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Zimbabwe Media Voices: Where are the women?
Federation of African Media Women of Zimbabwe (FAMWZ)
July 23, 2004

Zimbabwean media has consistently ignored the voices of women in issues of national interest and continuously marginalised women as both newsmakers and as sources of news, a study has confirmed. While gender activists in Zimbabwe and in Southern Africa in general have continuously called upon to the media to be gender inclusive, a recent study by the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) and a South Africa based non-governmental organisation Gender Links, has shown that not much progress in terms of gender-inclusiveness has been made by most mainstream media in general.  

The Gender and Media Baseline study showed that women make up an average of 17% of media sources in Southern Africa although they make up 52% of the population. Women in the media were more likely to be identified as a wife, daughter or mother than a man was likely to be identified as a husband, son or father. While women constituted 18% of the members of parliament in the region, their voices as politicians were not heard in the same proportion, revealed the findings.

In the case of Zimbabwe, where nine media were monitored, the study revealed that women constitute 15% of news sources while women constitute 51% of the population. This finding clearly shows the lopsideness and the inaccuracy of the news as projected by the Zimbabwean media. 

While the role of the media’s role in influencing policies and attitudes towards equality between men and women must not be underestimated, the media is in Zimbabwe is still a far cry from achieving this ideal. Zimbabwean media is still guilty of perpetuating gender stereotypes, which in some cases have been institutionalised and accepted as the norm and very few question this status quo and even fewer are allowed access to challenge this state of affairs. Women in particular have had little to do with the media and have consistently been denied the chance to actively participate in the shaping of the news agenda. 

The GMBS study revealed that media in Zimbabwe was less likely to seek the voices of especially older women and of the 17% accessed by the media, these women were likely to be in the 1-19 and 20 – 34 age groups. Older women’s voices are virtually missing form the media. These findings pose one of the major challenges that faces the media in present day Zimbabwe, a country which, to all intents, purports to be guided by the values of democracy. The media is expected to be an extension of the democratic system and should represent the different interests in society hence the importance of freedom of expression which ensures that decision-making at all levels is preceded by discussion and consideration of a representative range of views. This quality is important for the promotion of and respect for all human rights.

However, the media in Zimbabwe still suffer from wilful gender-blindness which manifests itself in its failure to report on the diverse contributions in society especially on women’s involvement in everyday situations such as power dynamics which are at play in national issues such as the current agrarian reform exercise, the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the different impacts of the national economic policies such as the budget on women.  

The media are constrained by their own inability to bring in gender analysis in news reporting. Instead, most media are keen to capture the rhetoric of mostly male politicians on a daily basis without making an effort to analyse national issues from a gendered perspective. This analysis would allow the media to closely scrutinise policies and everyday events and how they impact on both women and men.

The GMBS study revealed that men’s voices dominated in the hard news categories of economics, politics and sport and the only topic on which women’s voices outnumbered those of men was gender equality. The study also revealed that the only occupational categories, in which female views dominated were beauty contestants, sex workers and homemakers. Male voices predominated even in agriculture, where women perform most of the work, noted the report. 

This gender stereotyping which the media in Zimbabwe is guilty of institutionalising has perpetuated the continued projection of negative and degrading images of women in the media. As a result, women and their issues continue to be trivialised and their contributions at national level continue to be downplayed and ignored. Instead, the peculiar absence of women’s voices especially at decision –making and policy level and their presence in issues related to the domestic sphere reinforces the skewed relations between women and men in society. As a result, women’s voices, even at decision-making levels do not carry much weight. 

The skewed relations in society as a result of the patriarchal set up also have a bearing on the state of affairs of the Zimbabwean media. In terms of the social positioning of women and men, men are most accessed by the media than women. This is an extension of the patriarchal set up in which men are accessed more for hard news beats than women. Due to the current restrictive legislative environment, most media are located in central places in towns where only urban dwellers are accessible. However, according to population demographics of Zimbabwe, the majority of people live in the rural areas, a large percent of which comprises women.

Clearly, the media in Zimbabwe is limited in coverage and most of the rural areas are shunned by the media for a plethora of reasons, part of which includes the fact that the majority of this population mainly comprises women who have are denied a share and say in issues of importance but which inadvertently adversely affects them. This situation can be juxtaposed with other countries in the Southern African region where the airwaves are freer and media such as community radio stations are able to contribute news to mainstream print and broadcast media. Zimbabwe is still yet to liberalise the airwaves in order that such set ups begin to work. 

The absence of women’s voices in the media also hinges on the employment patterns in the media industry and the subsequent gender stereotyped duties that media houses assign to media workers. It has been a predominant tradition that men predominate in hard news beats while women media practitioners are relegated to the soft beats such beauty, fashion, gender equality and entertainment. As a result, men predominate both as sources and writers of hard news while women are virtually invisible in the soft genres that usually have little impact on power dynamics, governance and other hard news beats. 

Zimbabwe, like most Southern African countries, has a media industry that is predominantly owned and managed by men. Currently, all mainstream media in Zimbabwe have men either as managers or owners. As such, most of these media tend to peddle the dominant ideology, that of men and tend to configure women not as part of the news making process but rather as passive consumers of male ideology being peddled as news. Almost all news reports in the mainstream media are evidence of how this set up work against the interests of the majority, that is, the women, is the level of gender-insensitivity and gender blindness that characterises reports from the media.  

The GMBS study notes that women are the least represented in the print media and constitute only 22% of those who write news stories. They are also under-represented in the critical images, cartoons, opinion and commentary categories, notes the report.  

Women’s organisations and other rights activists, the world over, have consistently blamed the media for the stereotyping and negative portrayal of women by the media, a situation which has received condemnation with subsequent action plans being adopted by arms of organisations such as the United Nations and in forums such as the Beijing conferences. However, not much has changed in terms of how the media sets, and projects its news agenda in as far as plurality of voices and gender representation is concerned.  

In the case of Zimbabwe, this is evident in most media reports where women only make news when they are caught up in scandals or unusual events but hardly are sources of news when it comes to issues of national importance such as politics and economics. 

However, despite these challenges, activist organisations such as FAMWZ have taken up the challenge of lobbying the media towards a culture of gender-sensitivity in news reporting. This is with the realisation that media houses as well as journalism schools are devoid of training that is gender inclusive. As such, FAMWZ among other organisations has come up with training and lobby programmes to influence and lobby the media around gender.  

Through these programmes, it hoped that instead of allowing media to perpetuate gender stereotypes to the exclusion of women, media can be changed to become an essential tool for promoting equality as well as the advancement of women’s rights.

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