Nearly 60 women journalists from across India and an equal number from different parts of Kerala met in Kozhikode, Kerala, for the Eights National Conference of the Network of Women in Media, India. The various regional networks were busy with a variety of activities during 2009. Following are some of the highlights of the networks present:  

Pune Network Report:

In 2009, the NWM, Pune, which is an active group of journalists from the Marathi and English press, brought out a special Diwali issue (Ank) with writings by various women journalists. It was a way for women journalists to have their say, they said. The Diwali Ank is a Marathi literary tradition that celebrated its centenary in 2009. In the coming year, they are also planning a women’s film festival in Pune.    

Andhra Pradesh Network Report:

After the Manipur annual meeting in 2009, the AP group conducted a seminar on paid journalism where it invited professors and media trade unions. The AP group submitted a memorandum on the same issue to the Press Council members and also a letter to the Editor’s Guild. In figuring out how to get reactivated, the lack of resources was acutely felt. The issue of AP journalists being divided into two unions was also brought up, as that was felt to impact the atmosphere and participation at the Press Club where the AP NWM used to regularly meet on Saturdays.  

The Navodaya group presented its report of activities in AP. They received the Laadli award for gender sensitive reporting for writing on the rape of two girls and following up the cases. In the last year, they noticed a lot of trafficking of young children as domestic workers in the Anantpur district – they reported on it and complained to the district headquarters. In February, which is usually the season for child marriages, they brought out a special issue on child marriage, interviewing children whose marriages had been stopped and how they had benefitted with education. The group has faced a shortage of funds so only three of the 11 reporters (six of them having completed their degrees through the Open University) could make it to the Kerala meeting.          

Bengal Network Report:

The Bengal group remains well connected on the e-group, exchanging information and different points of view and enriching themselves through their association with NWMI. The latter part of 2009 witnessed a spurt of activities. Thanks to the efforts of Ranjita, in September 2009, members met journalist Laura Ungar who covers health and medicine for The Courier-Journal who was visiting Kolkata to write an investigative report about cervical cancer. In her interaction with the members of the Kolkata chapter, Laura, who has two decades of experience in health journalism, dwelt on her experience of covering women’s healthcare.  

Since the Bengal Network includes print and electronic media, Ananya who made her documentary Understanding Trafficking under the aegis of International Association of Women in Radio &Television, proposed a tie-up between Bengal Net and IAWRT. It would jointly conduct gender sensitization workshops and film festivals featuring women filmmakers and gender issues in the days ahead. This is still being discussed. As part of the process, a workshop on gender sensitivity in reporting was held in St Xavier’s College.  Manjira made a short presentation and interacted with students, along with other panelists. In discussing the role the print media can play in sensitizing readers towards gender, one fact clearly emerged: due to the convergence that has taken place in the media, print media is gradually getting sidetracked vis-à-vis television (soaps) and advertorials.   

Monitoring who really makes the news under Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) provided us with a platform at a collaborative attempt to participate in the day-long monitoring of news in November. There were several registrations, but ultimately, Aditi, Anju, Rajashri and Manjira from the network participated in what turned out to be fun and challenging. A re-think about the coding system of the GMMP was discussed.

The Bengal Network has not been able to increase membership substantially but efforts are seriously on to induct members, those working full-time or as independent media persons, into the Bengal Network’s fold.  

Kerala Network Report:

In the last six to eight months, the Kerala Network re-awakened itself to expand its membership and bring in more participation among the women in media in the state. In Kerala, most women journalists have worked individually to force their presence and influence in the news that appears. The last few months have been hectic with groups in Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode and Kochi meeting in their respective centres to work out the programme for the annual NWMI meeting.   

The Thiruvananthapuram Network met weekly to stay connected. The coordinated and ensured that they were among the audience in large numbers to cheer when a member’s play was being staged. When somebody was organizing an exhibition, they were there to help in arranging the work for the show. The group organized a preview of Sahitya Akademi winner Sreebala K Menon’s Malayalam short, ‘Bandhi Bojanam' which delves deep into the plight of women from an oppressed class. Though a maiden venture, Sreebala has transferred all her professional experience as associate director to popular film-maker Sathyan Anthikkad to portray the social divisions based on caste.  

The Kozhikode group meanwhile was busy running from pillar to post to get the annual NWMI meeting in place with many youngsters doing the major running about. A seminar on Indian Penal Code 375/376 was organized in which Kerala High Court Advocate Vincent Panikulangara who has filed a petition in the High Court demanding striking down the relevant provisions of IPC and reopening cases of rape since 1978 where ‘consent’ or ‘wife’ was the defence.

The anomalies between different laws, with regard to the definition of ‘wife’ and age of consent were discussed. The Kerala Union of Working Journalists in its annual meeting at Kozhikode had organized a seminar on ‘Portrayal of women in media’ in which several members had taken part.  

In Kochi, which incidentally has largest number of women reporters in Kerala, a beginning has been made with several meetings to discuss the NWMK meet.  

Bangalore Network Report:

The Bangalore group has had over 600 posts on its e-group this past year, meetings almost every month, and an addition of seven new members. Most meetings have a presence of five to ten members.  

The first meeting after the last annual meet was when Kalpana visited Bangalore. That set a pace, a whole lot of things got discussed at the meeting - a number of nitty gritty details of working out the revamping of the website and the use of network funds were discussed.  

NWMB members visited Karunashraya in Bangalore on 1^st April 2009 and Mahila Samakhya’s  programme  Madhyam Manthan  in Mysore district, their only initiative on rural Community Radio. The members interacted with Sangha members, discussing their media skills. Some news stories were written. 

After the Delhi High Court judgement repealing Section 377 on 2nd July 2009, NWMB organized a meeting on 18th July at the Press Club. Guest speakers included Akaimma from Sangama, an NGO working on rights of sexual minorities and Arvind Narain from the Alternate Law Forum. This Public Interest Litigation by Delhi-based NGO Naz Foundation challenged the constitutional validity of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (IPC), which criminalizes what is described as ‘unnatural offences’, including consensual sexual acts between adults in private.  

NWMI was the India co-ordinator for the 4th Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP). Ammu Joseph led and directed this effort which involved several non-NWMI members as well. It was a gargantuan but challenging and interesting venture. (details about GMMP are available on the website).  

On Nov 26 2009, the Bangalore network hosted guest speaker Sheela Ramnathan, Director of the Human Rights Law Network.  Sheela Ramanathan's thought provoking lecture on violence against women was focused on the Domestic Violence Act and other laws and judgements. That the DV Act included all relatives of the women was great news. The issue of ‘misuse’ of the law by women attempting to access property that was rightfully theirs, was also discussed.

On December 15th, Philomena Vincent, Director of Aikya, an NGO based in Raogudulur talked to Network members on Women in Panchayati Raj. Besides the focus on women in grassroot governance, she spoke about Aikya’s organic store, stocking medicinal oils and other products. Aikya was also involved in the pioneering Shodhini project, a network of groups working on traditional medicines. 

During the floods in North Karnataka affecting 15 districts, NWMB tried to organise a fact finding but it did not work out. One of the members, however, went to some areas and in collaboration with some NGOs working there managed to visit some villages. 

At the same time, NWMB members Ammu and Meera have been working on the NWMI website along with other members and Tannu, Anita and Susheela on the AJ award. 

Mumbai Network Report:

Though much of the activity of the Mumbai group has been online, it has also organized some meetings and initiated action.   

Soon after the Manipur meeting, in collaboration with the Mumbai Press Club, the Mumbai network organized a meeting in late March to felicitate Alifiya Khan, the new Anupama Jayaraman award winner from Hindustan Times, Mumbai, and release NWMI’s Imphal statement.  Members who attended the Imphal meeting shared their experiences of the North East.  

On April 25^th, a meeting was held at the Press Club by NWM Mumbai, with several Mumbai women’s groups to discuss the sensational way in which the media covered the rape of an international student studying in the city. The meeting lead to a discussion of what the Network could do in such a case. Following the meeting, two network members initiated a dialogue with senior Mumbai editors and held workshops with the staff of two leading Mumbai dailies on gender sensitive sexual assault reportage. This eventually led to Kalpana Sharma editing a book on gender sensitive reporting, “Missing: Half the Story, Journalism as if Gender Matters” to which several network members have contributed essays.  

Some Mumbai network members participated in the NWMI-GMMP 2010 exercise of monitoring local media in November 2009. 

On November 30^th, NWM along with the American Centre and Press Club hosted a discussion with Dr Suraiya Baluch, an expert on sexual harassment, on how the media covers sexual harassment and how it ideally should. Insights were provided on how the ‘Take Back the Night’ campaign is carried out on various US campuses and how immigrant women face sexual harassment. 

In December, three network members were involved in making presentations to the Bioethics and Gender School held at TISS, organised by the Wellcome Trust, U.K. NWMI members tried to provide a gender perspective on the media coverage of health. 

National Networking

Discussion on network-related issues was also carried out in three small groups, with each group presenting a report of its discussions. Areas of consensus were arrived at on the final day.  The main points that came up for discussion at the NWM- Kerala meeting with regard to the network were:  

1. Vision and mission of the Network, current and future.

Most members agreed that the network was an effective support group to women journalists. It provided a sense of community, identity and provided a platform to women journalists. Its loose, flexible, organizational structure helped it in remaining a loose, informal network that supported women journalists and raised pertinent media issues from time to time.   

2. Structure of Network

The debate about whether the Network should be formal or informal, what the membership criteria should be, and the mode of functioning came up in the Kozhikode meeting as well.

Most members agreed that the network should not be registered at this time but it should be an option we could work towards in the future. However, bank accounts could be opened at the individual chapter level to facilitate work. There could be more of a structure established at the local group level – with two coordinators who coordinate local activities and coordinate with national network as well, so that the burden does not fall on any one person. The issue of membership, as to who can be a member and be added to the e-list also came up, as did the issue of membership fees. It was felt that flexibility and the overall spirit of the Network must guide decisions taken by the chapters.  

4. Finances - local and national

The example of the Pune group was shared as to how funds could be mobilized. They set up an organization under the Shop and Establishments Act to bring out the Diwali Ank. This meant that they could keep their advertising money in a bank account and save it as well. It was also decided that every chapter would contribute to national activities such as the website revamp and maintenance and the Anupama Jayaraman Award.  

5. Activities at local level and national level

The idea of the network functioning as a skill-building centre – developing training modules on specific issues for the media also found a lot of takers. Some felt the need for more coordinated campaigns on issues related to the media and a faster response time as a network to media-related events.          

6. Website revamp

As decided in previous NWMI annual meetings, the website www.nwmindia.org was in the process of being revamped by Mapunity, a Bangalore-based firm. Since the main purpose of the revamp was to shift to an online Content Management System that would allow uploads and management from different geographic locations, more volunteers were sought for the purpose. 

7. Anupama Jayaraman Award for young journalists

It was felt that what was needed is quality applicants. Blind announcements do not work in bringing in quality applicants and network members need to get more involved and keep a look out for young talented women journalists in print across all languages and personally nominate them for the award.