Day: February 23, 2010

It’s the new song by  Akon and Keri Hilson featuring The Soweto Gospel Choir as a charity single to benefit underprivileged African youth and it also means much as the continent is three months away from the historical moment. Go Africa!!!!

The Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) in 2005 found only one woman for every four men who are appear as subjects in the world’s radio, television and print news. Expert opinion in the news was overwhelmingly male. Only 10% of news stories focused centrally on women. In November 2009, the media was monitored in 127 countries to update the 2005 report. Will the preliminary findings of the 2009 Global Media Monitoring Project show any change?

As part of the 54th session of UN Commission on the Status of Women review of Beijing+15, preliminary results of the GMMP 2009/2010 will be launched at a panel event.The WACC/UNIFEM event is scheduled for 2 March in New York.

There will be panel that will discuss the progress towards fair and balanced representation of gender and women in the media, and debate on what should be done by the media, governments and gender activists to make progress.

But in my country you have women like Kabakumba Winnie Matsiko who are spokespersons but their first mandate is to serve the powers that be. Instead of pushing for policies that are more meaningful to women, they want cheap popularity with their ‘maker by even going to extremes to accuse a parliamentary committee of killing a businessman who had not accounted for public funds he spent.

I will be waiting for the results from this research and I hope that one day Ugandan women will be well represented in the media. For now our media is mostly cluttered with empty talk by women in yellow dresses which is difficult for the media to ignore.

Most reports often show women as victims or in the cases like of faking pregnancy, the women are portrayed as monsters and without shame without reporting root causes of such issues.

You can follow the project and its results here.