Feminist and Gender Perspectives in Literature on Media & Development

"...changes towards gender equality in the media sector are small and slow."

This paper offers a literature review on gender and feminist perspectives in media development by examining how - and how often - gender issues are addressed. It addresses what it sees as an "under-researched topic" despite the fact that gender equality is a key development goal within the field of international media assistance.

The research review forms part of a series of publications initiated by Forum Media and Development (fome) and the MEDAS 21 post-graduate programme on international media development assistance, and is designed to inform practitioners and researchers about key debates, evidence, and emerging issues in international media development. The series seeks to provide concise analyses of current research, both academic and non-academic, and to discuss its practical relevance for international media assistance.

This paper is based on a screening of seven books on media and development published between 2008 and 2019. As explained by the author, "these books incorporate, to different degrees, two approaches to media and development that are often intertwined in practice: media for development, which refers to media mainly as instruments to reach development goals, and media development which aims at building up an independent media sector by strengthening the media themselves." The research focuses mainly on academic literature, although it includes a brief review of grey literature (comprising research and analyses produced by organisations or consultants outside of traditional academic publishing), with a particular focus on "interesting empirical studies and policy-related documents."

The author conducted a word count of "gender" and "women" in the reviewed books and also engaged in a qualitative review to explore how specific meanings are attributed to terms. It shows that only 2% of pages are devoted to gender and feminist issues and that references to these two terms are mainly framed as development issues in narrow and heteronormative ways. The findings show that the books reviewed had "quite superficial and narrow views of gender inequality in the media development sector. The majority of frames depict gender inequality as a problem limited to development, and women as passive, victimized or reduced to their reproductive role." There are, however, some exceptions, where gender issues are discussed as part of broader societal norms, depicting women as agents of change.

In summary, the following statement from another similar research paper substantiates the author's findings: "women are only mentioned tangentially in literature on media development specifically. Very little research has been done in this area and a review of the literature shows that the field is male dominated and mostly gender blind. Literature on media development often treats women as an afterthought, for example by listing women as one of the marginalised and disadvantaged groups that should be focused on."

Specific key findings highlighted in the paper include:

• In addition to scientific literature on gender in media development being sparse, it is mostly contributed to by feminist scholars through dedicated chapters; it is not addressed as a cross-cutting issue.
• However, feminist perspectives on media for development have brought forth the importance of considering multi-layered (both material/embodied and immaterial/symbolic) processes of (self) identification of "target groups" in media development projects, which influence the lived experiences of the groups and individuals.
• The emerging field of African Gender Media Studies is shown to be the most varied and promising field of research with respect to the assessment of gender perspectives in media development, particularly on the African continent. The paper states that this field could "contribute to the broadening of media development scholarship, through, for instance, the disruption of fixed categorisations and essentialisations often present in 'Western' ways of thinking. Gender perspectives in African Media Studies also bring the concept of intersectionality to our attention."
• Even though efforts in adopting an intersectional approach have been made (e.g., by Internews), there is a need for more action research to better understand the concept and render it applicable in the context of media (for) development.
• Grey literature on women in media (development) is abundant, providing important empirical data, e.g. through the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP). In particular, grey literature and research on information and communication technologies (ICTs) for development is contributing to the body of research on media, gender, and development. However, the large number of publications offered by various (media) development actors need to be read critically, taking into account their particular normative conditions of production.

Based on the review and the gaps in research on gender in media development it exposes, the author suggests a list of topics for further investigation by media development scholars. These include:

• Gendered participation in ICTs and artificial intelligence (AI), beyond questions of access;
• Institutional discourses and practices involving gender in media development;
• Application of qualitative, participatory, or action research designs to test and innovate media (for) development projects;
• Masculinities and non-binary gender identities in media development; and
• Development of an intersectional framework for media development scholarship and practice.

The paper also offers some key questions that practitioners might want to ask themselves. They include, for example:

• Do our assessments consider the specific conditions, needs, and relationships of all the people we work with?
• Who is excluded from our projects? Why? And how can this be changed? Should it be changed? What would the consequences be?
• How do our activities affect the relationships between men and women, between generations, between rural and urban dwellers, between the educated and the less educated, etc.?