women
writers and artists
Elayne Clift
Feminist Media and Its Contribution to Organizational Life
I open the conference program
and there it is: "The media is going to be at this event, and many of
them are looking for anything they can find to undermine the process we are
trying to start." Over and over again as a journalist, writer, and communications
expert, I have encountered the same hostility, the same distrust, and the same
lack of understanding about who I am and what I do.
This phenomenon has
been painful to me as a feminist journalist because I have committed my working
life to public health, gender, social justice issues, and communication. Yet,
writing for alternative presses, I have been disparaged by famous feminists,
press relations staff, and conference organizers. Often treated as if I were
lazy and ill-informed, I begin to wonder myself if I care enough, understand
the issues, or can shake my editors awake to get women’s issues covered properly.
The negative, hostile
reaction to journalists is so frequent and painful that several experiences
spring immediately to mind. At a global conference I covered in November 1991,
for example, when the first international meeting of women and the environment
was convened prior to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development
(UNCED), the world's women highlighted the critical role they play in effecting
sustainable development. Eight working groups were established to influence
the process that would be undertaken in Rio in writing an international Plan
of Action. Sectors such as health, economics, and micro-enterprise were represented,
but information, education, and communication (IEC) was not -- until we reporters
protested, lobbied, and insisted, culminating in the addition of a ninth work
group.
Frequently, while
interviewing some of the international stars of the women's movement, I have
been patronized with responses such as, "If you'd ever been there, you
would realize...." None of the women I was interviewing asked what my
background or experience was. They might have been surprised to learn what
I could bring to the dialogue. I had worked in the developing world extensively
and knew well what village reality was for women; that was why I was posing
my questions. None of the respondents had stopped to think that maybe I was
at this event – at my own expense -- because I understood their issues deeply
and personally, and was desperately trying to give voice to the majority of
human beings on earth – women -- whose stories are never on the front pages
of The New York Times.
Often no arrangements
have been made at feminist conferences for press briefings, no hard copy of
speeches is available, no interview room is set aside for TV or radio interviews,
no way of filing stories exists.
I have covered many
international feminist symposia which tout inclusion but which have yet to include
media experts as part of an integrated panel discussion rather than a ghettoized
workshop. We are seldom viewed as a legitimate working group representing an
important sector with specialized knowledge. Rarely are we called upon as expert
strategists in organizing and disseminating information, in framing debate,
in positioning priorities.
As a specialist in
health communication as well as a journalist/writer, such exclusion and lack
of understanding of what I do is even more frustrating. I want my colleagues
in the larger world of women’s issues, public health, and international development
to see what I can contribute to public policy, to women’s advancement and self-sufficiency,
and to individual behavior change, just as I want others to understand that
while there may be a troublesome media establishment, there are also those of
us who are not paparazzi, but rather partners in social change.
Another example may
be enlightening. Once I visited one of the World Health Organization's (WHO)
Healthy Cities in Europe. The program's director spoke about the principles
and strategies of a much-touted health promotion initiative, which included
community participation and intersectoral cooperation. But she was stumped
when I asked her how, in the context of such integration, the program works
with the information sector. "We find public relations a problem,"
she said, launching into a diatribe about a media expose that had caused the
Ministry of Health embarrassment. The notion of information as a sector with
something to contribute to health education and promotion, and of communication
as a relevant specialty rather than solely as a public relations function, eluded
her.
To help people like
that woman understand my concern, it may be enlightening to review briefly my
own personal odyssey into the field of communication, which I arrived at with
a deep commitment to feminism and to applying a gender lens to health education
and promotion.
My journey began
about twenty years ago when I realized the power of media to educate and inform,
to give voice to the disenfranchised. I had been a health policy analyst and
educator, a program manager, and a professional advocate. I had also been a
journalist and had done public relations work. Through my work as Program
Director at The National Women’s Health Network in Washington, D.C., I saw how
media could be used to empower individuals and communities. I recognized women's
potential for shaping information and for giving voice to their own experience
as an exciting way for them to act for themselves, for their families,
and for their communities. I wanted to “marry” health to media. So I produced
and hosted a Cable TV series called “Woman to Woman” where women "experts"
shared information, validating other women’s experience. I began reporting
for an international women's radio program, and focused my journalism on international
women's issues. In 1985, I attended the final conference of the U.N. Decade
for Women in Nairobi, Kenya, where I reported for various alternative women’s
presses.
Then I began a graduate
degree in communication which would credential me to do more of this work from
an organizational base. Ultimately I was employed by an organization in Washington,
D.C. that was growing into one of the pre-eminent venues pioneering social communication
and media advocacy in public health. It wasn’t a feminist organization. But
it was doing groundbreaking communications work focused on social change and
I thought, naively, that I could become its feminist conscience. There, I co-managed
an international health communication project with a focus on maternal and child
health sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
In 1990 I left that position to teach, write, and consult, the latter only when
organizations realized that communication skills were relevant to their needs.
The point of this
biography is not ego but exposition to the frustration I feel every time someone
denigrates me or misunderstands one of my colleagues, treating us as part of
the malingering media or overlooking the role that a feminist communication
specialist might play in the overall design of programs, policies, or social
change strategy. I hope it demonstrates that we are a group of highly trained
and experienced individuals who have contributions to make emanating from personal
commitment as well as sound and transferable skills. Surely we should be taking
our rightful place alongside economists, anthropologists, ethnographers, policy
analysts, and others whose work is recognized for the valuable contribution
it makes to the broader feminist agenda. Whether as communication researcher,
planner, implementer, evaluator, or trainer; as media advocacy specialist or
public relations and marketing professional; as gatekeeper negotiator, materials
design expert, production specialist, and sometimes "mistress of the dumb
question," it is time for our sisters to understand who we are, and what
we do. To keep us marginal, to exclude us in the urgent work of our time because
we are not understood and what we do is under-valued, is to miss an enormous
opportunity. That's why I plead with women in leadership to learn who we are,
what we do, and what we can offer.
There could be no
better time for this change to take place. The feminist movement has made measurable
progress in underscoring and elevating the importance of media in women’s lives.
During the 1975 to 1985 United Nations Decade for Women, at the 1995 Fourth
World Conference on Women in Beijing, and at various other forums, Plans of
Action have addressed the importance of media for women. While a fully developed
feminist critique did not emerge in the early years of the Decade, criticism
and feminist analysis drew to attention several key issues, including the under-representation
of women in news and programming; the trivialization and sex role stereotyping
in news and entertainment content; and the under-representation of women in
decisionmaking or gatekeeper positions (e.g., editors, producers). In its World
Plan of Action, the report from Mexico City in 1975 named the mass media as
the central mechanism through which women’s roles would be changed, their social
participation accelerated, and discrimination against them ended. Subsequent
Plans of Action elaborated upon this theme, proposing that mass media and advertising
“establish, consistent with freedom of expression, professional guidelines and
codes of conduct that address violent, degrading or pornographic materials concerning
women in the media, including advertising.” The Beijing Platform also underscored
the “need to increase the number of programs by/for women to see to it that
women’s needs and concerns are properly addressed.” Such language in a document
signed by 189 nations of the world codified women’s demand for equality, balance
and fairness within the entire information sector.
It is also important
to take note of “The Bangkok Declaration,” a document emanating from an international
meeting of women communicators from 80 countries in Thailand in 1994. Calling
for “women empowering communication,” the Bangkok document was strengthened
a year later in Sweden when the Kalmar Declaration was adopted by all participants
at the International Women and Media Seminar. Both the Bangkok and the Kalmar
Declarations call for increased press freedom, research and training, networking
among gender sensitive media, and greater participation by and inclusion of
women. Similarly, a subsequent Media and Violence Against Women Forum held in
New York at the United Nations called for strategies to eliminate violence against
women in the media, media literacy and access, industry codes of conduct, continued
monitoring, and independent regulatory bodies to deal with issues of gender
equality in various media.
Studies in countries
as diverse as Ecuador, Nigeria, and Egypt confirm that the male world of media
is global. Such studies have been crucial in advancing our knowledge of and
our concern about women and media. At the same time, from this politics of
marginality, have come independent feminist and woman-centered media who, individually
and collectively, are having a measurable impact globally. (Women are now the
majority of Internet users and are reshaping how information is shared.)
Clearly, progress in the realm of women and media is promising. But the concurrent
lack of progress from within the women’s movement itself is troubling. We’ve
made great strides in understanding and overcoming our oppression and “otherness”
in terms of the male hierarchy that continues to control the media and the information
sector. But the sad thing is that some of our otherness, some of our being shut
out, is also coming from within the feminist arena as well. Our own sisters
are eyeing us with distrust and sometimes contempt. How do we move beyond that
kind of sibling rivalry?
Years of feminist
activism has reinforced a sad lesson for me: “Power corrupts, and absolute
power corrupts absolutely,” as a British lord once claimed. I believe, too,
that power corrupts irrespective of gender. So the first lesson, perhaps, is
that in order to strengthen our feminist organizations and to continue building
a vibrant, viable movement, we need to let go competition; to share power, insight,
interpretation; to embrace disciplines that may be new to us; and certainly
to welcome into the fold women whose work may be unlike our own. We must be
sure that our own processes are transparent and accountable, just as we ask
that of men and male organizations. We must not just “talk the talk” of inclusion
but also demonstrate our genuine commitment to it at every bend and turn, and
to every woman whose training, experience, expertise, and analysis is germane
to our common goal of advancement. We must honor all women’s knowledge
and skill. We are obliged to understand “best practices” outside our own areas
of legitimacy. We must build true alliances that transcend rhetoric and count
as partners those women who open up new avenues of discourse and action.
How do we operationalize
such lofty goals? First, I would suggest, we think consciously about what
participation really means. We listen, ask, and question our own biases. We
ensure there are women with expertise in media advocacy, communications for
behavior change, public relations strategies, information technology and other
related fields participating in our public debates. We see to it that people
on our own staffs understand the importance of press rooms, press kits, press
passes, and press people. We ask speakers to provide papers in multiple copies,
have phone banks, computers, copiers, printers, interview rooms and yes, coffee
available. And more than anything else, we assume nothing, except that power
plays have no place in a feminist world, that leadership wears many faces, that
our mission is invisible unless we help our colleagues tell their stories.
The building of movements
is not unlike the building of physical structures: Build from the ground up,
using the best tools and materials available. Similarly, strengthening feminist
organizations is like strengthening ourselves individually. We mature from
interacting with others, from sharing, exploring, taking risks. We trust each
other. We ask for help when needed. We learn from experience. We find new
ways to think about ourselves, and others.
In the end, there
is not much difference between individual and organizational growth, except
perhaps that one is more visible than the other and may, if we are lucky, have
more impact. In both cases, however, we reap what we sow. And quite possibly,
we make headlines.
July 2005
# # # Elayne Clift
is a writer, journalist, adjunct professor of women’s studies, and feminist
activist in Saxtons River, Vt., USA. Her latest edited collection is
Women,
Philanthropy and Social Change: Visions for a Just Society (Tufts University,
2005).