I have been writing a lot lately about various aspects of gender in the Swazi media. Last Thursday for example, I wrote about how ‘ordinary’ women were hardly ever featured in the Swazi press.
Thinking about the raw deal women get in Swaziland reminded me of some research that was conducted in 2005 that looked at what women (and men) wanted from their media in Swaziland. One of the study’s conclusions was that more and diverse stories about women would sell papers.
The Swaziland Gender and Media Audience Study conducted by Gender Links was the first (and to date only) comprehensive study of how people in Swaziland access the news and what kinds of things they like to read, hear and see.
The study interviewed 88 women and 91 men, a total sample of 179 from three of Swaziland’s major urban centres.
The study found that radio was by far the most important source of news (53 per cent of women, 63 per cent of men). The largely rural country in which literacy levels are relatively low explains this.
Television was the second main source of news for women (31 per cent) and the third main source for men (17 per cent). The second most important source of news for men was newspapers (19 per cent) with women 16 per cent. No women and very few men (1 per cent) access the Internet.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the study found there was a strong correlation between levels of education and the main source of news. Women and men with primary level education constitute the highest proportion of those who chose radio as their main source of news. Women with secondary and tertiary education constitute the highest proportion of those who chose television as their main source of news. People with tertiary education constitute the highest proportion of those who chose newspapers as their main source of news.
Most of the women (74 per cent) and men (63 per cent) interviewed prefer short news reports to any other news genre. A low proportion of Swazi women (7 per cent) preferred in-depth features (compared to 24 per cent of men). Double the number of women (14 per cent) as men (7 per cent) cited news that asks for feedback as their favourite genre.
Who chooses the news medium?
Most men in Swaziland (60 per cent) make their own decisions about where they get their news from compared to 53 per cent of women. Given the status of women in the country the fact that the majority of women make their own choice with little interference from spouse or partner is significant. This could be a warning to media owners that they ought to take women consumers more seriously in their own right.
Representation of women in the news
There are mixed views in Swaziland about whether the news reflects the concerns of women and men equally and about whether women are accessed often or seldom as sources. The study recorded that women constitute 17 per cent of news sources in Swaziland
There were strong perceptions of gender biases in the news. When asked to identify the roles in which women and men are most frequently portrayed in the news audiences said that women predominate in roles that emphasise their vulnerability and or physical attributes, while men feature in more diverse range of roles often associated with power, money and prestige.
There were strong views about the way women are portrayed as sex objects in news media. Swaziland is a conservative society reflected in the findings that 36 per cent of women and 49 per cent of men said they felt uncomfortable when they saw very sexual images of women in the news. Only 6 per cent of women and 4 per cent of men said such images encouraged them to buy newspapers or watch the news.
Women (76 per cent) and men (41 per cent) said they would find the news more interesting if the ideas and views of women were reported more often. Most women (79 per cent) and men (51 per cent) agreed that the news would be more interesting if there were stories about women doing a wider range of things.
Conclusions
The Swaziland Gender and Media Audience Study leads us to conclude that media decision makers should be aware that women make decisions about what to buy / hear / see. Also, that sex does not sell in Swaziland. This will come as a shock to the editors of the weekend and Sunday newspapers in Swaziland.
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