Portrayal and Participation of Women in Nigerian Media

Portrayal and Participation of Women in Nigerian Media

The millennium declaration and MDGs opened a new door for the advancement of gender equality in the world. In 2000, 189 member states of the United Nations met and made a declaration to advance a vision of improving the condition of humanity throughout the world in the areas of development and poverty eradication, peace and security, protection of the environment and human rights and democracy. One of the critical areas of achieving this vision was the advancement of women’s right to gender equality. The realization of women’s human right is a development goal in its own right and an essential means of achieving poverty reduction and sustainable development. Eight of the key commitments set out in the Millennium Declaration came from the MDGs, the third of which is to promote gender equality and empower women. The MDGs are accompanied by 16 global targets and 48 global indicators. These were created to provide concrete measurements of the extent to which countries are making progress towards achieving the goals and the progress is being assessed on a regular basis at the country level through national MDG reports. (Waldorf, 2005, p. 5).

      Gender equality advocates have labored tirelessly to ensure that obligations and commitments under Convention on the elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women CEDAW and Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women are fulfilled and the results are now evident globally, in the form of gender sensitive laws constitutional provisions, judicial decisions, policies, government structures and resource allocations.

      However, after four world conferences on women, Nigerian women continue to experience marginalization in every sphere of human endeavor. In spite of the general belief, that an estimated 50% of Nigeria’s population is made up of women and girls (UNSN, 2001), the gender disparity in access to paid employment is still very much alive. This disparity which dates back to the pre-colonial era finds its roots and continues to thrive in the African traditional culture, Christianity and Islamic religion both of which preach submissiveness on the part of women. Traditional African society has stipulated clearly different roles for men and women and both sexes grow up knowing exactly what society requires of tthem. As Mattelart puts it “This division of labour finds expression in a definition of masculine and feminine qualities, transmitted, reinforced and rearticulated by the different institutions of society.” (Mattelart, 1986, p. 66). As boys herded their stock, hunted and went fishing, girls would fetch water, firewood, cooked, nursed the sick and took care of the young and aged. The boys would eventually become husbands performing the functions expected of tthem by society and the girls would become wives- both performing functions according to the norms of society but not necessarily to suit their individual aspirations.  While society places the woman in the home, specifically in the kitchen, it places the man in the hunting and fighting fields, both playing these roles thrust on tthem towards the success of society.

            Essentially women were victims of injustice in the African society not because of what society did to tthem, but what it did not do to tthem. Boys grew up knowing that they had to be strong, hardworking and wise so that they could take care of their wives, children and society. Girls on the other hand grew up knowing that they had to be hardworking and submissive so that they could find good husbands who would take good care of tthem. In other words, it was not up to tthem to make their lives successful but up to their future husbands and this notion robbed them of the initiative, ambition and creativity to make a choice which would make a difference. And Haskell sums it up thus: “How ironic that it was in the security of this enlarged image of himself, an image provided by wives, or more often mothers, that men went forth to fight, conquer, legislate, create. And women stayed home without so much as a room of her own, her only fulfillment, the hope of bearing a son to whom she could pass on the notion of male superiority.”

Gender inequality keeps women at a disadvantage all their lives and stifles development prospects of their societies. This perhaps justifies the situating of gender equality issue by the Beijing Platform for Action, at the core of the achievement of the MDGs. From improving health, fighting diseases and lowering child mortality to reducing poverty and mitigating hunger to expanding education, the MDGs hold a firm promise of empowering women as unhealthy, illiterate and poorly educated women are less able to care for their children. When a country educates its women economic productivity tends to rise, maternal and infant mortality rates usually fall, fertility rates decline and the health and education prospects of the next generation improve.

      The educational sector appears to be recording giant strides towards the attainment of gender parity in school enrolment. In Nigeria the establishment of more government schools and provisions of bursary and scholarship awards by some states and federal government to students in tertiary level were adopted in order to facilitate access to education by all including female students. The policies seem to have yielded positive results in terms of increased participation of girls in the educational system and the imbalances in the gender ratios at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education seem to have reduced greatly. At the primary level the gender ratio increased from 0.76 in 1990 to 0.96 in 2000, while at the secondary level the ratio increased from 0.75 in 1990 to 0.92 in the year 2000, and at the tertiary level from 0.46 in 1990 to 0.82 in 2002. The ratio of literate females to males between 15-24 years was 0.89 in 1996 and 0.93 in 2000, (National millennium goals report 2004-Nigeria), another indicator of increased women’s participation and reduction in gender imbalances in the education sector.

The above actions should have ideally set the stage for the attainment of gender equality in the economic, political and social arena but in Nigeria and indeed most of Africa gender equity goes beyond educational parity. Women, even those who do get education face embedded disadvantage in labor markets, property ownership and inheritance rights, and sexual and reproductive choices. Culture and religion help keep them in the chains of poverty, silencing and excluding them and allowing men to take the large share of resources.

 

Women Invisibility in the media

Gender inequality appears to be supported by the media treatment of women who are mostly ignored, denied or invisible. When they do attain visibility it is done with biases and negative stereotypes, since all they do is to play supportive roles for the natural order. They are given little voices, demeaned through various forms of behaviors which further increase their vulnerability. In agreement, Ukozor (2004), observes that an x-ray of media coverage of gender issues in Nigeria depicts an inglorious image of women’s exclusion or marginalization and that rather than give fair and balanced reports of issues from women’s and men’s angles, the news media exclude women’s voices or portrays them as objects who do not have opinion or only fit for advertising models. He concludes that they are almost never key players in media issues. Women’s exclusion from the media is not surprising since the media in Nigeria serve as government mouthpieces or the mouthpieces of their owners who more often than not are men. This seems to legitimize their focus on government activities and male subjects since very few women occupy government positions.

      Since independence, Nigeria has grappled with the problem of creating a fair, just and equitable political arrangement among its various ethnic groups, while the past three decades have witnessed a global emphasis on women’s issues related to empowerment and gender equality.

      The arrival of capitalism in African traditional society introduced the factor and institutionalized the sale of labour power and segregation of sex roles in the productive process. It reserved for the male the most prestigious and best rewarded jobs while restricting women to the worst.

Today in Nigeria the status quo appears to be holding out. The World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Global Gender Gap Report (n.d.), which ranks 128 countries according to the size of their gender gaps, rates Nigeria as one of the lowest ranking countries with 107th position as against countries like South Africa which occupy the 20th position.

Similarly the Media and Gender Monitor posits that of all the millennium development goals the least progress has been made towards achieving gender parity in most spheres of human endeavor including the media where women’s participation in the news is still very minimal. This perhaps explains the low status of women in the Nigerian society.

      The media, in addition to being agents of socialization, are believed to be the main setters of public agenda. They choose what they consider important enough for the society to at least think about. Consequently it may not be out of place to consider the media powerful enough to change the imbalance in gender relations in Nigeria as they can through sustained advocacy, serve as veritable tools for dismantling the patriarchal structures which seem to be the root cause of the imbalance by placing the issues high on their agenda. However scholars argue that the reverse seems to be the case. Okunna (2005), asserts that women are made invisible through the non representation of their points of view or perspectives of the world and citing Gallagher, She further submits that even when women do achieve visibility in media content, the manner of their representation reflects the biases and assumptions of those who define the public and therefore media agenda, a phenomenon she described as mediated invisibility. Similarly, Gerbner and Gross (1989), identifying this invisibility as symbolic annihilation, arguing that those who are at the bottom of the various power hierarchies will be kept in their places through their relative invisibility (p. 303)

      These theoretical assumptions are given relevance in a study conducted by Okoye on school textbooks for teaching core subjects like mathematics and English, published by four reputable academic publishers- Longman, Heinman, Macmillan and University Press. Results of the study revealed that sexism manifested in the dominance of boys in pictures and illustrations, stereotyping activities and family roles, and non representation of women in important and tough occupations which can only be done by the strong, brave and intelligent (men). (Cited in Okunna, 2005, p.11). Similarly, another study of a pamphlet titled Career Guidance for Children: Different Trades and Professions” conducted by Okunna in  2001, lists 31 trades and professions, fully illustrated with sketches representing: Accountant, Architect, soldier, Artist, Barber, Carpenter, Dentist, Doctor, Driver, Engineer, Farmer, Footballer, Geologist, Journalist, Lawyer, Mechanic, Mason, Musician, Nurse, Painter, Pharmacist, Photographer, Police, Priest, Printer, Publisher, Surveyor, Tailor, Teacher, Trader and Vulcanizer. Of these 31 occupations, only 2 of them have sketches of women- Nurse and Teacher. The other 29 have sketches of men (Okunna, 2005, p.9)

       On the heels of the Beijing Fourth World Conference where the MDGs were projected, the World Association for Christian Communication WACC, whose sole aim is to promote democratic structures of communication and seek full and equal participation of women in communication, through its monitoring and advocacy program, the Global Media Monitoring Project, GMMP, conducted a study to determine the extent of women participation in the media worldwide. Results revealed that in Nigeria, men produce an overwhelmingly majority of the messages in the mass media. A staggering 95% of the journalists reporting the news in the country’s radio, television and newspapers were male (GMMP, 2000, p. 78). Participation of women as news subjects remained at 17%, In terms of people in the news women are equally invisible as findings show a very low participation of women as news subjects. Women appear as news subjects in major topic areas such as politics and government, 17% of the time, Business and Economy 3% of the time and as total news subjects 7% of the time. They are also quoted in newspapers 13% of the time, while they appear in photos 20% of the time. (GMMP, 2000, p. 88).

      Equally revealing is the study of 8 broadcast stations conducted in three states in Nigeria by Okunna, which results reveal an employment ratio of 7:1 of males as against females in the state Radio stations and Federal Television stations. The three states covered has an aggregate population of 4.3 million women, with only 231 of them in the broadcast media with most of them at the lowest rung, often relegated to reporting women and social issues rather than news and current affairs. (Okunna, 2000, p.110). This appears to be a reflection of the patriarchal system, which has given birth to and continues to nurture male chauvinism in Nigeria. Against this background, this paper examines the extent of progress made by Nigeria in the last eight years towards the advancement of the millennium development goal3, particularly in the area of women participation in the media, both as journalists and news subjects. It also examines the portrayal of women in Nigerian home video films, to determine the degree of negative stereotyping, where same exists.

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