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WiPSU Media Monitoring Report (October - December 2006)
Women in Politics Support Unit (WiPSU)
April 16, 2007

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Introduction

The media plays a significant role in determining how women in politics and decision- making are viewed and perceived by society in general. The media does not only play an important role in shaping the values of society but also reflects those values.

According to the study carried by Gender links, women are most likely to be heard in news stories covering gender equality, gender violence or entertainment, but even among these topics, more men than women are often used as sources. In political stories, which add up to almost, half of all the coverage-surveyed, women politicians are given very little coverage.

It is very disturbing to note that often times, when a woman's voice makes its way into the news, she is most likely to be a beauty contestant, sex worker or homemaker. These three occupations are the only categories where women's views dominate.

Pick up any newspaper in Zimbabwe and chances are that the vast majority of stories filling its pages are written by men about other men. It is disheartening to note that in the Zimbabwean print media, we have quite a number of female journalists, yet women's voices continue to be under represented in the media. It is against that background that The Women in Politics Support Unit, a local NGO in Zimbabwe, that works with women parliamentarians, councilors and candidates to these Political offices has embarked on a media monitoring project which seeks to monitor the coverage of female politicians in their political spaces or offices.

In order to conduct a systematic analysis of how women are covered in the media, taking into consideration the fact that, the ownership and management of the media, wherever you go remains a patriarchal area, WiPSU, initiated an internal data capturing process where a daily monitoring of newspapers would be conducted and any article on women Parliamentarians and councilors would be collected.

Most people even some women believe that main reason why the media is heavily dominated by male views is because men predominate in positions of power, But is the media just about those who make and enforce decisions, or those affected by them? If both then we need to hear more women politicion's voices in the media, not just mentioning their names or putting their pictures in the newspapers but we need to hear them talking about issues that affect women and there is also need to hear them in their constituents.

There cannot be a real democracy if the voices and issues of 52% of the country's population are ignored or sidelined. This media analysis will assist in determining whether or not women's voices and issues are articulated to the public as matters of importance. It can also be used as a basis for assessing what could be done to ensure that women's voices and issues are regarded as important.

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