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| Sunday, 9 November 2003 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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Stereotyping of women in media When will we ever learn? by Jayanthi Liyanage
The discussion of the positive images of women in media has gone on for years and years between women's groups and the media, without ever reaching substantial concensus for action. The Ministry of Women's Affairs concluded one more programme on gender sensitization for senior media personnel, advertising agencies and script writers last week. They also held a similar programme last year. Though the instant feedback is always robust and pronounced, voicing the bottlenecks for preventing negative media images, programmes usually end up in near deadlock, without the process ever reaching the top management levels of the advertising and media houses, where policy decisions are made and strategies are formed to define the nature of their media content. "Lectures would have no avail. Call us for a dialogue. We, the media, operating under the state-instituted liberal economy have so much to tell you," was the request which came from Jackson Anthony, Director (Creative) of Swarnavahini at this year's programme. He was given the assurance that a date would be fixed for such a dailogue. "It is no use inviting us, the editorial personnel, to such discussions. Please get our top management people to attend a session and discuss with them," said a senior media person who attended the programme. "However much you infuse in us the need to correct media images, all this effort will be lost in the dynamics of the market in which our organizations are engaged, in a constant competition to survive." So, the media faces two sides in this argument. On one side, the need to overcome sexism and not present women, or even men for that matter, as sexual commodities. On the other, to fulfil market objectives for profit, to survive in a consumer economy. In this context, the market objectives primarily depend on what media content the contemporary consumers would demand, and what content they would reject. Advertising, an essential ingredient of media in the survival process, also relies on the same norms. Still another argument - could the media not be made aware and educate the consumer on raising the quality of his tastes so that he would not demand sexist content? Yet another - in our endeavour to avoid sexism, are we also stifling portrayal of the natural exuberance, vitality and spontaneity of womenkind? Do they know what they really want if the conditioning that has been bulit into them through market propaganda is removed? In short, how do we avoid market streotypes of women? "A stereotype is an unchanging pattern which does not yield to critical judgement," said Justice Shiranee Thilakawardena during her presentation at the gender sensitization programme of the Ministry of Women's affairs. "It is a concept woven around an idea a group of people might have." Such stereotypes are perpetuated through socialisation, influence of our mentors and even sexist toys we use in our childhood - such as the Barbie Dolls which chant "I hate Maths", giving the impression to the girl child that brain-taxing mathematical exercises are meant only for male children. As proven time and again, such stereotypes are often inaccurate and change from one individual to another. Then again, certain social and cultural powers too may be generating stereotypes for their benefit. "Stereotypes could even be prophesies which would eventually actualise," said Justice Thilakawardena. For, we tend to internalise the stereotypes fed to us and live them out as reality. When the market economy emerged, the female image turned out to be the commodity which could command the highest profits. As such, the image of the fashion model and the beauty queen reigns supreme in the mass media, suppressing the image of woman with brains, presented in a political context. The other most abused image in the mass media is the "marginal" woman - the so-called nymphomaniac or the prostitute or the criminal - they are so often flaunted with sarcastic glee and undue innuendo and sexual humour in the gutter press. Often women, who are mercilessly derided sexually on media, have no defence and end up being totally victimised. Negative images on consumer culture manipulate and distort the personality of women and destroy their insight and measure of their true worth. They believe that the meaning of "femaleness" is in the images they see in beauty magazines or the models advertising beauty aids and the beauty, glamour and seduction srrounding them. The commercialisation of the female body as an object to be feasted upon and consumed by eager male eyes in nude and semi-nude pictures of women, suggestive poses and revealing cleavage present distorted image of women in a consumer society. Such stereotypes it is claimed, often lead to inequality, sexist discrimination and then to violence, erupting in rape, molestation and street violence on women. "The State has an obligation to give women a violence free society," said Justice Thilakawardena. "Therefore, our culture should begin with equality at its base. The foundation of equality is impartial judgment. We must have strategies to retrieve the reality lost in the social stratification. Usually, it is not bad people who are to blame but the silence and confederacy of good people." "In a country where 99 per cent of the decision makers are men, we see a decline in the quality of human relations and that is the vulgarity we see today," opined Dr. Sunil Wijesiriwardena, Head, Department of Cultural Studies, Vibahvi. Removing that vulgarity is the challenge posed to our culture. "The market capital dynamics operate on things which can be commodified and sold. But human relationships cannot be commodified and sold. Once that is achieved on media, the world would no longer have natural humans," Dr. Wijesiriwardhena said. Do the media treat its subjects as just statistics and not with sensitivity accorded to human beings? Insentivitiy seemed to be the main problem where humans could not recognise another human. "As such, media can either nourish or pollute the cultural antenna of the eye and the ear." The vulgarity practised in our society today, has something to do with our eye point, he pointed out. "When the Britishers first arrived here, they had recorded of seeing bare breasted Sinhala women, watching them perched on tree tops, proud and unafraid. That itself shows that the the male eye of that day was different." Today, the same eye has developed different and distorted vision and it is also steadily deteriorating. One is also reminded that during the last year's programme, novelist Vijitha Fernando noted that when the world's first women's conference was in session, the first picture to appear in the press was that of two women fighting during the conference. Another instance, where the media eye had lost its relevancy. What are the spiritual and cultural dynamics of a media house, questioned Dr. Siriwardhena. Are there training methods? Do we really have the potential and power to regain our culture? The need of a legally empowered, independent Boradcasting Commission was spoken of. Presenting once again to the audience the Code of Ethics for Electronic Media, the Women's Education and Research Centre (WERC) had prepared four years ago, WERC's Executive Director, Dr. Selvie Thiruchandran, said that she had presented the code at several state media institutions of the country to no avail. Together with the Ministry of Women's Affairs, a re-presentation of a revised code was agreed on. A personality had once noted that social development called women to bring in their differences, their emotions, their way of seeing things and even their tears into the social process. But nothing can be done if the issue does not warrant discussion at the topmost levels of media decision making. |
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