in how conflicts affect not only them but the whole of society. Women should be allowed to speak about other issues that concern them other than their own bodies and their own lives and they should be allowed to speak about how they are personally affected by the conflict. In short, conflict reporting would benefit from not using gender stereotypes.
Master suppression techniques
The aim for all journalism should be to portray people in a truthful and
ethical fashion. But that is not always the case. Both women and men are
generally portrayed in a way that strengthens stereotype images that are
negative for the individual and for society in general. Because of the
prevailing conditions in society, where men still enjoy the most power and
women are often exploited as a gender, women are especially vulnerable to the
negative affects of the media. In the media it is easy to distinguish the ways
of exerting control that Norwegian scientist and politician Berit Ås called master
suppression techniques.
Exclusion
One common master technique is exclusion. When women do not appear in the
media to the same extent as men they are excluded. Women are also excluded by
not being portrayed as actors. The Global Media Monitoring Project from 2005
(länk till det) found that on a percentage basis women are more often portrayed
as victims than men in the Swedish media, 19 compared to 11 per cent. The
global equivalent is 19 and 8 per cent.
Withholding information
Another way to exercise power is by withholding information. When the media
does not cover women's conditions and lives or even accept information from
women to the same extent as from men, it affects our image of society and
political decision-making. Women media consumers do not receive confirmation
that women's reality plays a role or that women can have important jobs when
this is not visible in the news reporting.
Objectification
Objectification is another way to exercise power. When the news media publishes
images of scantily clad women, often nameless, women become objects. In some
cases there could be reason for doing so, but in most cases it is just pure
routine. An article on human trafficking is not illustrated by a picture of a
man in a bar but of a women posing in a porno club. Many times women also
illustrate an article without having any direct connection to the content. It
could for example be a picture from a conflict region of a crying woman who has
no direct connection with the content of the article.
Diminishing
Another way of exercising power is to ridicule an individual or group.
Continuously commenting on how women and girls look and dress diminishes them
as people. Another form of diminishing is to focus on the person instead of the
expertise. According to the 2005 Global Media Monitoring, women's family status
is named much more often than men's. In Swedish media, the family status of 15
per cent of the women is mentioned as opposed to 7 per cent of the men's. Women
do not take part on the grounds of their expertise but as somebody's wife,
mother or daughter. The global figures are 17 and 5 per cent. Women's rights
activists and peace activists in conflict-affected countries often feel that
they are ridiculed in the media. Their work is diminished and their mode of
life is questioned. There are also serious articles in which women who are
interviewed are ridiculed by the images accompanying the articles. Women are
asked to pose in a carefree fashion, which undermines the seriousness of the
article. Because of the strong perceptions of what is serious and how a person
with power should be portrayed, such images can marginalise women.
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