Making every voice count: a southern Africa case study

Abstract

The Gender and Media Baseline Study, conducted in southern Africa in 2003, revealed glaring gender disparities in the media and in its editorial content. With its goal to ‘promote gender equality in and through the media’, Gender Links (GL) has worked with a broad range of partners to try to redress these gaps through research, advocacy, and training, targeting media producers, those who influence news content, and consumers. GL, and the Gender and Media Southern Africa (GEMSA) network that it hosts, are also developing a Gender and Media Diversity Centre, to enhance the sharing of knowledge in this important but relatively new area of work.

Notes

1. Former GL Chairperson Thenjiwe Mtintso, speaking at the launch of the organisation in 2001.

2. The Global Media Monitoring Project is an ongoing study that documents the participation and portrayal of women and men in the world's news media, at five-yearly intervals. Studies have so far been carried out in 1995, 2000, and most recently in 2005 (Gallagher 2005). For more information, see www.whomakesthenews.org/about_us/what_is_gmmp (last accessed June 2007).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Colleen Lowe Morna

Colleen Lowe Morna is executive director of Gender Links, which she founded in 2001, and chairperson of the Gender and Media Southern Africa (GEMSA) Network. Lowe Morna worked as a journalist and editor in various posts in southern Africa, and as Africa Editor of the New Delhi-based Women's Feature Service, before working for the Commonwealth Secretariat for seven years. She also served as founding CEO of the South African Commission on Gender Equality