Media Marginalizes Women in S.African Elections Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit South Africa: Women Absent From The Election Coverage By Gumisai Mutume JOHANNESBURG, May 19 (IPS) - As South Africa's elections approach, the role of women in governance is under the spotlight and the country's Commission on Gender Equality says women are still in the margins. ''...the sad truth is that we do not have a democracy. Because government by men, for men, cannot be government by the people, for the people,'' says Joyce Piliso-Seroke, chairperson of CGE. ''Our newspapers reflect this undemocratic reality. With a few exceptions, women are absent from the coverage on, and about the elections to the extent that when women are portrayed they are trivialised, and sometimes even demonised in our news coverage,'' she adds. The media in South Africa is guilty of failing to transform itself from a gender perspective, Piliso-Seroke says, adding that the media is also guilty of perpetuating gender stereotypes. A study by the Media Monitoring Project released this month and titled 'Gender, Politics and the Media' says while there is little available research on women in the media, existing research attributes the inadequacy of their coverage to news being a structurally masculine narrative. ''Our monitoring and analysis of media election coverage in the 1994 National Elections, reveals that women-related issues were of marginal importance in the media,'' notes the report. ''This has continued in the five years since then.'' ''The media must become conscious of the role they play in maintaining sexism through the values that their reporting represents ... that women should not participate (that they disrupt the fabric of our society by doing so), and that they are incapable.'' South Africa's general elections are due June 2 and women make up 52 percent of the electorate. Of the contestants only the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has a quota system which requires a third of its candidates to be women. In the New National Party 25 percent of candidates are women and so are 23 percent of the United Democratic Movement's candidates. But beyond the figures games, issues of gender equality rarely feature on the stands of daily newspapers across the republic. In a media pack presented by CGE at a recent symposium on gender and the media is a front page splash of three bikini-clad models parading for a beauty competition. Super-imposed on the model's heads are three of the most powerful women in the ANC, Winnie Madikizela, Nkosazana Zuma and Thandi Modise. Also in the media pack is a letter of protest to the Film and Publications Board by the Women's Media Watch for the removal from circulation of a Hustler magazine last year which had a picture of Zuma framed by a toilet bowl of a men's urinary. The text accompanying the picture reads: ''She looks like the underpaid domestic worker most of us grew up with, but sadly, Health minister Nkosazana Zuma escaped this degradation during the dark days of apartheid. Instead she studied medicine overseas and returned a very wise medical doctor. ''In-bred nanny skills are not that easily destroyed however and dear Dr Zuma today believes she has the right to interfere with the habits of peaceful smokers...Cut out Zuma's sickening mug, set her over the urinal...and give her a shot.'' According to the Women's Media Watch there ''was consensus in the group that the suggestion accompanied by the picture amounted to gross racism and regardless of whether it was meant to be a joke, contravened the minister's and by extension other women's constitutional right to a life of dignity.'' Zuma has come out for major criticism following her introduction of a bill to ban smoking in public among other controversial pieces of legislation. She is arguably the most criticised government minister and the most powerful female in politics in South Africa. CGE says the trivialisation of powerful women in South Africa is a disturbing trend championed by newspapers that are still male-dominated. Some of the issues CGE has had to deal with include a protest to a Cape Town-based newspaper which published a cartoon depicting the First Lady, Graca Machel as a birthday present to President Nelson Mandela. The cartoon depicted Machel literally walking out of wrapping paper following their wedding last year. Women are often simply not seen in the South African media and advertising agencies ''skew the bias towards decorative images of women even further. Some women, girl children, the old, women with disability, rural women, are almost completely invisible.'' notes the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism (IAJ). ''The South African media is essentially and old (white) boys club,'' notes IAJ. In management courses run by the IAJ, the proportion of women participants is always lower than 25 percent. The Institute says one of the major reasons why women do not make news in South Africa is because of the refusal by the media to accept development as a national news story.(END/IPS/gm/mn/99) (c) 1999 IPS ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytaf-06.04.99-08:08:37-2596