Africa Media Review

0 - Prélim

2023-07-13T10:53:37+00:00

1 - An Exploration of the ‘Gendered’ Dimensions of Women’s Success in Ghana’s Media/Communication Industry

2023-07-13T10:33:02+00:00

Ghana’s return to democracy and a liberalised business environment in 1992 ushered the country into a period characterised by an ever-growing media/communication industry. From journalism, through public relations to advertising, there has been an upsurge in activity and, consequently, in competition. In the midst of this competitive environment, some women have made visible gains, having attained different levels of success evidenced by various awards they and the organisations they lead have won. This is in spite of the numerous challenges that women have been known to face in media-related industries (see for instance Okpara 2006; Steiner 2002). This paper reports findings from interviews with three such women that delved into their career journeys to explore whether there are gender implications for their success.

2 - Pourquoi le genre dans les études sur les médias

2023-07-13T11:16:56+00:00

3 - Gendered Portrayal of Political Actors in Nigerian Print Media: What Impact on Women’s Political Participation?

2023-07-13T11:23:07+00:00

The objective of this paper is to investigate the gendered portrayal of political actors in Nigerian print media and its impact on women’s political participation based on an empirical study. The study adopted a combination of methods – content analysis and cross-sectional survey. A case study of the coverage of the corruption charges of two former Speakers of the lower legislature (male and female, respectively) during the 2007-2011 administration was conducted on two purposely selected daily newspapers – The Punch and The Guardian. To complement the findings of the content analysis, a cross-sectional survey was conducted on a sample size of 100 respondents on their perception of media portrayal of female politicians. Findings of the content analyses revealed that the coverage of the cases was gendered, with the female Speaker’s case being sensationalised, hyped and trivialised. However, the findings of the survey indicate that a majority of the respondents saw the coverage as justifiable, believing the media simply reported the truth about the female Speaker.

4 - TIC et genre : domination ou innovation ?

2023-07-15T12:14:10+00:00

ICTs, and today’s Web 2.0, form a large family of tools, equipment, software and infrastructure that make possible the production, transport, archiving, publication and retrieval of all types of data. They are not just media in which the classic gender stereotypes are reproduced and in which the distribution of roles in decision-making relating to information are unequal in terms of gender. These technologies serve the information society that is both a producer and a product of globalisation in which the relations of domination and oppression are exacerbated and the divisions based on gender, class, race and generation are strengthened. In this context, women’s or feminist organisations in Africa are living a paradox. On the one hand, they use the Internet and Web 2.0 as a set of marketing tools in the service of their visibility and sometimes in response to donor request, while also facing an increasing prioritisation, in the immediate term, of the management of everyday life. On the other hand, they invent modes of political handling of information for social transformation in Africa. Thus, innovative ways to misuse ICTs for citizen or feminist purposes can be identified.

5 - Représentations de la féminité et de la masculinité dans la presse togolaise : étude de la caricature dans Sika’a, Viva et Pipo magazine

2023-07-15T12:17:12+00:00

This article sheds light on the stereotypes and the physical, moral and psychological traits of the femininity and the masculinity as caricatured, in three Togolese humoristic magazines. Thus, the article aims to study the recurrent representations charged with meanings that can be associated with men and women. In the meantime, the article focuses on the perceptive mutations that permeate each genre: the deviations and the stereotypical inversions in male-female relationships. It points, not only, through interviews, to the journalists’ appraisal of their society but also, to the objective of the magazines, created and managed mainly by men and the imaginary produced by the media discourse.

6 - Locating Kenyan Media in Anti-Rape Discourse: A Feminist Critique

2023-07-15T12:20:04+00:00

The tendency in most African media to sensationalise sexual and gender-based violence abstracts this issue from the reality of its prevalence, and at the same time averts critical engagement with the social, political and economic contexts within which sexual violence occurs in society. This paper applies a critical feminist analysis to media coverage of sexual violence that has been observed during key moments in Kenya’s political history. The paper draws from representations of sexual violence reported in the media at various epochs during Kenya’s transition from colonialism and authoritarianism towards democracy and elections, and through these narratives, attempts to construct a theoretical framework within which the relationship that exists between women in Kenya and the (democratising) state might be analysed. The paper shows that anti-rape discourses were produced in the media but served different purposes than that of pursuing a feminist agenda, depending on the imperatives of the time in Kenya’s historical political development.

7 - Le capital technologique et accès aux métiers techniques des technologies de l’information et de la communication (TIC) au Burkina Faso

2023-07-15T13:06:41+00:00

There are few women in the technical occupations of Information and Communication Technologies in Burkina Faso. To understand and explain this phenomenon, which occurs in the professional environment, we thought it advisable to ask what women’s representation in the fields of study leading to technological occupations is. Here too, it is the same story: there are few girls. The household and other spheres of socialisation of young girls and boys then become the breeding grounds for identifying the factors that influence their choices in terms of fields of study, in particular that of ICTs. Our study findings show that the acquisition of technological capital is to blame. It is unequally held depending on gender, and boys are best equipped with it.

8 - ‘Ndezve Varume Izvi’1: Hegemonic Masculinities and Misogyny in Popular Music in Zimbabwe

2023-07-15T13:09:38+00:00

Popular music has proved a fertile ground for the display of masculine identities, and songs have proved a ready-made arena for the playing out of these identities. This paper endeavours to offer an analysis of popular music in Zimbabwe, showing how hegemonic masculinities and misogyny are celebrated and venerated. The study uses discourse and content analysis on popular songs released in the last five years to highlight how music is a medium for normalising and transmitting masculinities and femininities from one generation to another. It highlights how popular music recreates and reinforces the perceived inferiority of women and how messages portrayed in songs mirror the dominant and hegemonic ideas about social life and sexuality. Young males and females listening to such music grow up believing that these sexual stereotypes are true. The paper concludes that, ultimately, popular culture mirrors real life and as such the masculine nature of music is one way in which sexual domination of women is celebrated and reinforced.

9 - Les TIC ont-elles un sexe ? Les perspectives africaines en TIC et genre à la lumière des approches théoriques en communication

2023-07-15T13:16:03+00:00

In this contribution, we will review gender- and ICT-related theoretical issues in the light of the positions developed by feminist research. An inventory of research in communication science will introduce the issue, laying emphasis on methodological and epistemological considerations. First, the universalist and differentialist approaches will be addressed and light will be shed on issues relating to their proponents’ positions on the issue of technology and information and communication technologies (ICTs). Second, the path taken subsequently by the constructivist approach will show how the reopening of the gender and technology categories is used to reconsider fruitfully the two previous approaches. The methods of the subsequent theoretical and methodological readjustment will be brought to light. Third, the ICTs and gender issue will be analysed in terms of its relationship to development, i.e., in so-called contexts of resource scarcity that happen to be located in so-called developing countries whose relationship to Western feminist research are already longstanding. We will show that the ICTs category is too wide to be used efficiently for the analysis, and that instead, we need to proceed as follows: first, distinguish ICTs according to the technical skills they require on the part of the user; next, consider that, in order to be able to analyse properly the practical effects of the problematisation, we need to take into account the various forms of accessibility (economic and geographic in particular); and last, that it is only in a third and final stage that the analysis of uses/non-uses will make it possible to think the improvement of women’s living conditions. In the concluding section, we will show that the way in which the issue of ICTs, gender and development is problematised makes the themes supportive of the universalist approach, despite some theoretical and strategic differences. A critical openness will enable us to lay the groundwork for an alternative research agenda that remains sensitive to the reduction of inequalities and the improvement of the living conditions of women and, more generally, of ICTs users in developing countries.

Africa Media Review, Volume 21, n° 1 & 2, 2013: Special Issue on Gender and Media

2021-12-15T13:51:58+00:00