Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Turkish women and the media

Did you know that:
• 15% of media managers are women, 85% are men
• 12% of columnists are women, 88% are men
• 11% of guests on political discussion programs on TV are women, 89% are men
• 18% of news sources are women, 82% are men
• 100% of "Page Three Girls" are women, 0% are men
• 0% of editors in chief are women, 100% are men.

A Dutch colleague of mine is asked to speak at the Womens Book Fair in Eskisehir, Turkey. She asked me whether I could update her about the Turkish media landscape and women’s participation in the media. I told her what I already knew from stories of my journalist friends and colleagues in Turkey. To be honest I didn’t have a real positive story for her. I told her how the media is still dominated by men and that we need a completely mentality change to increase women’s participation.

Let’s be honest: “Working in the media” has, for the most Turkish people, a negative connotation. It simply means that you are “exposing” yourself to the world, and the majority of Turkish families simply do not want their girls to be exposed to the world.
This counts not only for the jobs in front of the camera; it also applies for jobs behind the camera. Sometimes I can understand this, since “media" is an intangible concept. If you tell somebody you are a lawyer or a doctor or an engineer, everybody exactly knows what you mean, even they haven’t done it themselves. But since people associate “media” with “glamour,” “magic” and “power,” it’s something people find interesting but also scary and opaque.

What do you do, and how do you do it? For most women (particularly from patriarch and Islamic countries), it’s also less attractive because it requires one to work flexible hours. Media or journalism is not a 9-to-5 job. You have to be on standby constantly, and not every father/brother/husband (or mother!) accepts that — which is probably why you can’t find the equal number of male and female students from communication studies back on the newsroom floor. So that’s something we have to work on: the portrayal of jobs in the media. I can tell, after being there for more than 17 years myself, that it’s one of the, if not THE BEST job in the world.

Here are some statistics of Turkish women’s participation in the media, which are quite depressing since the numbers are significantly higher in European and American media.

30%: participation of Turkish women in the media.
20%: women in managerial positions
33%: women in decision making positions.
(of course the last two numbers apply to the 30% female participation)

Internet usage is more depressing, although its hopeful to know that there is an increasing trend:

In 2005 85% of Turkish women had never used a computer (against 69% of men). Ninety percent of women never used the Internet (male usage: 76%). In 2007: 76% of women never used a computer (58% of men) and 79% of Turkish women had never been on the Internet (against 61% of men).

We can be quite optimistic when we see that there is an increase over two years (there are no recent numbers for 2008 or 2009) but it depresses me when I talk to Turkish colleagues about this development.

From the 1990’s Turkey has known a huge expansion of TV broadcasters. The Internet explosion came worldwide at the end of the 90s. One could expect a huge explosion of employment in media, for both men and women, and because the communication schools are filled equally. So where does it go wrong?

Many Turkish media organizations like the Journalists Federations organize panels, conferences or programs for gender equality in the media — which is good. But they can’t do anything substantial when the government lacks the same commitment. There has to come some kind of action from the government, a series of quotas or a state allocation to fight for this issue. The position of women in the media can only change with their support. But since the reigning government has not any political aspirations as such, the problem will stay there. If the media sector stays in the same hands as now, I don’t forecast any improvements for the short term.


Source: Mediz, TC Basbakanlik Kadinin Statusu Genel Mudurlugu