A workshop on “Empowerment of Women through Media” was organised by the Affirmative Action & Equal Opportunity Project (AAEO) Cell of Tezpur University, in collaboration with the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism, TU, and the Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI) through its new chapter in Assam. The workshop was funded by Tezpur University and the ICSSR.
 
DAY I -- April 24, 2008
 
The cool weather with occasional showers was ideal for the first ever major venture of the NWMI in Assam. Two senior NWMI members, Ammu Joseph and Kalpana Sharma, along with Teresa Rehman, co-ordinator of the Assam Chapter of the NWMI, were present as resource persons. Since the NWMI does not have funds of its own, the best way to collaborate with other institutions and organizations is by sharing its rich resource pool.
 
Several members of the NWMI from different parts of the country sent in their reports and articles on gender-related issues that were copied onto a CD and distributed among workshop participants, including students of the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism, for future reference. The NWMI members from different parts of the country who obliged by sending their articles includes Laxmi Murthy, Rajashree Dasgupta, Freny Manekshaw, Charumati Supraja, Meena Menon, Ammu Joseph, Kalpana Sharma and M. Radhika

The workshop began at 2 pm to enable students from various departments in the university, other than MCJ, to participate.
As a result, the visiting NWMI members had a welcome opportunity to make a quick trip to the Kaziranga National Park in the morning. Due to time constraints, we did not go inside the park but we still managed to spot five one-horned rhinoceroses from a couple of different viewpoints on the highway leading to Kaziranga. We had our own light moments when Kalpana and Ammu were caught on camera counting the rhinos.
 
On the way, we also stopped at a tea estate and talked to women workers who had come out for a tiffin break. It was shocking to see how little has changed in their work conditions.  The women wore no protective footwear and showed us their home-made solution to deal with leeches which attached themselves to their legs. Kalpana made friends with little Sylvester, the constantly smiling son of a tea worker. The brief interlude in the morning was refreshing and we were all set for the inaugural session at 2 pm.
 
After the initial round of felicitations with the traditional Assamese towel, ‘Ghamocha,’ and gifts of wooden rhinos, the Vice-Chancellor of Tezpur University, Professor Mihir Kanti Chaudhuri (a scientist of national repute), gave the inaugural address. He emphasised the importance of such a workshop in a fledgling university like TU and on the need to evolve a gender-sensitive campus. He also spoke of the Women’s Studies Research Centre which is coming up in the central university.
 
Chief Guest Ammu Joseph highlighted the fact that there are several aspects to the theme of gender and media: the representation of women and men, and coverage of events/issues of particular concern and relevance to both, in media content; women’s access to the media as media professionals (especially their access to decision-making within media organisations); women’s access to and relationship with the media as citizens and audiences; and the impact on women of laws and policies relating to the media and communication as well as other media-related trends and developments at the macro level. 

She also made the point that gender, whether in the media or otherwise, is not exclusively a women’s issue, since the construction of femininity and masculinity are closely linked. 
 
Posing the question:  why bother about the media?  she pointed out that the media are increasingly playing the role once played by family, community, religion and formal education:  not only disseminating information and knowledge, but also shaping values and norms, moulding attitudes and behaviour, and influencing the very process of living.

She pointed out that the status of women in northeast India is not different from that of women elsewhere in the country, notwithstanding some local differences. Here, too, we find the same exclusion from political and social decision-making which indicate that women here also have an inferior position in society in comparison to men. She said that, apart from the patriarchal tribes of Nagaland, Mizoram, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh, even in the matrilineal society of Meghalaya and in Manipur where women have a conspicuous presence in the economic life, women are strongly discriminated against in politics and face much domestic violence.
 
Dr. Mahanta also pointed out that the participation of women in administrative, managerial and political decision-making in the Northeastern states is very much below the norm of 33 percent mentioned by the UNDP GEM measure as indicative of women’s enhanced status in society. In the name of ethnic identity social policing and protectionism of women is now quite common, restricting women’s movement and activities. Some of the manifestations of tensions introduced by modernism are the emergence of secessionist insurgency movements and ethnic identity conflicts and the accompanying social and state violence.
 
The next round of setting the context was introduced by Meghali Senapati, Assistant Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She spoke on the various aspects of patriarchy in a simple, playful and easily comprehensible manner. Her session energised the participants as they were engaged in an animated round of discussions on what they thought of patriarchy, the stereotypical roles assigned to men and women, and ways to overcome some of these stereotypes.
 
During the next session on “Empowerment through media,” Saibal Moitra, an advocate practising in the Tezpur Court,  spoke on “Constitutional Equality and Economic Justice,” going into detail on some laws relating to women's rights.  He also shared his ideas on how women can make use of legislation to claim their rights.
 
In the next session Meenakshi Bhuyan of the Tezpur District Mahila Samiti spoke about the evolution and current work of the NGO.  She was accompanied by two women victims of domestic violence of different kinds. On condition of anonymity, and with a special request that they not be photographed, both narrated their experiences of abuse by their husbands and in-laws. The young students were obviously appalled as they listened to a middle-aged, middle-class lady narrating her tale of woe.
 
The participants then got a glimpse of the changes taking place in the media in the Northeast through the power point presentation by Teresa Rehman of the NWMI, who is Principal Correspondent (Northeast India) for Tehelka. The presentation, titled “Turning the Media Wheel for Women: Reporting from a conflict-torn region,” highlighted the challenges of reporting from this region, especially when it comes to women – as subjects or reporters.
 
She also pointed out the typically skewed reportage of the region in "mainstream" media which reinforces the image of the region as backward, underdeveloped and unsafe. She spoke about the vibrant local media in the region and their portrayal of women, often simply emulating the mainstream media. Not many women have access to media, nor are there any organised forums for women or attempts to create gender sensitivity within media houses, she said.
 
She highlighted fresh ways to look at things and on possible devices to turn the media wheel for women, possibly by allotting more space to gender-sensitive and positive stories. She cited the examples of Khabar Lahariya, a rural newsletter from Uttar Pradesh, which has been highlighting problems faced by women, and the Navodayam magazine in rural Andhra Pradesh, produced by about a dozen semi-educated women who gather, write, edit, lay out, print, publish and distribute the Telugu publication all by themselves. According to her, media schools can also conduct independent surveys, analyses and research, publish articles in mainstream media, make low-budget films on pertinent issues and reach out to more women, increase the frequency of newsletters or lab papers, set up a campus radio and perhaps involve women from neighbouring villages in making interesting, relevant and useful programmes.
 
With all these points to ponder, the workshop wound up for the day with dinner.
 
DAY II – 25 April, 2008

The first half of the day consisted of an informal exchange between the students and Ammu Joseph and Kalpana Sharma. The students asked questions about working in mainstream media, they complained about the neglect of the Northeast in mainstream media, asking why this happened, and they commented on the frivolous nature of much of the media.

Thereafter they took a break for lunch and then the next session started with Ammu Joseph speaking on “Getting Gender out of the Ghetto” and Kalpana Sharma speaking on “Indian Mainstream Media – its Obsessions and Preoccupations.
 
Ammu sought to illustrate the need to integrate gender (and development as a whole) into "mainstream" media coverage instead of continuing to think of it as a "soft," niche issue that can be left to special interest journalists, while "real," "serious" journalists focus on the important, "hard" stuff.  She did this by talking about some of the gender dimensions of media staples such as politics and economics, conflicts and disasters.
 
She began by talking about media coverage of the annual budget, pointing out that, despite the introduction of the term "gender budgeting" into public discourse during the presentation of the 2005-06 union budget by Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, most journalists covering the budget do not seem to have done the necessary background work to understand what it was all about.

She then turned to media coverage of disasters, drawing on the experience of the 2004 tsunami to highlight the gendered impact of so-called natural disasters.  According to her, "Despite the well-documented gender differences in the impact of disasters, and despite the fact that women and children constitute the majority of victims seen in the media’s representation of disasters -- natural and otherwise -- media coverage of recurring disasters across the world continues to be, by and large, gender-blind."

"The media need to recognise more fully that even 'hard news' coverage, including the reporting of disasters, can actually benefit from gender consciousness," she said.  "The bonus is that the special stories that can result from gender awareness not only serve a valuable purpose in the aftermath of such events but they are also likely to stand out as more memorable than others in the customary media blitz that generally follows."

According to her, the same is the case with violent conflict, another staple of media fare.  But here, too, there is little reportage based on the experiences, perceptions and opinions of women in conflict areas -- neither those involved in the conflict nor those affected by it.  She pointed out that this is true of the experiences, struggles and opinions of women in several troubled areas in the north-east, despite the fact that both individual women and women’s groups have played significant roles in efforts to build and maintain peace. 
 
She highlighted a recent exception to the rule: the “nude protest” by a group of Manipuri women in 2004 to condemn the alleged rape and custodial death of 32-year-old Thangjam Manorama by some armed forces personnel.  Neither the government nor the media could ignore that, for obvious reasons, she said.As a result of the media’s general neglect of women in conflict zones, citizens in other parts of the country are deprived of a real understanding of the nightmare of life in such areas, including several parts of the north-east, where the ordinary, innocent people who constitute the majority of the population are caught between the rock of militancy and the hard place of the military.
 
Turning to politics -- another media staple – she acknowledged that the quantum of coverage given to women in the “public” political arena (particularly party and electoral politics) has marginally improved in recent times, if only because of the news-making qualities (for better or for worse) of some prominent female politicians.  However, she said, the gender angle to political coverage cannot be restricted to reporting on the sayings and doings of colourful, quotable women leaders, occasional articles on women in Panchayat Raj institutions, and the customary he said-she retorted style of reportage on the enduring, unseemly tug of war over the proposed reservations for women in Parliament and Legislative Assemblies.  According to her, this is all the more so because such coverage remains largely uninformed by independent inquiry into the position, role, experiences and opinions of rank and file women within political parties, organisations and structures. 
 
She ended by saying that young people entering the media have a vital role to play in challenging and helping to change conventional definitions of news, traditional hierarchies of news values, and outdated concepts about what is hard and soft, serious and trivial, important and marginal in media content.
 
The next speaker, Kalpana Sharma, speaking on “Indian Mainstream Media – its Obsessions and Preoccupations,” suggested that issues like gender, or the coverage of the Northeast in the mainland/mainstream media, needed to placed within the context of the country’s economics and politics and where the media is located within those.  She outlined the changes in the media and its preoccupations over the last six decades and pointed out that what was happening with gender, or an area like the northeast, represented the general trend in the media, which is to be concerned only about selling and not really about “news.” 
 
This was followed by a tea break. The concluding session featured a series of powerpoint presentations by students who had conducted surveys on various topics specifically for the workshop:  “Gender Issues on Campus,” “Human Rights and Women Rights,” “Gender Sensitive Policing” and “Average Indian Opinion of the Northeast Women – Breaking the Stereotype.”
A panel comprising Dr. B K Danta (Professor of English, Tezpur University), Dr. Madhumita Borbora (English Department, Tezpur University ), Dr Laxmi Goswami, a Tezpur-based gynaecologist and social worker, Dr Joyshankar Hazarika, Principal, Darrang College, Tezpur, as well as Kalpana Sharma and Ammu Joseph,  responded to the presentations with comments and suggestions.  The valedictory session included the presentation of mementoes to the students who had made the presentations.  The concluding  speech was delivered by Nandarani Chaudhuri, Education Officer, AAEO Cell, Tezpur University.

Teresa Rehman
Coordinator
Network of Women in Media, Assam
(with inputs from Kalpana Sharma and Ammu Joseph)

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