Gender and communication policy: Struggling for space Margaret Gallagher 2011 Introduction In late 2009, a heated debate erupted in the pages of the Spanish national daily El País. The controversy centered on an article in the paper’s Opinion section by writer and university professor Enrique Lynch. The article, ‘Revanchismo de género’ (‘Gender revenge’), took as its starting point an Iberoamerican campaign to promote ‘zero tolerance’ towards violence against women. Critiquing the campaign and its accompanying slogan, Lynch denounced what he perceived as the Spanish government’s ‘implicitly feminist’ equality policy. By favoring women over men, he argued, this approach contributed to gender violence. In fact, he claimed, women themselves bear responsibility for male violence. First, ignorant and brutal men are raised by women - their mothers. Second, in popular music, women assert their ‘rights’ by taunting and discarding men mercilessly. Citing music videos by three female artists, Lynch concluded his article with the prediction that three new videos like these would result in a three-fold increase in the monthly murder rate of women. Following publication of Lynch’s article, El País received several hundred phone calls and letters of complaint. At issue was the question of whether the article – regarded by many as a justification of gender violence and thus a potential incitement to further violence against women - should have been published. By giving space to Lynch’s views, had the paper’s Opinion editor correctly balanced the principle of freedom of expression against the newspaper’s internal guidelines, the Code of Ethics of Spain’s professional journalism association FAPE, and the Council of Europe’s Resolution on the Ethics of Journalism (which encompasses not just news reporting but also the expression of opinion)? Indeed, was this article in contravention of Spain’s 2004 law on the prevention of gender violence, one of whose goals is to strengthen ‘preventive awareness’ through the media? The questions raised by the controversy in a general sense may seem familiar. They highlight dilemmas that arise from competing and sometimes conflicting aspects of media and communication policy. However, this particular debate – raising fundamental issues of gender power relations, mobilizing not just individual women but women’s associations among its protagonists, employing arguments informed by feminist theorizing and statistics on gender violence, and conducted in a political environment supportive of women’s rights – says much about the contemporary state of play regarding gender issues and media policy. In

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Spain, such a debate could not have happened twenty, even ten years earlier.1 In many countries, such a debate would be still unimaginable. Historically, feminists have been slow to engage with the domain of media and communication policy. Although the earliest preoccupations of the women’s movement – equal access to media employment and decision-making, fair representation in media content – were clearly dependent on policy determinations, these issues were often presented as micro-level problems, stripped of their relationship to a broader policy context. Equally, policy frameworks have not readily accommodated gender concerns. Schooled in a traditionally ‘gender-blind’ worldview, not just policy-makers themselves, but other key actors in the arena of media and communication policy-making – politicians, business and media elites, academics and indeed civil society activists - have been slow to understand or accept that policy-making is seldom gender neutral, and that policy choices may impact differently on women and on men. The arguments in this chapter are inspired by feminist scholarship, one of whose principal goals is to make women’s experience visible. Central in much of this scholarship are the concepts of gender and gender difference, considered as pivotal in the analysis of structures of power, the organization of social and cultural institutions, and systems of ideological authority.2 One of the contributions of feminist theory and activism, particularly over the past 15 years, has been to interrogate the opaque nature of the concepts ‘people’ or ‘the public’ (traditionally and implicitly defined as white, male, elite) that informs much policy-making. By highlighting the many distinct, overlooked groupings - the most fundamental, from a feminist standpoint, being that of women (a grouping which itself is highly differentiated) – that actually inhabit the spaces affected by policy, feminist analysis seeks to identify significant policy gaps and expand policy frameworks. In essence, this approach aims at the development of ‘gender-sensitive’ policy – policy that acknowledges the distinct economic and social positions of women and men, the gender relations that both determine and result from such positions, and the gender-specific priorities that arise from these positions and relations. It is an ambitious goal, far from realization. Yet looking back at the evolution of media and communication and policy debates, we can trace the ways in which gender has moved gradually from the outermost periphery of consideration to a position which requires acknowledgement - even though it frequently fails to achieve acceptance.

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This chapter will first examine the extent to which gender has intersected with media and communication at the global level since the 1970s, focusing on three milestones in international policy deliberations – the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO), the Fourth World Conference on Women, and the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). It will then analyze the difficulties in reconciling policies on gender equality and on media and communication, with reference to the concepts of gender mainstreaming and freedom of expression. Finally it will highlight the challenges posed by persistent policy gaps, the strategies used to circumvent resistance, and the obstacles that remain in securing a space for gender issues within media and communication policy frameworks.

From NWICO to WSIS, via Beijing In the mid-1970s two major global issues –the status of women, and the status of communication and information – became focal points of international debate. The World Conference for International Women’s Year, held in Mexico City in 1975, launched the United Nations (UN) Decade for Women. From the outset, there was recognition of the link between women’s status and the role of information and communication. The World Plan of Action adopted at the Mexico City conference characterized women’s lack of control over, or even access to, communication channels as both a symptom and a cause of their disadvantaged status globally. Issues of control and access – at the level of the nation-state, and specifically with reference to the imbalanced flow of information between countries of the North and South – were also at the heart of the debate that initiated calls for a New World Information and Communication Order. The International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems (the MacBride Commission), established by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to respond to the issues raised by NWICO’s proponents, began its work in December 1977. The UN Decade for Women was two years old. No woman was nominated to serve on the 16-member Commission; but when one of the original members withdrew, he was replaced by Betty Zimmerman, at that time Director of Radio Canada International. At her instigation, a research paper on women and communication (one, out of the 100 or so prepared for the Commission) was requested in the spring of 1979. The Commission met for the last time in November of that year. This last- minute grafting is evident in the MacBride Report, only one of whose 82 recommendations covers women’s communication needs and rights. There is no discussion of the situation of

3 women in relation to transnationalization, advertising, infrastructures, professional communicators, the formation of public opinion – all of which would have repaid analysis in terms of gender differences and relations. Instead, the ‘issue’ of women is collapsed into two pages on ‘equal rights for women’, as if these rights were unrelated to the other matters covered in the report. Although rudimentary in its analysis of the topic, the MacBride Commission is an early example of the significance of gender in the composition of policy and other decision- making bodies. It was largely due to the efforts of Betty Zimmerman that the issue of women and communication received any attention at all. Other key international policy documents of the time were silent on the matter. For example the Mass Media Declaration, adopted by the 20th UNESCO General Conference in 1978, though explicit on the subject of youth, ignored women.3 In 1980, UNESCO’s 21st General Conference adopted Resolution 4/19 on NWICO which inter alia called for measures to follow up the MacBride Report. There is no mention of women in the Resolution. Yet by 1980, the United Nations and UNESCO had published three international studies on women and communication media. The UN system had sponsored or co-sponsored at least twelve regional and international meetings on the theme. Each meeting had published a written report. In many of these there is ample evidence that the issues driving the debate on global information imbalance and information flows - under- representation, misrepresentation, marginalization, pluralism, communication rights, access and control – featured strongly in deliberations on women and communication. Evidently the two sets of discussion – one on women, the other on NWICO – were carried out simultaneously and voiced parallel concerns. Yet they never intersected. Feminist critics were quick to note the irony in the position of NWICO advocates who called for radical redistribution of communication resources internationally yet remained silent on internal inequalities. As Marilee Karl put it in her 1981 analysis of the NWICO debate: ‘the one characteristic of present information structures which is rarely mentioned, but which has far-reaching consequences, is that they are male-dominated’ (Karl 1981: 27 in Gallagher 1985: 43). It was to be in specifically women-centered international gatherings – particularly the conferences of the United Nations Decade for Women – that issues of gender bias in media and communication structures were analyzed. But here too there was a problem. Throughout the UN Decade (1975-1985), and indeed until the 1990s, communication issues were generally regarded – both within the UN system and the international women’s movement - as secondary in importance to problems such as poverty, health and education for women. Although occasional paragraphs and recommendations on

4 the media and communication were included in the policy documents of each of the first three UN conferences on women, it was not until 1995 that the strategic breakthrough came. The Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA), adopted unanimously by 189 Member States of the United Nations at the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, acknowledged the media as one of twelve ‘critical areas of concern’. No longer regarded as a preoccupation primarily of the urban middle-classes in the global North, the media were understood as playing a fundamental role in the perpetuation of unequal gender relations at all levels of society. This part of the BPfA – commonly known as ‘Section J’ - identified two overall strategic objectives: (a) to ‘increase the participation and access of women to expression and decision- making in and through the media and new technologies of communication’; and (b) to ‘promote a balanced and non-stereotyped portrayal of women in the media’ (see BPfA 1995: paragraphs 234-245). To achieve these objectives, the BPfA specified a far-reaching series of actions to be taken by governments, national and international media systems, advertizing organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and media professional associations.

The Beijing Conference marked a turning point in putting the issues around women, media and communication on the international agenda. It moved away from the concept of women’s ‘advancement’ (within taken-for-granted, existing structures) to that of women’s ‘empowerment’ (implying the potential to transform those structures). It introduced the concept of women as key actors in the field of media and information and communication technologies (ICTs) both at the level of technology and of policy development. The BPfA is still considered by many to be the comprehensive blueprint for women’s human rights in relation to media and communication, and it continues to be used as a key reference point in national and regional policy-making. Its use goes beyond mere citation – for example, in preambles to texts where it is enumerated as an endorsement for policy. It is also used in a substantive way, to delineate the content of policy actions. For instance, the Council of Europe Recommendation on Gender Equality Standards and Mechanisms, adopted in November 2007, includes an extensive section on media which calls for ‘full implementation of strategic objectives and actions’ contained in the BPfA, ‘in particular Section J (women and the media)’ 4. The decade after 1995 brought immense technological transformation in the form of digitalization and the Internet – new information and communication technologies that were barely discussed at the time of Beijing. Issues of ICT access, infrastructure and content, as well as the role of ICTs in the development of culture, and the impact of all these for

5 women’s rights and gender equality opened up new questions. When in 2000 a special session of the UN General Assembly conducted a five-year review of the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action (Beijing +5), information and communication technologies were identified as one of the major new issues that needed to be addressed. The World Summit on the Information Society, held in two phases (Geneva 2003, Tunis 2005), promised a global forum for debate on ICTs and development, and might have provided the opportunity to create a new set of policies for women and communication in the twenty-first century – one that applied the women’s human rights perspective of the BPfA to the gamut of issues thrown up by technological development. Thus, in 2003 the Women’s Networking Support Programme of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC WNSP), which had played a key role in women-centered ICT initiatives since Beijing, called for a WSIS approach acknowledging ‘that gender inequality is central in broader social inequality, builds a broader consensual platform, places people at the centre of development, respects diversity, calls for the use of ICTs for peace and human development, [and] places human rights and women’s human rights as central principles’ (APC WNSP 2003: np in Shade 2006: 8-9). These aspirations would not be met. Although well-organized at the Summit, women’s numerical presence was weak. The truth is that media and communication issues – Beijing’s Section J notwithstanding – still exist somewhat on the margins of the international women’s agenda. Indeed, the inclusion in 1995 of media and communication as one of the ‘critical areas of concern’ occurred at a late stage in the Beijing preparatory process, largely as the result of intensive lobbying by civil society organizations, particularly in Asia and Latin America. While over 30,000 women attended the NGO forum associated with the Beijing Conference, WSIS proved to be one of the major international events in which women were ‘least engaged ‘, the main reason being ‘lack of understanding of the process and appreciation of the relationship between the issues and the overall women’s struggle for gender equality’ (Cabrera-Balleza 2005: np). Added to this was the over-arching technology- driven and market-led paradigm that framed the WSIS debate, in which references to communication rights or bottom-up media discourse were perceived by some as an attempt to revive the unresolved issues of the NWICO debate – a debate whose spectre haunted all global media agendas since the 1980s when it resulted in the withdrawal of the United States and the United Kingdom from UNESCO.5 Negotiations during the Beijing Conference itself had led to the introduction of the phrase ‘consistent with freedom of expression’ throughout

6 the final text of Section J – a reminder that this is one of the most highly contested areas within international debate. The years after Beijing saw the widespread adoption of a neoliberal economic model and market-driven policies propelled by the World Trade Organization (WTO) – formally established in the same year as the Beijing Conference – which undoubtedly intensified resistance to actions aimed at redressing imbalances in the sphere of media, information and communication.6 However, the basic problem was the nature of the WSIS process which, despite its claims to be a ‘multi-stakeholder’ forum, privileged governments and corporate interests while limiting the input of civil society. Within this process, the heterogeneity of civil society itself had to be negotiated. Particularly in the second phase of the Summit, civil society positions were ‘characterized by difference, division, and questions of identity and representation‘ (Banks 2005: np). Gender equality advocates were not spared these divisions. From the outset, two separate groups – the WSIS Gender Caucus and the NGO Gender Strategies Working Group (GSWG)7 - represented gender interests. Although they worked well enough in tandem during the first phase of the Summit, differences between them were evident. The approach favored by the Gender Caucus, itself a multi-stakeholder grouping whose members included representatives of not just civil society but national governments, the private sector and the UN system, was problematic for many of those involved in the GSWG. The core members of the GSWG were drawn from long-established women and media NGOs (including ISIS International, the International Women’s Media Tribune Centre, Agencía Latinoamericana de Información-ALAI, African Women’s Development and Communications Network-FEMNET, and APC WNSP) whose advocacy had been important in the Beijing process. For them, working in this multi-stakeholder space meant ‘settling for the lowest common denominator - one that the CEO of Hewlett Packard and an NGO worker from the South could agree to’ (George 2004: np). Reflecting the sense of disillusion felt by many civil society activists after the Geneva phase of the Summit, the GWSG stepped back from the WSIS process during phase two, though individual members continued to work with both the Gender and the Civil Society Caucuses. The first phase of the WSIS concluded in Geneva in December 2003. A basic commitment to women’s empowerment and participation in the information society was included in paragraph 12 of the WSIS Declaration of Principles. However, the struggle for inclusion of this paragraph was laborious. In July 2003, Canada had proposed a paragraph on gender equality. Yet in the draft documents presented at the WSIS Preparatory Committee

7 session in September there was no sign of such a text. In what came to be known as the ‘T- shirt incident’, members of the GWSG entered the negotiating session wearing a T-shirt with the message ‘Draft WSIS Declaration has a missing paragraph’ displayed on the front, and the suggested Canadian wording for this paragraph on the back. The action – reminiscent of the tactics honed and used to increasing effect by NGOs during the UN women’s conferences – caught the attention of WSIS delegates. A ‘gender’ paragraph was eventually agreed, but with wording much weaker than that originally proposed by Canada.8 It was clear that WSIS would not recognize the principle of gender equality as fundamental to a just information society.9 Negotiations on gender issues ‘were subsequently to be conducted over a sentence here or a paragraph there’ (Gurumurthy 2004: 15). WSIS evidently failed to build on the BPfA. When the needs of women and girls were addressed in the Geneva Plan of Action, this was limited to support actions in the traditional ways – education, training and careers in ICT-related contexts, balanced and diverse media portrayals of men and women, development of gender-sensitive indicators on ICT use and needs. Issues that have typified post-Beijing ICT gender analysis – such as the need for gender-sensitive infrastructure development – were not addressed. It seems that as long as gender equality advocates in the WSIS process confined themselves to ‘traditional women’s issues’ they had some chance of success – perhaps because these issues were considered to be on the fringes of the overall WSIS agenda. The outcome of the second WSIS phase was perhaps even more disappointing. Paragraph 23 of the Tunis Commitment document does recognize the existence of a gender divide within the digital divide. But apart from this, little was added to what had been achieved in Geneva. Despite its multi-stakeholder tag, WSIS was an inter-governmental conference. Civil society groups depended on government delegations to channel and support their suggestions, if these were to figure in the outcome texts of WSIS. Here there was a special problem for gender equality advocates. The nature of the WSIS agenda meant that government delegates were drawn mainly from telecommunications and finance ministries, where few women are to be found and where consideration of gender differences would not be the norm.10 From the outset of the WSIS process, the inclusion of a gender equality perspective proved contentious for government delegations. There were radically different viewpoints on how the issue of ‘women’ should feature, if at all. While countries such as Canada and South Africa favored a ‘women’s empowerment’ perspective in the official documents, others ‘including China and Syria, took the position that references to women should be in the context of marginalized

8 and vulnerable groups of society’ (Hafkin 2004: 56). Governmental authority was decisive to the very end. When it came to negotiating the Tunis Agenda, which sets out follow-up actions to WSIS on financing and Internet governance, ‘most of the contributions by gender advocates … were erased at the last moment by the Russian delegation’ (Huyer 2006: 232).

Gender Mainstreaming and Freedom of Expression The WSIS process proved to be daunting, though not completely barren, terrain for gender equality advocates. In effect it was an attempt to pursue, at the global level, one of the BPfA’s most ambitious goals – gender mainstreaming. The concept is potentially powerful in policy terms, though it is often poorly understood and has sometimes been a smokescreen for inaction.11 The UN Economic and Social Council has defined it as ‘the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women's as well as men's concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality.’12 In the years since Beijing, political institutions have struggled not simply with the concept of ‘gender mainstreaming’ but with the concept of ‘gender’ itself. Feminist scholars understand gender as a set of socially constructed attributes and relations that define women and men differently (Lorber 1994; Risman 2004). Analysis of these differences and their implications is crucial in the development of gender-sensitive policy and in gender mainstreaming. But frequently in policy documents the term ‘gender’ is used simply as a synonym for ‘women’. Worse, it may be included ritualistically in the belief that mere reference to ‘gender’ amounts to ‘gender mainstreaming’. For instance, in two Recommendations adopted by the Council of Europe in 2007 – on Media Pluralism, and on Public Service Media - the following sentence appears, in each case at the end of a paragraph: ‘Due attention should also be paid to gender equality issues’. A similar phrase is included in the Political Declaration adopted at the first Council of Europe Conference of Ministers responsible for Media and New Communication Services (2009): ‘Gender-related

9 issues should also be mainstreamed with regard to these services’.13 But with no indication of what these issues are, how they could be ‘mainstreamed’ or even how they relate to the substance of the policy documents, it is difficult to imagine how the Member States of the Council of Europe will attend to them. It can be argued that mere allusion to the existence of ‘gender issues’ in such documents is a step forward, something that would not have happened in the pre-Beijing era. Using the BPfA and other international instruments such as the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), women’s rights committees and lobby groups have fought hard for even minimal recognition of equality goals in policy instruments. The inclusion of a word or phrase can seem like a major victory. But opposition is formidable.14 Media and communication seem to occupy a protected space, to be defended against claims from policy areas that are perceived as extraneous and threatening. The European Union’s 2004 Equal Treatment Directive is a case in point. When initially drafted, this was intended to cover discrimination in the media. However, in the final version of the Directive the media and advertizing are expressly excluded from the equal treatment provisions.15 Conflict within EU institutions between gender equality policy and media policy is clear. The European Commission’s Roadmap for Equality Between Women and Men 2006-2010 – the operational plan for implementing EU equality policy – contains a section on the elimination of gender stereotypes in the media. The proposed actions are modest, covering ‘awareness-raising’ and ‘exchange of good practice’, the development of ‘dialogue with media’, and the promotion of ‘gender mainstreaming’ in other community programs. Although the Roadmap for Equality includes indicators that will be used to measure progress on its other policy areas, no indicators are given for the policy on media. It is difficult to read these proposals as troublesome. Yet the Commission’s internal Media Task Force – which scrutinizes all proposed measures in terms of how they affect media policy – judged that this section of the Roadmap presents ‘tension with freedom of expression’.16 As one of the most jealously protected values that guide media and communication policy, ‘freedom’ - of expression, the press, the media – is conventionally argued to be at risk in the face of advocacy for diversity, pluralism or equal rights. This uneasiness is regularly expressed in debates within the Council of Europe, which in recent years has adopted several Resolutions on aspects of gender equality and media.17 In 2007, the Council’s Committee for Equal Opportunities for Women and Men tried to anticipate the ‘freedom of expression’

10 argument in its presentation of a Resolution and Recommendation on The Image of Women in Advertising by referring to the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). In the view of the Committee, this includes several clauses (Article 10 paragraph 2, Articles 14 and 17) that qualify rights and freedoms – including freedom of expression. However, this reasoning was rejected by the Council’s Committee of Ministers. They reaffirmed the right to freedom of expression, noting that, according to case law of the European Court of Human Rights, freedom of expression is applicable to ‘information or ideas that offend, shock or disturb. This likewise applies to the images contained in commercial messages and advertising’.18 Advertizing – though at the center of an enormous amount of feminist advocacy at every level of policy – is protected not just by the dogma of freedom but by the power of money and the influence of lobbying. Kiran Prasad (2008: 79) has argued that the obstacle of ‘media profitability’ impedes enforcement of existing gender equality provisions in India. Within the institutions of the European Union, where media and communication have been defined primarily as tradeable goods, the market principle is immensely influential. The European Commission’s response to the 2008 European Parliament Resolution How marketing and advertising affect equality between women and men19 is revealing in this respect. The Commission first suggests that ‘freedom of expression arguably provides a basis for tolerance of stereotyping in advertising’ because of its ‘short-form’ and ‘ephemeral’ nature. Furthermore, ‘one should take into account the positive role that advertising plays in reducing the cover price of print media and in funding free online media, together with commercial television channels … Heavy-handed interventions to limit stereotyping could be counter-productive in terms of overall media policy priorities, since they would divert promotional expenditure outside the media’.20 Here, ‘freedom of expression’ is used to support respect for ‘overall media policy priorities’ of finance and profitability. In this logic, the premise of the Resolution – advertizing’s effect on gender equality – is ignored in the interests of policy goals perceived as more important. The apparent impregnability of ‘freedom of expression’ discourse in the gender equality domain gives rise to an inevitable question: Whose freedom, defined by whom? A radical re-balancing of gender-determined rights and freedoms may seem unrealistic, at least at this point. However, feminists have focused on the concept of freedom to highlight gender inequities and to argue that women’s right to freedom of expression and information is

11 severely limited by layers of structural, economic and cultural constraints. This means shifting conventional understanding of freedom of expression away from ‘freedom from government control’ towards a conception that acknowledges the right of women, as well as men, to be informed, and to have their voices heard. Starting with the question ‘can free media be only a male domain?’, Patricia Made has highlighted the shortcomings of the influential Windhoek Declaration on Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press (1991). By ignoring internal gender biases within media systems – biases which mean that ‘the media do not provide access to expression to more than half of the region’s population: women’ (Made 2004: 48) - policies like this have failed to link ‘democracy, freedom of expression, governance and issues of gender justice to the editorial content of the media’ (Made 2004: 49). At the institutional level, it was the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) - a Windhoek-based regional body established in 1992 to promote media freedom, pluralism and diversity - that was to make the breakthrough in acknowledging that the absence of explicit reference to gender in the freedom of expression discourse of the Windhoek Declaration had resulted in a lack of attention to ‘gross gender disparities in the media’. In its 2002 gender policy, MISA states that ‘gender equality is intrinsic to a plural and diverse media’ (Gender Links, MISA, GEMSA 2005: 16). With chapters in twelve Southern African countries, MISA plays a key role in promoting progressive policies and practices in the media of the region. Together with Gender Links - the organization with whom it developed the gender policy - and the Gender and Media Southern Africa Network (GEMSA), MISA continues to work with media and regulatory bodies to develop policies that recognize the importance of giving equal voice to women and men. Despite its lead on the freedom of expression issue however, this particular aspect of the MISA vision has yet to gain widespread support. Attempts to include it in the media provisions of the 2008 Southern African Development Community (SADC) Protocol on Gender and Development were unsuccessful.

Policy Gaps and Challenges While the first decade of the twenty-first century saw the emergence of some media and communication policy spaces receptive to gender equality advocacy, resistance remains high. The 2005 review of implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action (Beijing +10) concluded that ‘lack of gender-sensitivity in media policies is an ongoing problem’.21 Multi- country studies in Africa (Hafkin 2002; EAJA 2008), Asia (Ramilo 2002) and Latin America and the Caribbean (Bonder 2002) have been unanimous in highlighting the absence of

12 attention to gender equality goals in almost all media and ICT policies. Between 2005 and 2010, compared with the other ‘critical areas of concern’ identified in the BPfA, media and communication continued to be neglected.22 The question of how to fill these policy gaps is likely to dominate international debates on women and communication in future decades. Education of policy-makers on women’s right to equal participation and on the gender implications of policy design has become a widely advocated strategy, though one that proves difficult to implement in a sustained way. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which established a Task Force on Gender Issues in 1998, did produce a set of guidelines for policy-making and regulatory agencies (Jorge 2001) intended to illustrate the steps needed to increase women’s participation in decision-making and policy-making. The guidelines cover several key areas -internal mechanisms to promote gender equity, woman- friendly working conditions, human resource and training issues, gender-based criteria for the granting of licences, as well as monitoring and data collection. Sonia Jorge, who prepared the guidelines, developed an even more ambitious proposal for the ITU Task Force -a workshop curriculum for telecommunications policy-makers and development practitioners on the need for a gender perspective in policy-making (Jorge 2000). It included a comparison of the difference between a ‘gender neutral’ and a ‘gender-sensitive’ approach to the formulation, implementation and evaluation of policy, showing how a gender focus changes policy so as to bring greater benefits for women. Though the guidelines and the curriculum were potentially influential in terms both of education and of gender mainstreaming in ICT policy, by 2009 the ITU had turned away from this approach to concentrate on specific projects aimed at increasing use of ICTs by women and girls. In a curious though perhaps related development, the ITU Task Force on Gender Issues (later a Working Group) became a fully-fledged Gender Unit within the ITU secretariat, before eventually losing its explicit gender identity within a Special Initiatives Division.23 Whether this was an effort at ‘gender mainstreaming’ within the organization, or a sign that ‘gender, as a variable, [had] fallen off the mainstream research agenda’ of the ITU (Crow and Sawchuk 2008: 95), it does signal a retreat from the goal of policy transformation that typified the early work of the Task Force on Gender Issues. Implementing special projects may well benefit some women and some girls, but from a feminist standpoint it is a step backwards – towards a ‘catch up’ conception of gender relations, in which women simply have to catch up with men and that improved opportunities will allow this to happen. The lack of structural critique inherent in the catch up approach means that underlying

13 patterns of inequality and exclusion are ignored (see Moser 1993). Other international organizations such as UNESCO, which has focused on communication training for women as a key strategy, have been found similarly wanting for failing to ask the right questions about structural inequities, including gender bias in policy-making, the allocation of resources and so on (Lee 2004; also Leye 2009). Despite international conventions and instruments such as the BPfA and CEDAW, since 1995 there has been little success in securing a place for gender equality concerns within national communication policies. An alternative strategy has been to introduce provisions on media and communication into other types of policy – for example, equality policy or policy on violence against women. Since the 1990s, many countries have adopted or revised legislation on violence against women, and increasingly the links between violence and the content of media and advertizing have been addressed in new legislation. Mexico’s 2007 Ley General de Acceso de las Mujeres a una Vida Libre de Violencia (Law on the Access of Women to a Life Free from Violence), Brazil’s Law 11340/06, known as the Maria da Penha Law (2006), Spain’s 2004 Ley Orgánica de Medidas de Protección Integral contra la Violencia de Género (Law on Integrated Protection Measures against Gender Violence) and Argentina’s 2009 Ley de Protección Integral para prevenir, sancionar y erradicar la violencia contra las mujeres en los ámbitos en que desarrollen sus relaciones interpersonales (Law on Integrated Protection Measures to Prevent, Sanction and Eradicate Violence Against Women) all include provisions aimed at restraining media content or reporting that encourages or legitimizes violence against women. Gradually, definitions of violence have broadened from physical, psychological and sexual, to economic and – in the case of Argentina’s 2009 law – ‘symbolic’ violence.24 While laws like these are expanding conventional definitions and policy frameworks in the field of gender equality, it remains to be seen whether future media and communication policy-making will reflect or reference their provisions.25 Making policy and passing legislation is one challenge. Ensuring implementation is another. India’s 2001 National Policy for the Empowerment of Women includes a section on mass media which covers women’s access to information and communication technologies, and the development of self-regulatory mechanisms to ensure balanced portrayal of women and men.26 It seems that this policy ‘has had limited success’ (Prasad 2008: 77), possibly because its provisions on media are not sufficiently well-defined. Specificity is essential. Spain’s 2004 Law on Gender Violence actually modified the country’s 1988 Advertising Act

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(Ley General de Publicidad) which was considered not precise enough in relation to gender. The 2004 Act establishes that those advertisements that ‘…represent women in a humiliating manner, either using their body or parts of it specifically and directly as a mere object unconnected with the product that is to be promoted, or their image associated with stereotyped behaviours…’ are unlawful.27 It enables the public authorities – including the Institute for Women’s Issues (Instituto de la Mujer) - to take official action against such advertizing and in fact successful actions have been mounted (de la Fuente Méndez 2008: 4). The difficulties of ensuring effective implementation of national policy are of course greatly compounded at international and even regional levels. One of the most far-sighted regional initiatives to date has been the work to develop the Southern Africa Development Community Protocol on Gender and Development, adopted by SADC Heads of State in 2008. This transformed the non-binding commitments of the 1997 SADC Declaration on Gender and Development into concrete, time-bound and legally binding actions. Articles 29- 31 of the Protocol cover Media, Information and Communication calling inter alia for gender mainstreaming in information, communication and media policies, equal representation of women and men in media decision-making structures, equal voice for women and men in media content, and policies and targets for equal access to ICTs.28 A research tool (the Gender Protocol Barometer) has been developed to measure progress. Though spear-headed by a team of women’s NGOs (the Gender Protocol Alliance), coalition building with the SADC Secretariat (in particular its Gender Unit) was one of the keys to success. Admittedly, ‘there is still a long road to travel in order to make the Protocol a reality in the daily lives of women and men in SADC’ (Made and Lowe Morna 2009: 102). However, as a model of an integrated approach to the translation of policy into practice, the Gender Protocol does illustrate the potential of partnerships between governments and civil society.

New Spaces, Same Old Worries The Beijing Platform for Action encapsulated the main challenges to gender equality in media and communication in terms of three problem areas: gender stereotyping in media content, professional discrimination in the media industries, and unequal access to new information and communication technologies. While these apparently ‘straightforward’ challenges remain, in some ways they have been overtaken by developments hardly imagined in 1995. The Asia and Pacific document prepared for the 15-year review of Beijing (Beijing

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+15) in 2010 calls for a re-conceptualization of the BPfA ‘to encompass issues relating to the rapid changes taking place as the world evolves towards an information and digital society’. Of particular concern is the ‘increased proliferation of pornography and sexualized, exploitative and violent imagery of women on the Internet … exacerbated by the loose regulation on the use of the Internet and new technologies’.29 Yet the issue of pornography is one of the most divisive for feminists, at least partly because of its (mis)appropriation in governmental ‘morality’ rhetoric to justify control and censorship. The muted response of women’s movements to ICANN’s (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) initial approval in 2005 of .xxx as a global top level domain for sexually explicit materials in the Internet (finally rejected in 2007) is indicative of feminist reluctance to engage in this area of policy debate. Searching for alternatives to the dominant governmental approaches to pornography - viewed either in terms of obscenity or the protection of children - feminist analysis has focused on the problem as a reflection of structural power relations in society. Such a broad conception does not yield simple policy solutions. For example, Sarikakis and Shaukat (2008: 122) advocate ‘policies that are transnational … organically coordinated to address the questions of violence, choice, sexuality, and citizenship … and that also provide ways out for those in the [sex] industry’. This might seem utopian. On the other hand, more pragmatic approaches, for instance calling for policies that ‘promote the use of ICTs as an effective tool in distributing information about and advocating against gender-based violence’ and that encourage Internet service providers to make ‘self-regulatory efforts to minimize pornography, trafficking and all forms of gender-based violence on-line’,30 appear to offer fragile strategies in the face of such a massive global industry. What is clear is that the issue of Internet pornography will not fade away, and the development of a coherent policy response grounded in an understanding of gender inequalities and gender relations remains a particular challenge for feminists. Although pornography is a contentious issue, it is a familiar one. Other topics that will affect future communication policy – Internet governance, free and open software, surveillance, privacy, intellectual property rights, financing mechanisms – all need to be examined from a gender perspective, though as yet very little feminist analysis has been applied to any of them. Heike Jensen (2006) has identified some of these emerging policy issues from a women’s rights perspective, while Sonia Jorge (2000) and Nancy Hafkin (2002) have applied a gender lens to a wide variety of ICT policy issues. Shirin Rai has explored the

16 gendered aspects of one of the more arcane instruments of ICT policy – the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) regime which, she argues, is ‘reducing, not increasing, the space for women to reap the benefits of their efforts’ in the processes of invention and knowledge creation (Rai 2008: 155). Yet even as this body of work grows, it will not necessarily reach the center of policy debate. In the academic sphere, Alison Beale (2008), among others, has argued that feminist scholarship and gender-related analysis are still not integrated into policy studies. In civil society fora, feminists continue to struggle for visibility, voice and influence. Taking the World Social Forum as an example, Janice Conway (2007: 66) describes how the contribution of feminism has been systematically erased ‘in many origin stories of the anti-globalization movement and the WSF, both activist and scholarly’. The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is a good example of this predicament. To follow up the World Summit on the Information Society, the IGF was established as an annual forum for multi-stakeholder dialogue. At the first IGF in 2006, the APC Women's Networking Support Programme organized a panel discussion on ‘Content regulations from gender and development perspectives’. It was the only one - out of a total of 46 workshops, panel and plenary discussions—to bring a gender angle into the 2006 IGF discussions. The pattern was to continue. At each annual forum the APC WNSP organized sessions on gender issues and Internet governance - looking at communication rights, the tensions between freedom of information, right to expression, opinion and privacy, and freedom from violence against women. Yet the IGF as whole failed to engage with gender. In its assessment of the 2009 forum, the APC concluded that if the IGF is to be a real multi-stakeholder platform, ‘serious attention needs to be paid to the still very visible gender gap at all levels of access and participation to this forum, including agenda shaping, representation and diversity within each stakeholder group’.31 In the words of writer and activist Jan Moolman (2009), despite all the talk of people- centered democracy, inclusivity and equal access, the absence of a women’s rights agenda at the IGF is a predictable disappointment. In the struggle for acceptance of gender issues in communication policy debates, it is a case of ‘new spaces, same old worries’.

Conclusion This chapter has argued that the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action helped to open up some media and communication policy spaces receptive to gender equality advocacy. Nevertheless, analysis of recent policy processes shows strong resistance to calls for

17 frameworks that recognize the significance of gender in the design and implementation of policy. Token or ritualistic references to ‘gender issues’ within policy statements are often presented as gender mainstreaming, though this actually calls for thorough assessment of the gender implications of policy and serious consideration of women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences in policy elaboration. Gender mainstreaming is a distant goal within media and communication policy, where freedom of expression is conventionally upheld as an argument against advocacy for equal rights. But the question is: whose freedom, defined by whom? Feminist efforts to expand the ‘freedom’ discourse from a simple focus on government control towards a more complex understanding of the social, economic and cultural controls that limit women’s right to freedom of expression have, as yet, found little support in policy-making circles. To circumvent resistance to gender equality claims within media and communication policy, one strategy has been to introduce provisions on media and communication into equality policy or policy on violence against women. Another has been to tighten definitions and establish mechanisms to strengthen policy implementation. Yet fundamental problems remain. Even as feminists increasingly engage with the policy domain, new centers of policy debate show little sign of engaging with feminist analysis of policy issues. Securing a space for gender in media and communication policy will be a struggle for decades to come.

References Association for Progressive Communications (2003) “APC Women’s Programme Critiques the Draft Declaration and Action Plan prepared for the UN World Summit on the Information Society” (21 March 21). Melville: APC. Banks, K. (2005) “Summitry and strategies”, Eurozine, 25 October, accessed 23/01/2010, http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2005-10-19-banks-en.html. Beale, A. (2008) “The expediency of women” in K. Sarikakis and L. R. Shade (eds) Feminist Interventions in International Communication. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 59-73. Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995) Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. New York: United Nations, accessed 28/02/2010, http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/pdf/BDPfA%20E.pdf. Bonder, G. (2002) “From access to appropriation: Women and ICT policies in Latin America and the Caribbean”, paper prepared for the United Nations Expert Group Meeting on information and communication technologies and their impact on and use as an instrument for the advancement and empowerment of women. Seoul, Republic of Korea, 11-14 November, accessed 23/01/2010, http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/egm/ict2002/reports/Paper-GBonder.PDF. Burch, S. (2005) “Communication rights: Building bridges for social action” in O. Droussou and H. Jensen (eds) Visions in Process II: The World Summit on the Information

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advancement and empowerment of women. Seoul, Republic of Korea, 11-14 November, accessed 23/01/2010, http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/egm/ict2002/reports/Paper-NHafkin.PDF. Hafkin, N. J. (2004) “Gender issues at the World Summit on the Information Society, Geneva”, Information Technologies and International Development, 1 (3-4): 55-59, accessed 23/01/2010, http://itidjournal.org/itid/article/viewDownloadInterstitial/158/28. Huyer, S. (2006) “E-Quality or E-Poverty? Gender and international policy on ICT for development” in K. Sarikakis and D. K. Thussu (eds) Ideologies of the Internet, Cresskill: Hampton Press, pp. 213-243. Jensen, H. (2005) “Gender equality and the multi-stakeholder approach: WSIS as best practice?”, in O. Droussou and H. Jensen (eds) Visions in Process II: The World Summit on the Information Society. Berlin: Heinrich Böll Foundation, pp. 53-61, accessed 23/01/2010, http://www.worldsummit2003.de/download_en/Visions-in- ProcessII(1).pdf. Jensen, H. (2006) “Women’s Human Rights in the Information Society” in R. F. Jorgensen (ed) Human Rights in the Global Information Society. Cambridge: The MIT Press, pp. 235-261. Jorge, S. N. (2000) Gender Perspectives in Telecommunications Policy: A Curriculum Proposal. Prepared for the ITU Task Force on Gender Issues, accessed 23/01/2010, available at: www.itu.int/ITU-D/gender/pdf/3rdMeeting/TFGI-3-4.pdf. Jorge, S. N. (2001) Gender-Aware Guidelines for Policy-making and Regulatory Agencies. Prepared for the ITU Task Force on Gender Issues, accessed 23/01/2010, www.itu.int/ITU-D/gender/pdf/GenderAwarenessGuidelines.pdf. Karl, M. (1981) “Alternative World Communication?” ISIS International Bulletin, 18: 26-29.

Lee, M. (2004) “UNESCO’s conceptualization of women and telecommunications 1970- 2000”, Gazette: The International Journal for Communication Studies, 66 (6): 533- 552. Leye, V. (2009) “UNESCO’s communication policies as discourse: How change, human development and knowledge relate to communication’, Media, Culture & Society, 31 (6): 939-956. Lorber, J. (1994) Paradoxes of Gender. New Haven: Yale University Press. Made, P. A. (2004) “Can free media be only a male domain?”, Media Development, 51 (4): 47-52. Made, P. A., and Lowe Morna, C., eds. (2009) Roadmap to Equality: Lessons Learned in the Campaign for a SADC Protocol on Gender and Development. Johannesburg: Gender Links, accessed 23/01/2010, http://www.genderlinks.org.za/article/roadmap-to- equality-lessons-learned-in-the-campaign-for-a-sadc-protocol-on-gender-and- development-2009-08-27. Moolman, J. (2009) “New spaces: Same old worries” (19 November). Blog from Internet Governance Forum, 15-18 November, Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, accessed 23/01/2010, http://www.genderit.org/en/index.shtml?apc=f--e--1&x=96364. Moser, C. (1993) Gender Planning and Development: Theory, Practice and Training. London: Routledge. Prasad, K. (2008) “Gender-sensitive policies for women’s development”, in K. Sarikakis and L. R. Shade (eds) Feminist Interventions in International Communication, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 74-89. Rai, S. M. (2008) The Gender Politics of Development. London: Zed Books.

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Ramilo, C. (2002) “National ICT policies and gender equality regional perspective: Asia”, paper prepared for the United Nations Expert Group Meeting on information and communication technologies and their impact on and use as an instrument for the advancement and empowerment of women. Seoul, Republic of Korea, 11-14 November, accessed 23/01/2010, http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/egm/ict2002/reports/Paper-CRamilo.PDF. Risman, B. J. (2004) “Gender as a social structure: Theory wrestling with activism”, Gender and Society, 18 (4): 429-450. Sarikakis, K., and Shaukat, Z. (2008) “The global structures and culture of pornography: The global brothel” in K. Sarikakis and L. R. Shade (eds) Feminist Issues in International Communication. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 106-126. Shade, L. R. (2006) “Stirring up the pot? Integrating gender into policy, practice, and evaluation”, CRACIN Working Paper No. 13. Toronto: Canadian Research Alliance for Community Innovation and Networking, accessed 23/01/2010, http://www3.fis.utoronto.ca/iprp/cracin/publications/pdfs/WorkingPapers/CRACIN% 20Working%20Paper%20No%2013.pdf. Wajcman, J. (2004) TechnoFeminism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Wharton, A. S. (2005) The Sociology of Gender. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. World Summit on the Information Society (2003) Declaration of Principles. Building the Information Society: A Global Challenge in the New Millennium. Document WSIS- 03/Geneva/Doc/4-E. Geneva: WSIS, accessed 28/02/2010, http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs/geneva/official/dop.html. World Summit on the Information Society (2003) Plan of Action. Document WSIS- 03/Geneva/Doc/5-E. Geneva: WSIS, accessed 28/02/2010, http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs/geneva/official/poa.html. World Summit on the Information Society (2005) Tunis Agenda for the Information Society. Document WSIS-05/Tunis/Doc/6(Rev. 1)-E. Tunis: WSIS, accessed 28/02/2010, http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs2/tunis/off/6rev1.html. World Summit on the Information Society (2005) Tunis Commitment. Document WSIS- 05/Tunis/Doc/7-E. Tunis: WSIS, accessed 28/02/2010, http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs2/tunis/off/7.html.

Guide to Further Reading Published work on this topic is scattered, and much of it is available only via Internet. The APC website on gender and ICT policy (www.genderIT.org) is an excellent resource with up-to-date articles, research papers and policy guidance on gender issues in media and ICTs. Documents from two United Nations expert group meetings held in 2002 - one on women and media, the other on women and ICTs - cover policy-related topics and data that are still relevant. For papers on the media, see http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/egm/media2002/index.html; for papers on ICTs, see http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/egm/ict2002/index.html. Chakravartty and Sarikakis (2006) is the only full-length work to date to integrate feminist scholarship within a general analysis of media policy formation. Several chapters in Sarikakis and Shade (2008) deal with aspects of media and ICT policy from a feminist perspective. Jensen (2009) gives a useful overview of gender equality issues in relation to ICT policy.

Chakravartty, P., and Sarikakis, K. (2006) Media Policy and Globalization. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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Jensen, H. (2009) “ICTs and Gender” in D. Souter (ed)The APC ICT Policy Handbook. (Second edition). Association for Progressive Communications, pp. 194-199. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence. Downloadable at http://www.apc.org/en/node/9555/, accessed 23/01/2010.

Sarikakis, K., and Shade, L. R., eds. (2008) Feminist Interventions in International Communication. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Endnotes

1 I am grateful to Pilar López Díez for drawing my attention to the El País controversy, and for subsequent discussion. The campaign slogan, as spoken by women, was ‘De todos los hombres que haya en mi vida, ninguno será más que yo’ (Of all the men in my life, none will be more than me); and when spoken by men ‘De todas las mujeres que haya en mi vida, ninguna será menos que yo’ (Of all the women in my life, none will be less than me). ‘Revanchismo de généro’ (Gender revenge) by Enrique Lynch appeared on 19 November 2009; see http://www.elpais.com/articulo/opinion/Revanchismo/genero/elpepiopi/20091119elpepiopi_4/Tes. Milagros Pérez Oliva, Defensora del Lector (Ombudsperson) at El País, used two of her weekly columns to address the issues raised by publication of the article: ‘¿Quién teme al feminismo?’ (Who’s afraid of feminism?) on 22 November 2009 http://www.elpais.com/articulo/opinion/Quien/teme/feminismo/elpepiopi/20091122elpepiopi_5/Tes; and ‘Informar sobre la violencia machista’ (Reporting on male violence) on 29 November 2009 http://www.elpais.com/articulo/opinion/Informar/violencia/machista/elpepuopi/20091129elpepiopi_5/Tes (accessed 23/01/2010).

2 An introduction to the sociological study of gender is Wharton (2005). Risman (2004) proposes a theory of ‘gender as social structure’, arguing that this conceptualization situates gender at the same level of social significance as the economy or the polity. Feminist scholarship on gender, media and information and communication technologies stretches back to the 1970s. Gallagher (2001) and Byerly and Ross (2006) provide internationally grounded critiques of media systems and structures, illustrating some of the relationships between feminist media activism and social change. Since the 1980s, feminists have debated the potential and challenges posed by technologies, seen from the perspective of gender (see Wajcman 2004). A useful entry point to theoretical and empirical approaches to the gender-technology relation is Green and Adam (2001).

3 The Mass Media Declaration (Declaration on Fundamental Principles concerning the Contribution of the Mass Media to Strengthening Peace and International Understanding, to the Promotion of Human Rights and to Countering Racialism, Apartheid and Incitement to War) includes a ritualistic reference to ‘the rights and dignity of all nations, all peoples and all individuals without distinction of race, sex, language, religion or nationality’ (Article III). However, it devotes a full substantive paragraph (Article IV) to the role of the media in the ‘education of young people’ and in ‘making known the views and aspirations of the younger generation’; see http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vp01.cfm?outfit=pmt&folder=193&paper=954, accessed 23/01/ 2010.

4 Council of Europe, Recommendation CM/Rec (2007) 17 of the Committee of Ministers on Gender Equality Standards and Mechanisms, paragraph 48 (i); see http://www.coe.int/t/e/human_rights/equality/04._standards_and_mechanisms/096_CM_Rec_2007_17.asp#Top OfPage, accessed 23/01/2010.

5 The Republic of Singapore also withdrew from UNESCO at this time.

6 In 2000, during the Beijing +5 review and appraisal, the US delegation stipulated in its reservation statement that nothing in the outcome documents could be considered binding on the media (Burch and Leon 2000: 37). 7 The Gender Caucus was well funded, with technical cooperation grants from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden as well as from the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). The NGO Gender Strategies Working Group was largely self-financed (see Hafkin 2004: 55).

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8 The final text: ‘We affirm that development of ICTs provides enormous opportunities for women, who should be an integral part of, and key actors, in the Information Society. We are committed to ensuring that the Information Society enables women's empowerment and their full participation on the basis on equality in all spheres of society and in all decision-making processes. To this end, we should mainstream a gender equality perspective and use ICTs as a tool to that end’ (see paragraph 12, WSIS Declaration of Principles, 2003; WSIS- 03/GENEVA/DOC/4-E, http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs/geneva/official/dop.html, accessed 23/01 2010.

The original Canadian text: ‘A focus on the gender dimensions of ICTs is essential not only for preventing an adverse impact of the digital revolution on gender equality or the perpetuation of existing inequalities and discrimination, but also for enhancing women’s equitable access to the benefits of ICTs and to ensure that they can become a central tool for the empowerment of women and the promotion of gender equality. Policies, programmes and projects need to ensure that gender differences and inequalities in the access to and use of ICT are identified and fully addressed so that such technologies actively promote gender equality and ensure that gender-based disadvantages are not created or perpetuated’ (as quoted in Shade 2006: 9).

9 In December 2003 civil society organizations, frustrated by the official Declaration which they perceived as weak and insubstantial, issued their own Declaration Shaping Information Societies for Human Needs (http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs/geneva/civil-society-declaration.pdf, accessed 23/01/2010). Among its core principles (Article 2), this states the need to ‘address gender concerns and to make a fundamental commitment to gender equality, non-discrimination and women's empowerment, and recognise these as non-negotiable and essential prerequisites … within information and communication societies.’ It also contained detailed substantive paragraphs, contributed by the GSWG, on gender justice (2.1.3) and women’s rights (2.2.6). The Civil Society Declaration was ‘subsequently endorsed by hundreds of organisations … though the official summit process only grudgingly acknowledged its existence’ (Burch 2005: 11).

10 Heike Jensen makes the point that this lack of previous involvement with or commitment to gender equality issues extended to most of the civil society organizations working in the WSIS context (Jensen 2005: 55).

11Adherence to generalized ‘gender mainstreaming’, which is difficult to measure, is sometimes preferred to more specific commitments. For example, paragraph 12 of the WSIS Declaration of Principles opted to ‘mainstream a gender equality perspective’ rather than to pursue ‘policies, programmes and projects’ in which ‘gender differences and inequalities in the access to and use of ICTs are identified and fully addressed’ (see note 8).

12United Nations General Assembly. Report of the Economic and Social Council for 1997. A/52/3. http://www.un.org/documents/ga/docs/52/plenary/a52-3.htm, accessed 23/01/2010.

13 Council of Europe, Council of Ministers Recommendation CM/Rec(2007)2 of the Committee of Ministers to Member States on Media Pluralism and Diversity in Media Content, paragraph 3.2, see https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?id=1089699; Council of Europe, Council of Ministers Recommendation CM/Rec(2007)3 of the Committee of Ministers to Member States on the Remit of Public Service Media in the Information Society, paragraph 8, see https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?id=1089759; Council of Europe A New Notion of Media? Political Declaration and Resolutions adopted by the 1st Council of Europe Conference of Ministers Responsible for Media and New Communication Services. Reykjavik, 28-29 May 2009; MCM(2009)011, paragraph 7 of the Political Declaration, see http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/standardsetting/media/MCM(2009)011_en_final_web.pdf (all accessed 23/01/2010).

14 During the revision of the European Union’s Television Without Frontiers Directive (in place since 1989) the European Women’s Lobby worked intensively on advocacy and drafting, focused on the protection of women’s rights, anti-discrimination and violence against women in advertizing and media content. The revised Directive – known as the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (2007) – simply repeated the general formulations of Television Without Frontiers: avoidance of incitement to hatred (Article 6) or discrimination (Article 9) based on sex (or on race, religion, nationality etc); see http://eur- lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2009:0185:FIN:EN:PDF, accessed 23/01/2010. 15 Council Directive 2004/113/EC of 13 December 2004 implementing the principle of equal treatment between men and women in the access to and supply of goods and services. See Article 3, paragraph 3: ‘This Directive

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shall not apply to the content of media and advertising’, http://eur- lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2004:373:0037:0043:EN:PDF, accessed 23/01/2010.

16 Commission of the European Communities. A Roadmap for Equality Between Women and Men 2006-2010 COM (2006) 92 final, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2006:0092:FIN:EN:PDF; and European Commission, Media Task Force Inventory of Measures Affecting the Media, May 2009, p. 17. http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/media_taskforce/doc/grid_inventory.pdf (both accessed 23 /01/2010).

17 For example: Council of Europe, Parliamentary Assembly Recommendation 1555 (2002) on The Image of Women in the Media (http://assembly.coe.int/Mainf.asp?link=/Documents/AdoptedText/ta02/EREC1555.htm; Council of Europe, Parliamentary Assembly Resolution 1557 (2007) on the Image of women in advertising (http://assembly.coe.int/Main.asp?link=/Documents/AdoptedText/ta07/ERES1557.htm (both accessed 23/01/2010).

18 Council of Europe, Committee for Equal Opportunities for Women and Men. The Image of women in advertising. Report, 21 May 2007. http://assembly.coe.int/main.asp?Link=/documents/workingdocs/doc07/edoc11286.htm; and Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, The image of women in advertising. Recommendation 1557 (2007). Reply from the Committee of Ministers, 20 February 2008. http://assembly.coe.int/Documents/WorkingDocs/Doc08/EDOC11530.pdf (both accessed 23/01/2010).

19 European Parliament Resolution of 3 September 2008 on How marketing and advertising affect equality between women and men INI/2008/2038, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&language=EN&reference=P6-TA-2008-0401, accessed 23/01/2010.

20 European Commission (2008) European Parliament Resolution on how marketing and advertising affect equality between women and men. Response to requests and overview of action taken, or intended to be taken, by the Commission, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/DownloadSP.do?id=15132&num_rep=7576&language=en, accessed 23/01/ 2010.

21 Paragraph 423: Review of the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of the special session of the General Assembly entitled “Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century”. Report of the Secretary-General. E/CN.6/2005/2. New York: United Nations, 6 December 2004, http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/Review/english/49sess.htm, accessed 23/01/2010.

22 See page. 2: Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Review Of The Implementation Of The Beijing Declaration And Platform For Action And The Outcome Of The Twenty-Third Special Session Of The General Assembly In Latin American And Caribbean Countries LC/L. 3175, http://www.eclac.cl/mujer/noticias/paginas/8/36338/ECLACBeijing15.pdf, accessed 23/01/2010.

23 See presentation by Susan Schorr, Special Initiatives Division, ITU ‘Overview of Special Initiatives Activities on Gender Issues’, 1 September 2009. http://www.itu.int/ITU- D/sis/Gender/ISGI/Schorr%20Gender%20Information%20Session.ppt, accessed 23/01/2010.

24 Defined as ‘La que a través de patrones estereotipados, mensajes, valores, íconos o signos transmita y reproduzca dominación, desigualdad y discriminación en las relaciones sociales, naturalizando la subordinación de la mujer en la sociedad’. (Which through stereotyped patterns, messages, values, images or signs transmits and reproduces domination, inequality and discrimination in social relations, thus normalizing the subordination of women in society) (Article 5.5, Law 26485 on Violence against women 2009); see Article 6f for specific provisions covering media, http://www.el-observatorio.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/ley- 26485.pdf, accessed 23/01/2010.

25 At the time of writing (January 2010) a draft law on Audiovisual Communication Services is under discussion in Argentina. It does refer to the country’s 2009 Law on Violence against women, and includes clauses on equal treatment for women and men in media and advertizing. Article 1 of the draft quotes extensively from the WSIS Plan of Action (Articles 8, 9 and 10); see Servicios de Comunicacion Audiovisual. Ley 26.522 Regúlanse los

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Servicios de Comunicación Audiovisual en todo el ámbito territorial de la República Argentina. Draft 10 October 2009, http://www.infoleg.gov.ar/infolegInternet/anexos/155000-159999/158649/norma.htm, accessed 23 January 2010.

26 Government of India, Ministry of Human Resources Development, Department of Women and Child Development (2001). National Policy for the Empowerment of Women, paragraph 9.1., http://wcd.nic.in/empwomen.htm, accessed 23/01/2010.

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28 SADC Protocol on Gender and Development (2008), http://www.sadc.int/index/browse/page/465, accessed 23/01/2010.

29Paras 61-62. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (2009) Highlights of Progress and Challenges In Implementing the Beijing Platform For Action: Good Practices, Obstacles and New Challenges. Review of the Implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action in the ESCAP Region E/ESCAP/BPA/2009/2. Bangkok: ESCAP, http://www.unescap.org/esid/GAD/Events/HLM-2009/download/BPA09_2E.pdf, accessed 23/01/2010.

30 APC Women’s Networking Support Programme (nd) ‘Violence Against Women’ http://www.genderit.org/en/index.shtml?apc=i90501-e--1, accessed 23/01/2010.

31APC's assessment of the fourth Internet Governance Forum, Sharm El-Sheikh, 15-18 November 2009, p. 7. PDF file available at http://www.apc.org/en/node/9642/, accessed 23 /01/2010.

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