What about a woman president?

General Observation

FOLLOWING the previous week’s review in which MISA-Zimbabwe pointed out that the media coverage of elections needs to be more gender sensitive, analytical and informative, this week we look at how the media coverage of issues to do with women seems to have largely been left to the commercial entity of political advertising. We also interrogate the media in relation to whether they have been informative in the coverage of issues such as those relating to political party manifestos.
Campaign Advertorials: The case of relegating women to commercialisation:
Entities including the Women’s Trust and the Ministry of Gender and Women’s affairs continued with their advertising campaigns urging for greater and more active participation by women in political affairs. Some of the adverts particularly call for more women to be elected into political office. This is commendable but:
• The media this week failed to follow-up on the commercials as they did not carry much of serious editorial content arising from the advertorials as they relate to the participation of women in the elections.
• Voiceovers in most of the commercials are dominated by males. For instance, in some of the advertorials by Zanu PF and Independent Presidential candidate Dr Simba Makoni flighted by ZTV, it appears the role of women has been confined to dancing, singing and ululating while men attend to the serious business of articulating the issues.
Coverage on Political Party Manifestos: Gender insensitivity at its highest
• While there have been efforts by media including The Zimbabwe Independent, The Standard and ZBC/TV to bring the various political party manifestos to the attention of the public, there has not been much analysis of these manifestos, especially where they relate to critical issues such as the empowerment of women in relation to such pertinent issues as land reform, health, economic indigenisation and others
• For example, in its story on the recently enacted Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Bill, The Sunday Mail (March 9-15, 2008) does not critically interrogate how the legislation will empower previously marginalised groups including women and the youths.

What about a Woman President?

• The Zimbabwe Independent (29 February to 6 March, 2008) did well in coming up
with the story headlined: Women surpass 30% quota but still not keen on presidency. This raises critical questions in a context in which the candidature of women has been confined to lower leadership positions while in other countries such as Liberia, Germany and the United states, women are vying for, or have been elected to, the uppermost leadership position.
• The issue of Zimbabwe having a woman president is a critical one that the media has not tackled well enough or if it has, it has been concealed inside pages of newspapers. Adverts by groups lobbying for women’s empowerment in both the print and the electronic media have also not incorporated the idea of a female presidential aspirant.

Please note that this is a weekly commentary by MISA-Zimbabwe as part of the monitoring of the media for the duration of the election period. The analysis focuses on gender issues, sourcing methods, language use and basic journalistic media ethics in election reporting as informed by MISA-Zimbabwe’s election reporting guidelines.

This commentary appeared in The Standard 16 -22 March, 2008