Globalisation is increasingly transforming the nature and structure of media. Media ownership and control is in the hands of a few private and transnational corporations. These were the statements made by participants in the workshop on Women and Media in the on-going Regional NGO Symposium at the Kasetsart University in Thailand.
Women media practitioners and activists from around the Asia-Pacific region came together for this workshop to discuss the challenges that the media face today. According to them, media is virtually unregulated, and not even national governments are able to exert any meaningful control or influence as this is driven by the free market ideology.
States that are signatories to international trade agreements -- like the World Trade Organisation or the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT) - find it difficult to intervene in terms of media regulation as such action would be perceived to be a violation of these international trade agreements.
In 1995, the Women and Media section of the Beijing Platform for Action, the major output document from the 1995 World Conference on Women anticipated that the advances in information technology would facilitate a global communications network that would enable media to make a greater contributions to the advancement of women.
However, over the last four years, in contrast to the unprecedented expansion and development of communications technology, there appears to have been very few concrete gains in the area of women and media.
The workshop participants also stressed that majority of women in media are still denied access to decision-making levels in the communications industry and denied positions in governing bodies that influence media policy.
Sexual harassment is still used as a common impediment to the full participation of women in the media. Moreover, women are still portrayed negatively and in a stereotypical fashion, the participants added.
The full potential of existing self-regulatory mechanisms and professional guidelines in the media have not been utilised.
After Beijing, initiatives of women's groups and women in the media increased at the local, national and regional levels. These initiatives include media monitoring, media advocacy, increase in the participation of women in various forms of media production, training and networking. However, these gains were diffused by the effects of globalisation.
The Regional NGO Symposium is being held as part of the on-going global assessment of the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA), the major output document of the 1995 World Conference on Women that took place in Beijing, China. Signed by 189 governments, the BPFA aims to advance women's status and condition around the world.
