KARACHI: With elections 2018 only a few weeks away, Uks, a research, resource and publication centre dedicated to the cause of gender equality and women’s development, has called for a united effort to initiate a conscious, concerted work to produce gender-neutral and gender-sensitive media content. “Do we see women or their issues being taken up by the media? Do we see women as experts, opinion-makers and commentators discussing these issues? Do we get in-depth reports on how women are going to contest elections in areas where previously they were not allowed to vote? Or, an analysis of how did women parliamentarians of the last five years perform in the upper and lower houses? The answer is a big NO,” said a press release on Thursday.

“If one goes by the 24/7 news channels or even most of the print media, then elections in Pakistan are being run by men, for men and of men. Women only appear when there is a mention of alleged monetary corruption by a political party/ies or moral corruption of a leader heading another party, or some dispute over tickets distribution. All the time and space is taken up by content that are important, but overly discussed. Why? Though there is now a sizable number of women anchors and newscasters, men continue to be the ones who select and decide what all is carried as news and views. Hence, it is easy to sideline ‘women’s’ issues,” it added.

According to the research centre, women — who constitute almost half of the country’s population somehow remain under- and poorly represented. “It is against this scenario that Uks has called for a united effort to initiate a conscious, concerted work to produce gender-neutral and gender-sensitive media content,” it said.

This is part of its yearlong initiative, Gender Equality in Media, launched in May. The advocacy and rights-based group aims to utilise its experience of sensitising the media in Pakistan by activating the first-of-its-kind Women’s Media Complaint Cell (WMCC) for more gender-aware and proactive media consumers who would play their role in ending sexism in news media.

The centre aims to achieve this with the help of communication tools; a media gender equality sco­recard, #EndMediaSexism Inst­agram campaign and ‘This is NOT OK’ letter-writing campaign, to engage the media producers and consumers to take forward the campaign to conclusively address sexism in news media in Pakistan.

The initiative is aimed to enhance media’s role as key influencer in creating positive perceptions on gender-equality. The centre would be monitoring the media from July 1 to Aug 15 to analyse and discuss absence or presence of gender-balance, equality, biases as well as misogynistic content.

This initiative will focus on sexism in news media. Universities and media houses across Pakistan would also be engaged in these awareness-raising campaigns.

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2018