Africa media criticized for stereotyping women

By Teresia Mutuku, Communications Officer and Web Manager, WACC

Nairobi, Kenya - Gender and media experts meeting in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, 3-5 December have released a declaration criticizing media in Africa for gross gender imbalances and stereotyped portrayal of women in the media.

"We are concerned with the gender imbalances and portrayal within news media reporting in Africa. We call upon the media to exercise their responsibility to the public and apply the standards and practices of good governance and democracy in line with freedom of speech and expression", said the experts in the statement released in Nairobi at the end of a 3-day gender and media advocacy workshop.

The workshop organised by the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC), a communication rights organization based in Toronto, Canada, brought together over 35 gender and media advocates from 13 countries in English-speaking Sub-Saharan Africa.

A global media monitoring survey conducted for WACC in 76 countries in 2005, revealed that only 21 per cent of news sources, subjects and authors are women, yet women comprised 52 percent of the population. In Africa today, only 17 percent of women are news sources according to the Nairobi statement.

Read full statement