Dr BRENDA MURPHY speaks to Marie Benoît about the International Association of Women in Radio and Television Awards 2007
Tell me a little about the International Association of Women in Radio and Television award.
The International Association of Women in Radio and Television
(IAWRT) – was founded in 1949 and held the first conference of its own in 1951. IAWRT now has large chapters in several countries where conferences have been held, and where recent changes in media regulations have opened up the media profession, including India, Ghana, and Kenya.
Among its goals are the following:
To contribute towards the enhancement of broadcasting by ensuring that women’s views and values are an integral part of programming.
To utilise the professional skills of members to support women in developing countries.
This year’s Awards will be presented at the IAWRT conference in Nairobi, Kenya, from 29 September to 3 October 2007.
When was the award previously given?
The IAWRT Award of Excellence for the best Radio and TV documentary 2005 was awarded to Zimbabwe's Violet Gonda and Sweden's Maria Rinaldo after the juries reviewed compelling stories directed by women about women from all over the world.
Violet Gonda, of Short Wave (SW) Radio Africa, won the Award of Excellence for best Radio programme. In her innovative documentary Arise!
Zimbabwean Women speak out, she gives a voice to Zimbabwean women, who repeatedly defy the regime of President Robert Mugabe, despite beatings, rapes and imprisonment.
Maria Rinaldo, of the independent ‘Documentary Group’ in Sweden, has been granted the Award of Excellence for best Television programme.
Suzana – I have a dream portrays a Kurdish woman living in Sweden, who uses her music to preserve the language and cultural identity of the Kurdish people, and define her own role as an immigrant in a foreign country. The filmmaker follows Suzana for over a year, intimately revealing the daily challenges she faces in the pursuit of her dream.
Gerd Inger Polden, the Coordinator of the 2005 Awards, said that there was tough competition. Thirty TV documentaries and 16 radio programmes competed for the awards.
There are two absolutes in these awards, the documentaries must be made by women – about women.
Yes. The programmes submitted must be made by women, and the subject of the programme must be female too. This is a useful strategy to help address some of the imbalances that we are aware of around TV and Radio content. For example we know from the Global Media Monitoring Project 2005, based on data from 76 countries, that women were dramatically under-represented in the news examined. Only 21 per cent of news subjects – the people interviewed or whom the news was about – were female. So for every woman who appears in the news, there are five men. In recent research in Northern European TV there is not a single genre in which women are better represented than men. The worst scenario was around ‘sports programmes’ where women had only 12 per cent representation, and in the best scenario, ‘children’s and youth programming’, women had 44 per cent representation.
Do you envisage any entries from Malta?
As far as I am aware, this is the first time that the International Awards for Women in Radio and Television has been publicised in Malta.
I sincerely hope that women working in TV and Radio broadcasting in Malta hear about this competition, and are given the time and support, within their organisation, to prepare their entries for this Award. This is an International Award, and I have no doubt that the women working locally could compete, and hold their own, amongst the international and broad profile of contestants.
You have been here for a number of years now and know this island intimately. How would you like to see things evolve in radio and television. What more could women do which will help their cause?
I think the onus should not be placed on women per se, to ‘help their cause’. The power and responsibility for effecting change, and ensuring equal opportunities in the media industry comes from decision makers, not from the women, and men, at entry level, or even from those working in non-decision making positions in TV and Radio.
Change can only come about through policy, legislation, enforcement of the policies and legislation and most importantly through education. We cannot assume that women and men are gender sensitive – we all have to be trained to think in non traditional ways and to incorporate that into our work practice and ultimately into the media products that we produce. Ideally we should not wait until people are in the workplace, to effect gender training, it should be a part of the curriculum, alongside media literacy from the earliest age.
Ultimately I would like to see media literacy and equity training starting with children in primary schools. That training should continue throughout conventional education and into the workplace. That in turn would have a positive impact on the output we would receive in our media.
Dr Brenda Murphy is a lecturer at the University of Malta, where she lectures, researches and supports student research (undergraduate and postgraduate), and runs practical credits in Media and Cultural Studies with special reference to gender and the media. Her area of expertise is in the various aspects of gender issues in the media, locally and globally.
Her research areas are: constructions of identity/consumption of advertising, diaspora, and gender and the media.
She can be contacted at [email protected].
The IAWRT competition is open to all women producers/journalists/directors making Radio and TV programmes.
For information, rules and entry forms see www.iawrt.org. Information can also be obtained from IAWRT Secretary, Gunilla Ivarsson, Swedish Radio ([email protected])