Alexandria—A two-day conference calling for greater sensitivity toward gender issues in the Arab media wrapped up last week. The conference was sponsored by the Swedish Institute and finished with the release of a document titled "Arab media from a gender perspective: Trends and operational tools." The document seeks to create concepts and tools which can be used to develop a balanced image of both men and women in the Arab media, and to establish practices within media institutions that respect gender differences and feature positive images of women. "We are in great need of a fair media policy to work in favor of women," said Benaz Batrawi, the director of MediaNet, an organization based in Ramallah that provides consultation and training to journalists. Doaa Abdel Aal, coordinator for Egypt at the Media Diversity Institute, agreed that the problem is endemic. “There are a lot of female journalists in the Arab world who know nothing about women's problems in their societies,” Abdel Aal said. The solution, according to Swedish journalist Mia Grondahl, is clear: "There's an obvious need for a gender approach among journalists, so we need to train journalists to take the issue into account.” Maria Jacobson, head of Everything is Possible, a feminist media watchdog organization in Sweden, pointed out that even in the western world gender sensitivity in the media can be a problem. According to Jacobson, women in Sweden regularly face violence and the image of women perpetuated by the media is part of the problem. “We have gender equality in the law [...but not] in the market. But when it comes to media, most newspapers do not work according to principles of gender equality.” Still, within the Arab media small improvements can be seen. Batrawi pointed to an increased coverage of violence against women and Amina Shafiq, veteran Al-Ahram journalist and member of the National Council for Woman, described, in an interview with Al-Masry Al-Youm, the image of women in Egyptian media as being “better than ever before but still less than what we need." "We need more transparency, awareness and diversity, and [we need] to tackle all the problems which have been neglected,” said Shafiq. Hanan Youssef, chairman of the Arab Organization for International Cooperation, approved of the idea of working on gender issues on both an Arab and international level. “There are many commonalities among different societies. This is a global problem and we need to exchange our experiences,” she said. Youssef described the document released as “a good procedural guide for those who work in media.” Participants at the conference considered the document an important step forward and hoped that this would reaffirmed through its use by civil society and private and governmental media institutions, through activities enhancing training programs for journalists based on a gender approach, as well as using modern technology to improve the image of women both in the media and in general. They also asserted the importance of producing a guide to measure the gender gap, and cooperation with the Arab League in integrating the issue of gender into its different media productions and activities.
