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Access of women to media

Omen's participation and access to the media was the theme of a meeting of leading media experts and representatives of women NGOs from all over the world that was organized by the UN and UNESCO in Beirut this week. The meeting aimed at reviewing policy issues; access, employment and decision-making, content, and impact of ICTs on media professionals and media content. The meeting that was convened by the UN Division for the Advancement of Women, the UN Department of Public Information and UNESCO's Division for the Development of Communication, was intended to assist the work of the UN Commission on the Status of Women that is in charge to prepare its 47th session in March 2003 when it will consider the theme "Participation and access of women to the media, and ICTs and their impact on and use as an instrument for the advancement and empowerment of women". The "Women and media" section, being one of the 12 critical areas of concern in the Beijing Platform for Action, clearly recognised the potential of the media to make far greater contribution to the advancement of women. Although policy frameworks and strategic targets for the enhancement of women's careers in media have been shown to produce positive results in a number of settings, the increasingly global and commercial structures of media institutions do not sit easily with the adoption of gender sensitive measures. The experts argued that the nature and the scale of women's continued marginalisation in the media, allied with the difficulty of establishing effective systems of accountability in an increasingly commercial and globalising media market place, meant that no single strategy can accomplish a great deal on its own. The expert group meeting examined experiences and approaches that have proven successful in specific contexts, and will soon publish its recommendations for policies and actions directed at various levels -national, regional and international. Taking account of the rapid pace of technological change in the area of media and communications, the expert group meeting tried to look to the future in an attempt to anticipate new challenges and trends. The findings and conclusions of the expert group meeting will also provide the basis for a report of the UN Secretary-General on this theme early in 2003. India is a land of diversity with different linguistic, ethnic, religious, groups and has a unique feature of 'unity in diversity'. Indian culture is distinct and each ethnic group has the liberty to maintain their religious identity. Among the different religious groups in India Muslims constitute the largest minority group i.e. 13% of the India's total population. Muslim society of India is very heterogeneous in nature because of the influence of caste system, which has led to Indianisation of Islam. Indian Muslims are facing various socio-economic problems in today's age, which has to be understood in terms of their educational background. We want to emphasise through this discussion the problem of the educational backwardness of Muslim women. There are various reasons for Muslim women being educationally backward which include economic, social and cultural causes. In general, women are the most vulnerable section of our Indian society due to its patriarchal nature. Muslim women suffer more because of the patriarchal nature of Islam and are not given enough freedom and hardly have access to higher education, though even the primary level education is not easily accessible to them. In the walled city of Delhi, the sad plight which is not highlighted is the fact in Urdu medium schools, buildings are in a dilapidated condition and without basic infrastructure like drinking water. Students sit on mats whether its summers or winters, toilets are in a bad condition or are unavailable, and the behaviour of the teachers towards their wards is very bad. The girl child is abused by the female teachers who force them to perform their household chores. They come to school, take the attendance and then go to perform the household work. This is exploitation in the name of imparting education. They have more emphasis on Quranic education which is given at home to the girls and thus they are discouraged to go outside the home in the name of education. Match fixing within the kinship creates distraction among young girls and they loose the zeal to achieve something through education and thus they themselves do not have academic interest. If at all they are fortunate enough to go to a good school, they are often discouraged to go for higher education, especially overseas. The most important reason is that there is difficulty in finding educated groom if the girl becomes highly educated. The problem is even more severe if the girl has studied overseas therefore. There is often misconception regarding the "purity" of girls if they have studied in Universities, or have traveled abroad. Women are conditioned to such an exploitative situation in their lives and accept the laws passed by religious leaders. The only solution to liberate them from the shackles of ignorance, illiteracy, exploitation is through education. -Internet