The NWMI and its newly launched and evolving website were showcased during a side-event during the 47th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York in March 2003. The event, billed as a panel to showcase different types of 'best practices' in efforts to address gender / media matters in various parts of the world, took place on March 4 at the Church Centre, across the street from the (currently beleaguered) UN headquarters, where most of the non-official events connected to the CSW were located.

Thanks to a Powerpoint presentation prepared by Anjali Mathur and her team in Mumbai, the audience was able to see some sample pages of the website. The presentation, made by Ammu Joseph, generated considerable interest in the NWMI, and especially the prolonged, consultative process through which it emerged. The president of Sancharika Samuha Nepal (a forum of women in media there) said it was good to know that such a network existed in India and suggested that it reach out to and link up with media women and groups in other South Asian countries. A number of African women expressed interest in an exchange of ideas and experiences. An office-bearer of the German Association of Women Journalists, who had participated in the online discussion in August-September that was part of the lead-up to the CSW, commented on the wide range of issues and activities taken up by the NWMI and asked about the gender focus of the network.

The two other presentations during the event related to Africa. Anne Walker, former executive director of the New York-based International Women's Tribune Centre, and now special projects coordinator for the IWTC, presented a CD ROM through which women in Uganda are learning how new information and communications technologies can be used to access the information they need to improve their lives as a whole and their economic situation in particular.

The interactive CD, developed through a collaborative process involving feedback from field tests, features a narrator whose voice, speaking the local language, helps guide even illiterate women through the various, illustrated sections of the CD that deal with different topics. The village-based women who have become devotees of the CD have access to computers through the experimental telecentres set up by the government as part of its efforts to make ICTs more accessible to the rural population. The lively presentation was warmly received, with the audience reluctant to miss out on any section of the fascinating CD.

Colleen Lowe Morna of Gender Links, South Africa, and Jennifer Mufune of the Media Institute of Southern Africa, then presented highlights from their landmark Southern African Gender and Media Baseline Study. The event served as the international launchpad of the newly published regional overview of the study, which was subsequently launched in Johannesburg on March 7. The research, which brought together 20 institutional partners in the 12 countries of southern Africa, covered 36 per cent of the media in those countries over a one-month period (September 2002). Focusing exclusively on news, the survey included both print and electronic media in the private, public and community sectors, and involved both quantitative and qualitative analysis. Thanks to the tables and clippings that illustrated the points made in the presentation, the audience was able to get a clear picture of the variety of issues raised by the study.

The objectives of the study, which could well serve as a model for similar efforts in other parts of the world, were to (a) provide baseline data for monitoring progress towards achieving gender balance in media coverage in the region, (b) build capacity in the region for monitoring media content from a gender perspective, and (c) become a key advocacy tool in the campaign to ensure that the voices of women and men, in all their diversity, are equally represented and fairly portrayed in the media of the region. One of the many key findings of the research was that women's views and voices continue to be grossly under-represented in the media, with women constituting 17 per cent of known news sources in the media monitored in the study (which is close to the global figure of 18 per cent revealed by the Global Media Monitoring Project in 2000) even though they constitute 52 per cent of the population in the region.

A.J., NYC, March 13, 2003

Reports from the 47th session of the CSW, New York

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