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International and regional support systems for Arab
media women
by
Naomi Sakr
(Research Associate of the University of Westminster, UK)
Paper presented to the
Arab Women Media Conference, 2001
Introduction
This year, in honour of World Press Freedom Day on May 3rd, the International Women's Media Foundation gave one of its three "Courage in Journalism" awards to Amal Abbas, editor-in-chief of the Sudanese newspaper,
Al-Rai al-Akher. She received the honour from the Foundation, which is based in Washington, for withstanding fines and jail terms in order to expose corruption among officials in Sudan. The achievements of Amal Abbas, and the Foundation's initiative
in giving her a prize, provide an inspiring and intriguing starting point to a review of international support systems for women journalists in the Arab world. Inspiration comes from the way that news of the awards, reported by Agence France Press and
picked up by newspapers around the world, succeeded in drawing international attention, as the International Women's Media Foundation intended it
should, to the exemplary conduct of some women journalists in difficult circumstances. The intriguing part is whether an award from an institution based in the US will have any impact on the future status of Amal Abbas and Al-Rai al-Akher in Sudan.
In view of the nature of the award, the question also arises as to whether her achievements should be seen primarily as those of a journalist, a woman, or an Arab woman journalist.
Journalists, like other people, have multi-layered identities in which certain layers acquire more importance
than others in certain situations. If a group of journalists share a particular experience of the profession because of a particular aspect of their identity, that aspect is liable to become a unifying factor and assume a prominence for them that it might
not otherwise have. This is the case among women journalists everywhere, not only those working for the Arab media. Research conducted in 100 countries all over the world
shows that women journalists of all nationalities have faced and still face, two basic, universal obstacles. One is the difficulty of balancing work and family obligations in a profession where breaking news dictates long and erratic work schedules and
where men with families have traditionally been better able than women in the same position to put deadlines first. The other obstacle is the lack of role models. From Romania to the Philippines to the US, a scarcity of women in top editorial positions
leaves female newcomers to journalism feeling isolated and discouraged. Of course the two obstacles are inter-related. If there were more senior women around, they might try to ensure that work schedules do not present an insurmountable problem to their
junior colleagues.
The uniformity of these workplace obstacles
across international borders contrasts with the diversity of subject matter that may preoccupy women journalists in their different national or regional contexts. A snapshot of preoccupations taken by one newspaper
to mark International Women's Day on March 8th last year highlighted the diversity of their concerns: from educational disadvantage in Turkey and dowry deaths in India, to male camaraderie gone mad in Australia and the pressures of materialism
on family life in Hong Kong. A comparable review of national priorities for women and the media in the Arab world would also reveal a range of issues, in which some are common across the region and others are specific to individual countries.
Whereas widespread media coverage can sometimes help to focus international attention on these national priorities, the impact may be transient or counterproductive. On the other hand,
international solidarity among women journalists on shared organisational issues related directly to their profession — such as recruitment, working conditions, promotion and
editorial policy-making — is a project that can be pursued consistently, behind the scenes and over the long-term. Frameworks for international solidarity can help to bring more women into journalism, thereby giving them the vantage point from which to
highlight the wider issues facing women in their own countries or region. Such frameworks and support systems operate by, among other things, providing the information that activists need in order to hold governments to their obligations under
international law. International law in this context means UN treaties designed to advance women, guarantee media pluralism and improve the status of women in the media. It is worth remembering that the challenge of improving the status of women
journalists working in the media is complementary to the challenge of improving the media representation of women. It could be argued that meeting the first of these challenges is a prerequisite for achieving the second. The only way to find out is to
ensure that there are enough women journalists in positions of sufficient authority that they can truly be said to have made the key decisions about what news stories to cover and how.
CEDAW in action
Women's access to the media was identified, along with negative stereotyping of women,
as a critical area of concern in the run-up to the Fourth World Conference on Women, which took place in Beijing in 1995. That conference grew out of a process that had started in 1975, at the start of the UN Decade for Women. Half way through the decade
the UN adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The Convention came into effect in September 1981 (20 years ago this year), as soon as the required number of states had ratified it. Today more than
two-thirds of UN member states are parties to CEDAW. The Convention has a wide remit, being dedicated to eliminating all forms of discrimination. As such, it includes several elements that are directly relevant to women's role in the media. Article 5
refers to the problem of stereotypes, calling on state parties to take all appropriate measures to work towards eliminating practices that are based on stereotyped roles for men and women. Under Article 7, states undertake to promote women's equal
participation with men in the political and public life of the country. Article 11 deals with employment, stipulating that women should have the right to choose their profession freely,
the right to promotion and the right to receive training and equality of treatment for work of equal value.
As with all UN human rights treaties, CEDAW includes arrangements for monitoring states' compliance once they have ratified the convention. Under Article 18, states undertake to report at least every four years to the UN Secretary-General on the measures
they have taken to guarantee equality for women. A special UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women monitors these measures and comments on them. It comprises 23 experts chosen from states that have ratified CEDAW, and in recent
years has included Arab women. In this way everyone, from the UN Committee that reviews the reports and the government that submits it, to local non-governmental
organisations and journalists, can monitor progress or setbacks and bring them to light. The status of countries vis-ŕ-vis the convention, their reporting timetable, the content of their reports and the comments of the monitoring committee are all
available on the website of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Moreover, the CEDAW monitoring committee itself regularly emphasises the media's importance in this regard, calling on states to work towards the widest possible
dissemination of information about the Convention and its implementation. It also takes account of the potential for discrimination in and through the media. When it reviewed the Egyptian government's report in January this year, the Committee noted
several positive aspects but made a large number of policy recommendations. It said it was "concerned at the continuing stereotypical portrayal of women in the media, which encourages discrimination and undermines the equality between men and
women". In light of this concern, the Committee urged the government and the National Council for Women to support the important role of the media in changing stereotypical attitudes and promoting equality. It recommended that:
"opportunities should be created for the portrayal of positive, non-traditional images of women and that the number of women in decision-making positions in the media should be increased. It also recommends that the Government establish, within the
National Council for Women, a monitoring body on the representation of women in the media".
In its feedback on Jordan's performance in meeting its commitments under CEDAW, the Committee complimented the
government for the extensive consultation process it conducted with non-governmental organisations in preparing its report. But it noted at the time (January 2000) that Jordan's ratification of CEDAW would not become legally binding within the country, or
enforceable through the courts, until it was published in the kingdom's Official Gazette. The Committee was also concerrned at various points of Jordanian law, including, for example, the prohibition on women concluding contracts in their own name and
non-recognition in the Personal Status Code of a woman's right to choose her own profession or occupation. It is clear that restrictions of this kind disempower women
working in the media or owning media companies. In recommending remedial measures in both the Jordnian and Egyptian cases, the UN Committee called on the governments concerned to publicise its comments, along with information about the provisions of CEDAW
and their implications for law and policy.
The Beijing Platform
The point about CEDAW, as the Committee's observations make plain, is that it has been built on over the
years, so that, nowadays, policies to advance the position of women have also to take account of the Beijing Platform for Action and the results of last year's Special Session of the UN General Assembly in New York, under the heading "Women 2000:
gender equality, development and peace in the 21st century". In order to understand how these supplementary frameworks and mechanisms can be deployed in support of Arab media women, it is necessary to consider how the world of media and
communication has changed in the 20 years since CEDAW came into force. Between the beginning and the end of the UN Decade for Women, satellite communications and computer technology were developed to the point where they would have a major impact on media
operations. During the following decade, from the UN conference on women in Nairobi in 1985 to the 1995 conference in Beijing, the significance of media developments for women's
equality became a focus of attention and concern. The positive and negative aspects were highlighted at an international symposium on women and media in Toronto in March 1995. The symposium participants recognised that advances in information and
communication technologies offered new opportunities for women to communicate and inform. Yet, at the global level, they saw no sign of an end to negative and inaccurate portrayal of women. It was time, they said, for women to become more involved in both
the technical and decision-making areas of communication and media in order to raise awareness of their situation as seen from their own perspective. The Toronto
statement was formally adopted by UN members at the 28th session of the UNESCO General Conference in 1995.
Against this background, it is not surprising that the media were identified as a
crtical area for action at the UN conference on women in Beijing. The conference adopted a programme, called the Beijing Platform for Action, that highlighted 12 "critical areas of concern". Alongside unequal access to education, health care,
economic resources and decision-making capacity, the Beijing Platform identified inequities in the media as constituting a fundamental obstacle to women's wider empowerment in their public and private life. Section J of the Beijing Platform for Action set
out two strategic objectives in relation to the media. One was to promote a balanced and non-stereotyped portrayal of women in the media. The other was to "increase the participation and access of women to expression and decision-making in and through
the media and new technologies of communication." Before proceeding to consider mechanisms for meeting these objectives, it may be appropriate to take stock of how relevant the second of these objectives was in the second half of the 1990s to the
situation of women journalists in the Arab world.
"Critical mass"
The task of increasing women's participation in, and access to, the media has both quantitative and
qualitative aspects. In other words it focuses on the number of women working in the relevant fields but it also raises questions about their relative seniority, authority and position in the information hierarchy. As discussed in the introduction to this
paper, the two dimensions of numbers and seniority are linked. A UNESCO study of women journalists in Mediterranean Arab states conducted in the mid-1990s found that 28% of accredited journalists in Egypt were women, with equivalent statistics of 21% in
Tunisia, 15% in Morocco and 10% in Jordan. Although the study did not compare these participation rates with the number of women in the overall paid labour force in each country, it may be deduced from the extremely sparse statistical information available
that, in all four countries, the percentage of women in journalism was below the percentage of all women in paid employment. In Tunisia, for example, women accounted for an estimated 24% of the total workforce in the mid-1990s,
while the equivalent figure for Jordan is put at 13.6%. Significantly, the UNESCO study found that many women entering journalism ended up leaving it through frustration at the lack of further training opportunities and lack of promotion to senior
positions. Women journalists' decisions to switch to other careers seemed often to stem from a lack of requisite technical or managerial skills resulting from a lack of training. Meanwhile most media institutions in the Mediterranean region were found to
be privileging the dominant discourse and ignoring issues of importance to women.
The state of affairs described by the UNESCO
study can be understood in terms of a lack of "critical mass". In other words, a certain number of women of sufficient calibre are needed in any given context if they are to make a difference. One or two women alone are unlikely to change
editorial policies or working practices. The absence of a critical mass of women journalists has applied at one time or another, or still applies. to newspapers and broadcasting stations in all parts of the world. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the number
of women as a proportion of the total number of US journalists was lower by at least ten percentage points than the proportion of women in the US civilian labour force as a whole. Moreover, the proportion of female journalists barely changed in the decade
from 1982 to 1993, while the proportion of women in the total civilian labour force increased. Nevertheless, according to veteran US woman journalists, the pattern of women's employment in the wider workforce proved to be an influential factor in
determining whether women in the media could make their voices heard. That is because the day-to-day policy issues that concern women working outside the home — such as childcare, career opportunities, harassment — started to matter more to people in
general, both men and women. One has only to look at recent developments in the composition of the Saudi workforce and content of the Saudi media to see these mutually-reinforcing trends in operation. The number of Saudi women in paid employment increased
by 36% in the five years to 1999, to reach a total of 10% of the total workforce of Saudi nationals and nearly 30% of all Saudis employed in permanent jobs in the government sector.
During this time the number of Saudi women journalists writing in papers such as Okaz, Al-Jazirah, Al-Madina has also increased. They have written, among other things, about why women need identity cards, why they need to earn their
own living, and about success stories among female Saudi professionals working abroad. Independent observers note that Saudi-owned newspapers published inside Saudi Arabia appear to be more outspoken on these subjects than those published abroad.
Here again, however, it is not just a question
of numbers but of the status of women media professionals. Interestingly, the sizeable increase in the female workforce observed in some Arab countries has not been replicated uniformly across the Arab world. Where privatisation of state-owned companies
has occurred, as in Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and Tunisia, this has had the effect of reducing the number of jobs for everyone and removing safeguards introduced for female employees by previous governments. Women working part-time or on temporary contracts
have been particularly vulnerable under the privatisation process. Meanwhile, in parallel with privatisation, some countries have also witnessed an increase in non-government media outlets, through limited liberalisation of media ownership rules. While
these outlets have increased employment opportunities for media women, the outlets themselves have rarely enjoyed the same access to news sources, representation on official bodies or other pre-requisites for success and security as the government-owned
media. So, for their female employees, the issues of disadvantage and insufficient critical mass persist.
The situation was clearly described in the report that Arab NGOs produced in early 2000 as part of
preparations for the UN General Assembly Special Session on Women, also known as Beijing Plus Five (Beijing + 5). With help from the Western Asia Regional Office of the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM-WARO), and led by the NGO Co-ordinating Committee
of the Jordanian National Commission for Women, Arab NGOs pooled their commentaries on how far the 12 strategic objectives targeted in the Beijing Platform for Action had been met in the five years since the conference in Beijing. The resulting document
was called the Arab Regional NGOs' Alternative Report because it offered an alternative set of views to those contained in the official government submissions to the Special Session of the UN General Assembly. On the strategic objective of
increasing women's participation in and through the media, the Arab NGOs Alternative Report cited some examples of women moving up the media and information hierarchy to take charge of whole departments in countries like Jordan, Kuwait and Yemen.
But successful policy initiatives were limited in number, centring mainly on the breakthroughs achieved by the Palestinian Woman's Affairs Technical Committee in forging relationships with media institutions as part of an effort to safeguard advances made
by Palestinian women before the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994. In contrast, the report noted that many NGOs had failed to respond to requests for contributions to the Alternative Report. It also stressed the hard work still to be done in
establishing a dialogue with media institutions, facilitating women's access to them, and raising awareness of gender issues through media campaigns.
A two-way process
Preparations for the Beijing + 5 conference demonstrated that international and
regional support systems for women journalists are only useful to the extent that they are understood and applied. This brings us to the basic conundrum: namely, that the media are not only part of the problem but part of the solution. Spreading
information about support systems is a job for media professionals. Where support for media women is concerned, an abundance of information already exists and is waiting to be tapped. There is, for example, no need to start from scratch in devising
suitable policy initiatives, as a great deal of effort has already been expended on setting out a vast array of possibilities. If the media had done their work, policy-makers would know that the Toronto symposium in 1995 (itself the culmination of a series
of regional conferences) came up with no fewer than 73 recommendations — to media enterprises, professional associations, media training and academic institutions, governments and non-governmental organisations. The CEDAW machinery also provides valuable
feedback on policies adopted and their implementation. If media professionals could publish this feedback, it would become apparent that the UN support system is not something separate from, or "outside", individual states. On the contrary,
international mechanisms exist because national governments have signed up to them and pledged to make them work. These are the points to be made in media debates. Where free debate is not feasible in the mainstream print and broadcast media, attention
turns instead to the new information and communication technologies (ICTs), especially the Internet.
The Internet's potential as a medium for debate and solidarity among women in the media was demonstrated in 1999 as part of preparations for Beijing + 5. To provide the relevant UN
bodies with information on achievements and problems relating to the media component of the Beijing Platform for Action, an open, international online discussion was arranged at the end of 1999. The discussion, under the heading "Women and Media"
was jointly organised by WomenWatch, an arm of the UN, and WomenAction 2000, a coalition of national, regional and international organisations concerned with women-and-media issues. WomenAction 2000 designed and moderated the debate, which took place over
six weeks. By the end of the exercise, 42 countries had been represented in the discussion by 114 participants, including 24 from the Asia-Pacific region, 15 from Africa and seven from Latin America. For whatever reason, contributions to the debate from
participants in Arab countries were all but non-existent. Similarly, WomenAction 2000 itself had no participating Arab groups at the time of the debate. Yet the coalition was by no means limited to Europe, North America and Australia. On the contrary, it
had members from Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, South and Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands.
In fact, a lot has happened since the end of 1999 and the rather bleak picture of Arab media women being conspicuous by their absence from a crucial international debate no longer holds true. Indeed, while the six-week online forum was happening,
initiatives were being taken in the Arab world. One important example is the launching of the Arab Media Women's Centre by our colleague, Mahasen Imam. The Centre was officially opened in December 1999 and moved quickly to put the spotlight on successful
Jordanian women journalists by presenting honours to nine of them on International Women's Day in March 2000. On the other side of the Mediterranean, the Collectif 95 Maghreb Egalité issued a report for 1998-99 which highlighted the role of the media in
perpetrating "symbolic violence" against women through demeaning images and programmes full of prejudice. The Collectif, a network of groups and individuals from Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, gathered evidence in the report to back the argument
that the boundary between symbolic violence and physical violence is highly porous, with physical violence feeding on symbolic violence and vice versa. The Collectif's report listed several urgent steps that could be taken to ameliorate the situation,
including incentives to encourage good journalistic coverage of women's crucial role in development and the recruitment of women to decision-making positions in the media.
Late 1999 also saw the convening of a regional conference on Gender and Communication Policy in Beirut. This was organised by the Institute for Women's Studies in the Arab World, based at the Lebanese American University, in collaboration with WACC, the
ecumenical World Association for Christian Communication. This event, attended by women journalists and academics from eight Middle Eastern and Mediterranean countries produced the Beirut Declaration, containing recommendations on training, advocacy and
networking. Recommendations to impove the status of women journalists envisage better training and capacity-building, equal opportunity policies in recruitment and the formation of committees, networks and alliances to follow up these recommendations,
share information and experience and promote communication between women's groups and key media personnel.
While these and other initiatives were taking place, Arab women journalists were also gaining better access to
the Internet and gaining a higher profile in the broadcast media as a result of the spread of Arab satellite television channels. Various factors have driven the upward trend in Internet use by Arab women generally, including educational improvements, an
increase in Arabic-language software and websites, and growing recognition of the benefits of e-mail communication on the part of an increasing number of Arab women's non-governmental organisations. The
period between 1999 and 2000 saw rapid increases in Internet subscriptions in the majority of Arab countries. Based on estimates that as many as four or five people use each Internet account in the Arab world, market research companies suggest that the
overall number of Internet users more than doubled Saudi Arabia and the UAE, increased by more than two and a half times in Morocco and rose by 60% in Egypt, 50% in Jordan and nearly 40% in Oman — all in a single year. Although it is believed that, on
average, a mere 6% of Arab Internet subscribers are women, the percentage of women users is likely to be much higher. The big increases recorded in 2000 (partly as a result of regulatory changes affecting Internet availability and the cost of connections)
mean that a great many more women had access to communication networks via the Internet at the end of 2000 than they had at the end of 1999.
Meanwhile developments in the field of Arab satellite channels have had the effect of stimulating debates about the role of women working in television. More and more people have begun to question whether women television presenters and reporters are put there for decoration only or whether the satellite channels will eventually learn to represent the full range of women's experience. Official statistics quoted at a seminar organised in March 2000 by the National Commission for Lebanese Women and the UN Volunteers revealed that, despite appearances to the contrary on television screens, only 26% of jobs in Lebanese television are held by women. This is below the level of 30% reported in 1997.
The road ahead
The trends and initiatives listed here are indicative of a wider movement. What they
show is that Arab women journalists who are concerned about professional and career issues can now look for information, guidance and support not only from the global UN system and international non-governmental organisations but also from regional
networks and proactive Arab groups. These regional groups and networks can, in turn, be sustained with international help. Some possible forms of support were suggested in the course of discussions held in the run-up to Beijing + 5. For example, the 26
recommendations emerging from the six-week online forum on Women and Media at the end of 1999 included advice to donor agencies to support greater connectivity for women to enable them to benefit professionally from the Internet revolution. The forum urged
software developers to produce search engines and translation programmes better geared to women's information needs. It called on professional translators to provide free or low-cost translation services to enable the wider dissemination of alternative
media content via the Internet and community radio. While these are constructive suggestions, it should not be forgotten that support systems have already been created by international non-governmental organisations to facilitate Internet access for
women's rights activists. For example, the Association for Progressive Communication (APC) operates a Women's Networking Support Programme committed to redressing gender imbalances in Internet access, especially in countries of the South.
In conclusion, if this review of support systems for Arab women journalists is to follow the tradition of making recommendations, then there would seem to be three main points. The first relates to the CEDAW monitoring committee's comments on
implementation of CEDAW by Arab states. There is material in the comments both for good journalism, in the form of articles and news reports, and for campaigns intended to improve government policies on women generally, and on women and the media. The
second point is that women journalists everywhere, including in the Arab world, stand to gain more in the long run from collaborating with each than competing. By co-operating, in the workplace and across the profession, they can achieve what was described
earlier in the paper as "critical mass". The third point, which is linked to the second, is to establish a network of women mentors in the Arab media who can act as role models for women starting out on their journalistic career. This does not
necessarily mean putting juniors and seniors directly in touch. It could be achieved simply through greater efforts to publicise the achievements of successful media women throughout the Arab world. It is sad to think that the first time many people heard
about Hidaya Sultan al-Salem, long-standing Kuwaiti editor-in-chief of Al-Majalis, was when, instead of being honoured for her professional achievements, she was assassinated on 20 March, 2001.
Notes
[1] Including, for example, the Tehran Times, 8th May, 2001
[1] Research conducted by the International Women's Media Foundation in 1999.
[1] The Guarian (G2 section), 8th March, 2000, pp 8-9.
[1] The murder of brides by in-laws who consider their dowry insufficient.
[1] See Naomi Sakr/CMF-MENA, Women's Rights an the Arab Media (London, 2000), pp 17-49
[1] www.unhchr.ch
[1] Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women: Egypt 02/02/2001. CEDAW/C/2001/1/Add.2 (Advance Unedited Version), Paragraphs 23-24.
[1] Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women: Jordan, 27/01/2000. A/55/38, Paragraphs 170, 172 and 174.
[1] The Toronto Platform for Action on Women and the Media was issued on March 3, 1995, at the end of an international symposium entitled "Women and the Media: Access to Expression and Decision-Making".
[1] Economist Intelligence Unit, Tunisia Country Profile 1996-97, p 15
[1] According to Jordan's periodic report to the Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (see Concluding Observations of the Committee, op.cit., paragraph 184.)
[1] See David Weaver, "Women as Journalists", in Pippa Norris (ed), Women, Media and Politics (New York and Oxford: 1997), p 23.
[1] Kay Mills, "What difference do women journalists make?", in Pippa Norris (ed), op.cit, p. 45
[1] Said al-Shaikh, "Demographic Transitions in Saudi Arabia and their Impact on Economic Growth and the Labour Market", NCB Economist, Vol. 10, No. 1, 1st Quarter 2000, p. 10.
[1] E.g. Nourah Abdel-Aziz al-Khereiji, Fawziyah al-Jarallah, Wardah al-Bakri, etc.
[1] According to a woman journalist who has written for both the Saudi-owned pan-Arab Al-Hayat and Saudi Gazette.
[1] The effects of these trends in Egypt were discussed at a workshop entitled "Whose Information Age? Equality and Technology in the New Millennium" organised by the Public Administration Research & Consultation Centre and the British Council in Cairo, 4-6 March, 2000. See also Noha al-Mikawy and Marsha Posusney, "Labour Represenation in the Age of Globalization: Trends and Issues in Non-Oil-Based Arab Economies",paper presented to the Third Mediterranean Development Forum in Cairo, 8 March, 2000.
[1] See Sakr/CMF-MENA, op.cit., pp 118-120
[1] Lamis Alshejni, "Unveiling the Arab woman's voice through the Net", in Wendy Harcourt (ed), Women@Internet: Creating New Cultures in Cyberspace (London, 1999)., pp 217-218
[1] Data from Pyramid Research reproduced in "Reaching out to the untapped Internet market", Middle East Communications, October 2000, p. iii.
[1] Economist Intelligence Unit, "A slow launch into cyberspace", Middle East and North Africa Regional Overview, September 2000, p.4
[1] Daily Star, 3 March, 2000
[1] Irene Lorfing, Women Media and Sustainable Development (Beirut, 1997), p. 30