Kamla Bhasin

In 1972, the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women noted that in all its efforts to promote the advancement of women, it had encountered a serious obstacle in the deep-rooted attitudes of men and women which tended to perpetuate the status quo. The Commission also observed that those attitudes were due to cultural patterns which, to a great extent, determined thoughts and feelings about women and men. These in turn were being disseminated on a vast scale as a result of technical advances in mass communication media.

— UN Expert Group Meeting on Women and the Media, Vienna, 1981

Expenditure on girls' training is like giving a dowry. There is no point in training girls as they get married and go to other places after acquiring the skill so the investment in them is lost.

— A Block level official in Uttar Pradesh, India

— Quoted in Women in Focus by Kumud Sharma, Sahiba Hussain & Archana Saharaya, 1984

 

Two years ago when some of us in Delhi initiated a group on Women and Media, many women — both individuals and from organisations — joined enthusiastically. But there were others who did not, partly because they felt media was not an important issue (as compared with, say, work, basic needs etc.) — it affected only urban middle class women and had little relevance for rural women.

This response made us realise that although media is all-pervasive, its functioning is very subtle. It is highly insidious but also equally invisible. It is similar to, say, environmental pollution in a fast-growing urban centre in that it is everywhere and yet invisible. What is worse is that we seem to get used to this slow poisoning without realising the effect it cumulatively has on us. There is very little protest and the poison gradually settles in our bodies. Similarly, the poison of media settles in our minds and slowly affects everything else.

In the last two years we have looked at different media consciously and critically, particularly with regard to the position of women. At the end of our research we are more than ever convinced that media as an issue is related to all women's issues and it affects not only urban women but all women and all men. Modern technology has vastly increased the outreach of media and made its centralised control possible. I was both fascinated and shocked recently to hear that within months of telecasting the US television series Lucy, there are little girls in the villages of Haryana called Lucy. From Radha, Sita or Kamla, straight to Lucy! For people who have perhaps never visited a big town in India suddenly to be exposed to chunks of US and British life must indeed be mind-boggling.

More frightening than the direct reach of media however, is its indirect influence. By gradually shaping public opinion, personal beliefs and even people's self perceptions, media influences the process of socialisation and shapes ideology and thinking. Added to this, there is a general uncritical acceptance of the views and facts presented by the media — very often the only proof and argument people give in favour of something is 'But I saw it on television' or 'I read it in the papers'. The 'objectivity' of this truth is questionable. Few people realise that most major newspapers and magazines are owned by a handful of business houses and that television and radio are under the total control of the party in power. Because of the increasing commercialisation, television and radio time is also controlled by a few rich business houses. In this way, the views, prejudices and interpretations of a few people come to be accepted by the majority. Such views become 'respectable' and 'objective', they become facts and prescriptions, the prevalent ideology. The minority which controls media uses this technique to strengthen its own position. Therefore, media often acts as a conservative force in society — one which wants to maintain the status quo and avoid major changes, whether in relation to class or sex.

There have been several studies of media with regard to women (in various countries) which have found the media guilty of sexism, distortion of the image of women and propagation of sex stereotypes: mothers, housewives, dependent, passive, etc. The other side of such misrepresentation is that in most popular media women are seldom shown as working women — capable professionals, labourers, farmers. Rather, the predominant image is that of the self-sacrificing housewife.

It is often held in defence of media that it reflects current social reality. But this is only partially true. Media has a two-way relationship with social reality. On the one hand it reflects what exists but, on the other, it affects social reality. By being selective in what it shows, and how it shows it, it interprets and creates its own reality. A part of this is the selective reinforcement of values, attitudes, behaviour. Thus, by always perpetuating the view that the male is in every way superior to the female, media misrepresents the roles women play.

A recent publication of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN entitled Women in Agriculture states:

Of all the hours worked throughout the world, women contribute about two-thirds... Women in rural areas grow at least 50 per cent of the world's food. They work in all aspects of cultivation, including planting, thinning, weeding, applying fertiliser and harvesting... In some regions they also market what they grow. Many of them provide the main or only support for the family — in some developing regions a quarter to half of the rural households are permanently or de-facto headed by women (emphasis mine).

One does not need more than a quick glance at our media to realise that this kind of social reality does not find a reflection in it. All farmers and most workers depicted in the media are male. Most media reports are about male farmers and workers. These biases are found not only in the popular media, but also in educational media and development communication media, i.e. media which focussed on development issues, as elaborated below. Analysis done of the so-called educational media like children's books, text books, adult literacy primers and even literacy primers for women shows that they are sexist, they perpetuate sex-stereotypes and almost completely negate the economic contribution of women.

Women as seen in Development Communication Media

Development communication media remains silent about the role of women as workers and professionals. It does, however, show them as mothers and housewives. Because such media sounds serious, authoritative and concerned about development, the stereotypes it perpetuates are likely to be more effective. Further, because it is the brainchild of development and communication experts, its inaccuracies are more harmful and alarming.

Some years ago a Delhi-based English daily set a new trend in development journalism by introducing a weekly column on a village it had 'adopted'. On going through several reports on this village a woman journalist found that her male colleagues had not even alluded to the existence of women in the village. However, when she visited the village she saw women all over — carrying water, fuel, fodder, working in the fields, looking after animals. The eyes of the male journalist had somehow succeeded in missing them — thereby consigning them to further invisibility. Recently, a male journalist defended this by saying: how could they write about women when they could not speak to them? The inability and handicap of a journalist becomes an excuse for distortion! The thought had not occurred to the journalist that his colleagues could not speak to the cattle and poultry either (perhaps they could?) but that did not deter him from writing about them.

Similarly, radio and television programmes on agriculture are almost entirely male-dominated and oriented. Statistics may tell us that half the world's food is produced by women but television presenters still begin their programmes with: 'Greetings to our farmer brothers'. All experts, interviewers, model farmers are men (even though women produce more than half of India's food) and after they have discussed business rural women appear in their 'picturesque' costumes, to provide song and dance and a little entertainment. To add insult to injury, every now and again a programme deals with 'women's issues' such as nutrition, home management, etc. Because most programmes are by, about and for men, women do not feel addressed so they do not watch or listen to them. When they are interested in watching (as was found by a Delhi-based research organisation), their men often discourage them from doing so with the excuse that the programme does not contain anything for women.

In recent years a number of attempts have been made to use media and communication techniques to support ongoing development projects. Films, videotapes, radio programmes, slide-tape shows, charts, etc., have been made for use as development support communication. Because the main objective of development projects has been to increase production (and ignore questions of equity and distributive justice) this support communication has concentrated on the big, viable farmers who, because of their size, access to resources and services, have come to be known as 'progressive' farmers. Women, marginal farmers and the landless do not feature in these programmes at all. The entire machinery of such rural development projects is 'manned' by men, right from the decision-making to the implementation levels. For example, the thirteen massive and expensive training and visit (T&V) projects for agriculture extension in India planned and funded by the World Bank totally ignore and by-pass women. Similarly, a report on media support for a big reforestation programme in Nepal does not mention women even once. Thus women have not been involved even in projects related to reforestation, water supply, grain storage and other such areas which are primarily managed by women and are of concern to them.

Because most rural development programmes, training, credit and other resources are for (upper class) men and they completely ignore women, development support communication, which is a tool to promote such projects, obviously does the same. The vicious circle is complete. Because women are not seen as agricultural producers and decision-makers (among other reasons) all projects are by and for men. And because of this the media only talks of men, reinforcing the view that it is only men who matter and it is only for them that plans have to be formulated.

Typically, the communication programmes in which women have been given prominence are those on family planning. National and international resources have been made available to make multi-media programmes on this subject. Even traditional media has not been spared the ignominy of delivering family planning messages. As can be expected, in these programmes women are wooed not as individuals or subjects but as 'targets' (at which all contraceptives have to be shot) and objects of family planning messages and programmes planned by men. The sexist bias of these programmes is quite blatant. As a Bangladeshi woman put it: 'Earlier our bodies were controlled by our men. Now they are controlled both by our men and our government'.

The content of the family planning communication programmes also perpetuates sex-stereotypes. A woman editor of a feminist journal, reviewing two family planning films made by the Indian Films Division, writes: 'What strikes one about this documentary (For the Love of Munna) is the cult of glorious motherhood through which the women are appealed to. She further asks: 'Why is it that, in this documentary, the love of a child becomes synonymous with the love of a male child, as the very title of the documentary suggests? Why is it that the male child Krishna is always used as the archetype of a precious child and never any female mythological figure?'¹

Hundreds of religious and other films deepen people's faith in miracles, in fatalism; they encourage unscientific thinking and irrational behaviour. Their messages are anti-development and basically reactionary. They prescribe personal salvation through (falsely) religious deeds. This successfully diverts attention from the real issues our societies face.

The Widespread Impact of Distorted Portrayals

What impact does this kind of distortion have on the position of women in society and their development? The impact of the media is different at different levels.

(i) The perpetuation of inequalities in the home

Statistics tell us that women and girls are more undernourished, underfed, uncared for than men and boys. Our media provides the necessary ideology to the society (women the eternal sufferers; women the rejoicers in self-sacrifice and self-denial; woman the mother-earth) to calmly accept this blatant discrimination against half its people.

By reinforcing sex-stereotypes and constantly glorifying motherhood and subservient wifehood the media makes it difficult for women to break out of these prescribed roles, norms and behaviour patterns. Such conservative depictions reduce the few statements about sex equality and equal participation of women contained in the Constitution to mere window dressing. The resultant conservative thinking justifies the decisions of parents who do not educate their daughters, or give them freedom, or let them take up jobs, and who discriminate between daughters and sons. Are not these real hurdles in the way of women's development? Are not these attitudes partly responsible for the lagging behind of women in literacy, education, vocational training as also for the neglect and consequent higher mortality rates of girls and of the declining sex-ratio in India?

(ii) Creating a distorted self-image

Media does not only influence the social image of women but also their self-image. Most women are themselves uncritical consumers of anti-women media. Media affects their socialisation process, it influences their choices regarding what they consume and wear, how they behave, what they learn, dream, aspire to and what they ultimately become.

Media has therefore not only not helped women and society to redefine their own and men's roles; it has also ignored, even trivialised whatever attempts women have made to redefine their roles, to create alternative behaviour patterns and life-styles. By so doing media has clearly discouraged the emergence of a new woman, a new man and a new relationship between them.

Such treatment of women by the media instead of reducing their isolation, increases it further. Instead of empowering women, it weakens them. Women remain unheard, unrepresented and more 'uncommunicable' than before. They continue to blame either their fate or themselves for their plight, often they turn to religion for their salvation. Media succeeds in depoliticising women's miseries and issues. Women's oppression remains a personal and a family matter and the misery and marginalisation continue.

(iii) Reinforcing biases in development plans

As has been already stated, media reinforces the conservative view of women and ignores their economic participation and contribution, especially that of rural women, over 50 per cent of whom are directly involved in economic activities, in addition to housework and childcare. All this means that media, instead of challenging the view that women are inferior, subservient, unimportant, reinforces it and establishes man as the active force, the doer, the one who matters. lt also means that a blind is drawn over the real lives of women. Their needs and concerns, the problems they face are not articulated publicly, no public thinking and debates are initiated on their real concerns. Because their concerns and interests remain unarticulated, women also remain neglected.

The near total silence in the media about the productive and economic role of women makes their absence in decision making and implementing bodies seem quite natural. Planning is left entirely in the hands of male, upper-class, urban planners who, in addition to their own misconceptions and conservative views on women, have the omnipresent media to (mis)inform and (mis)educate them. They have little or no commitment to women's development. Most of them see women as part of the family and believe their interests are identical with those of others in the family. According to them, it is not only unnecessary but also blasphemous to separate the interests of women because such a 'separatist view' destroys the 'harmony' and 'peace' of the family. Needless to say, media strengthens such views.

Not surprisingly, this results on the one hand in biases in national data collection and on the other in inappropriate plans and programmes for women. It has been pointed out by a woman economist for example that 'In most Third World countries, the accuracy of national level statistics which usually serve as the principal data input in the framing of development policies, is impaired by gender biases which lead to an undercounting of women in the labour force'. Using examples from several countries in her paper, she spells out the 'nature and sources of these biases (specially in Census data), such as those stemming from the definition of "worker", the respondents and enumerators being male, cultural perceptions regarding women's appropriate roles and the type of work that women usually do, especially its unpaid character.'²

It is obvious that such biases in data collection lead to inappropriate planning for women. Such miscalculations and misconceptions on the part of our planners and policy makers take the shape of policies and plans which determine women's lives. These misconceptions, among others, are responsible for the fact that in the mainstream plans for industry, agriculture, commerce etc., women do not figure, they figure only as a separate, small section.

In planning for rural development, it is the poor and women who have been neglected and further marginalised. Most training, information and resources for the development of agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry, are given to (better off) male farmers, inspite of the major contribution of women to these activities. All extension programmes are almost exclusively by men and for men. For women the reserved areas have been the 'feminine' ones such as home science, nutrition-education, mother and childcare Mahila mandals (women's groups), Charcha mandals (discussion groups) and bhajan mandals (hymn-singing groups) are 'women's' preserves, not credit unions, trade unions or cooperatives. In the name of income-generating activities women are given schemes like sewing, embroidery, papad making, which have generated little income but many myths about what is feminine and what masculine.

After three or four generations of such planning, we now discover that women have been thrown out of jobs they were traditionally doing; and have been handed over jobs which are more tedious, repetitive and back-breaking; that commercialisation of agriculture has led to increasing control of cash and family resources by men. A review of 11 major rural development projects in Nepal shows that because of distorted concepts of 'housewife' and 'head of household', 'economic activity' etc., the productive roles of women have been completely ignored. In most of these projects:

women have either been left out of all the major national development projects, or included only in peripheral activities. This by-passing of women in activities which have traditionally been theirs, both as workers and as decision-makers, has led to situations where their traditional responsibilities, authority and status have been weakened or lost. In other words it has diminished their role and contribution rather than enhancing them. The corollary to this is that the development projects themselves have failed to make use of potential resources, in this case the traditional skills and expertise of women.³

(iv) Biases in international development aid

In the relatively limited areas where foreign aid has been directed to women it has been mainly in encouraging housewife-related activities, as noted in the context of Nepal. Also as a recent FAO document entitled Women in Agriculture (which is based on research in a number of countries) states: 'In the past, development assistance has often failed to reach women in rural areas, both in absolute terms and relative to that of men. Such failures stem from two principal causes: agricultural development programmes which focus primarily on the man as producer; and lack of knowledge or false assumptions about the role of women in agriculture' (emphasis mine).

Similarly, a study conducted by the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women shows: 'A multitude of studies demonstrate that women, as producers and providers, have often been hindered rather than helped by development programmes. Although more assistance has been directed towards women, it is predominantly of a type inappropriate to their real needs and circumstances, based as it is on a prevailing misconception that a woman's only role is that of mother and housewife and not of producer.'⁴ One well known writer looking at development programmes in several countries shows that there is a deep-seated sexism in the workings of development agencies, especially several of the United Nations bodies. According to her: 'One of the most important blocks to a development process that really helps women, is the blindness and rigidity of the planners to the needed changes, from headquarters staff to those in the field, almost all of whom are men. Because they never deal professionally with women, they have little comprehension of women's real contribution in development, or even that women may have needs that differ from those of the men'.⁵ Thus, under the guise of development aid new methods and machinery have been made available only to men; often they apply only to male tasks, such as ploughing. Or, if mechanization is introduced for a female task, it becomes men's work — as has happened with the introduction of mechanized milling for high-yield rice varieties in Indonesia and Bangladesh.

The FAO document also points out that:

'Emphasis on reaching the men may change the mix of crops grown. In Bangladesh, for example, women grow vegetables, fruits and spices for home use, while the men grow rice and wheat. Training and credit directed only to men have caused a shift in emphasis to their crops — with a potentially adverse effect on the diversity of food and nutrition of the family.'

New agricultural methods and machinery may lighten the work of the men, but it can mean more work for women. One irrigation/settlement project in Kenya was directed at men even though women do most of the work in rainfed agriculture. The mechanisation of land preparation relieved men of much hard labour but introduction of irrigation increased the workload of the women. Previously, decisions on disposal of the crops and proceeds from sales had rested with the women. In the project, proceeds from the sale of crops went to the household head, and the women, other than those recognised as household heads, lost control over their earnings'.

This multi-sided neglect of women has, over time, further reinforced the image of the patriarch and his power vis-a-vis his wife and other women. The knowledge, information and power disparities between men and women have increased tremendously over the last few decades as a result of 'development' and 'modernisation' aided by male-dominated and male-oriented media.

The (media reinforced) thinking that men are the heads of household and they need jobs more than women do and that the natural vocation of women is that of mother and housewife leads to the prevalent discrimination against women in matters of recruitment and their displacement especially in times of widespread unemployment. This happens inspite of the fact that what women earn goes almost entirely for the upkeep of the family and there are a significant number of woman-headed households in many countries.

Conclusion

I strongly believe that as a shaper of ideology and public opinion, media influences society and women in a major way. As has been shown, it affects all aspects of women's lives including their self-image. It influences most decisions regarding women's development. Thus it would be nothing short of tragic if women and men activists concentrated only on economic and political issues and neglected to grapple with such a powerful and insidious force such as media.

It is important that we recognise the manipulative role and the class and gender bias of media and that we challenge it. Instead of remaining a tool in the hands of men and the elite, media should be increasingly controlled by those who want to challenge and change the present system.

We women must create alternatives in different media and use them to inform and empower women, to get women out of their isolation. We must make ourselves more visible and audible so that our concerns do not remain unarticulated and unattended. Not only must we create alternative messages but also evolve alternative methods of working together; methods which are more democratic and participatory and which break the divide between 'media makers' and 'media takers'.

It is heartening to see many women making feminist films, publishing magazines, writing plays, songs, children's poems, to express themselves and to initiate a dialogue with other women, to challenge stereotypes and myths. The fight is long and hard because the adversary is very strong. But is there an alternative to fighting?

________________________

1. Maclhu Kishwar; Family Planning or Birth Control?' iWuiitishi, No. 1, 1979.

2. Bina Agarwal: Work participation of Rural Women in the Third World: Some Data and G)nceptual Biases', mimeo. Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, 1979.

3. Bina Pradhan and Indira Shreshtha 'Foreign Aid and Women in Nepal', mimeo. Institute of Development Studies, Kathmandu, 1983

4. New monitor for Women's progress, Development Forum, Nov-Dec 1983.

5. Barbara Rogers, The Domestkution of Women, quoted in 'Integration of Women into Development: What Does It Really mean', ISIS, Ideas and Action 137, FAO, Rome.