Day  1 |  9 February

The public meeting on 9 February 2007 was without doubt the highlight of the three-day 5th Annual Meeting of the Network of Women, India, which concluded in Bangalore on 11 February. The event, which drew a large and diverse audience from the city, was made extra special by the exceptional and distinctive speeches by chief guest Gloria Steinem and special guest Ruth Manorama, as well as the poignant yet inspirational launch of the Anupama Jayaraman Memorial Award for Young Women Journalists, won in this inaugural year by Smita Aggarwal.

Casteless, classless and gender-equal society
On the question of caste and the media, she pointed out that it was important to pay serious attention to the scarce presence and skewed representation of dalits in the media. She described the marginalisation of Dr. Babasaheb R. Ambedkar, the main architect of the Constitution of India, during the early post-independence period and drew attention to the way Kanshi Ram, founder of the Bahujan Samaj Party, was written off as a casteist leader whose death in 2006 did not merit front page coverage in some leading newspapers.

The thought-provoking, applause-producing and laughter-generating keynote address by internationally renowned feminist writer and activist Gloria Steinem covered a vast canvas. “The Current Campfire,” the title of her talk, refers to the long tradition of people gathering around campfires to sing and dance, and to share stories and information.

Describing the media as “the current campfire” she said the question of whether human beings become “empathetic, peaceful and supportive of each other’s welfare or narcissistic, dominant and convinced that life is a zero sum game” depends to a large extent on “the kinds of campfires we, our families and our communities grow up with.” In many cultures most women and certain groups of men were relegated to the task of keeping the fire going and restrained from telling their stories at the campfire. However, thanks to women and supportive men in the media, the circle of those who speak has slowly been enlarged and this has changed what is being learnt by everyone.

“We are also beginning to learn that we have a collective human history in which everyone sat around the fire and everyone was heard, when we told news and sang, and our voices were valued for their usefulness to the whole group – not just the group into which we were born,” she said.

According to her, it is important to recall the 95 per cent of human history that predates patriarchy, which has been in existence over the past five to eight thousand years, so that it is clear that things have not always been this way and need not always be this way. We are finally beginning to understand that there were other forms of human organisation during 95 per cent of human history, she said, pointing out that knowledge about these “original cultures” is important not only to the female half of the human race but also to the races and classes of males who were also suppressed and made to serve the so-called superior groups.

Post-patriarchal, post-monotheistic, post-nationalistic age
“I want to excite your curiosity about thinking of the whole span of human history instead of just 5000 years or so and to understand that patriarchy and monotheism are very new,” she said. “In fact, perhaps we should tonight declare the past 5000 years of patriarchy, political forms of religion… and nationalism as an experiment that failed. And declare this as the first meeting of the post-patriarchal, post-monotheistic, post-nationalistic age!”

Returning to the concept of the media as “the current campfire,” she reiterated the fact that women and “wrong” groups of men have been keeping the fire going but prevented from speaking around it. Pointing out that a society that is deprived of a large part – indeed more than half -- of its wisdom is going to be in trouble, she said: “We are now in big trouble.”

Describing the status of women and coverage of events and issues in the US media, she said the gendered view of the world which has led to the division of news into “hard” and “soft” can be seen in the way Oprah, “arguably the most influential media person in the US,” is condescended to by “serious voices” in the media who “talk with sorrow about the Oprah-fication of the news.” According to her, by that they just mean that she is discussing most of human experience and that she dares to use narrative – not just generalisations, not just figures, not just two opposite poles fighting over an issue: “She dares to take seriously the subjects that affect most of our lives.”

She also highlighted the many important stories that remain unreported or incompletely covered by the media because of this partial view of the world. She called upon the media to recognise that there are not just two sides to every question, that everything is not about winners and losers, that it is important to focus on solutions as much as problems, and that narratives are just as relevant – if not more – than statistics and analysis even while tackling serious issues.

“Altogether, as you can see, we have a big job in gathering the whole human family around our various media campfires, with voices that are not prejudged, not excluded, with all ears open and with everybody tending the fire – not just a particular set of groups,” she said. “We are not doing this only because of the great talent in this room, we are not doing it only because of the female half of the human population, we are not doing it only to free and allow the full circle of human qualities to be accessible to men as well as women, we are doing it to save this fragile spaceship earth that we love so much.”

WHO, WHAT, WHEN

Earlier in the day participants took part in an interactive introductory session. Nearly 100 women journalists from nine states (Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Manipur, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal) participated in the NWMI meet – all but one of them paying their own way to Bangalore. Among them were 20 women involved in community media – print, radio and video – in Andhra Pradesh (Pastapur and Chittoor). In addition, there were four South Asian journalist participants (from the Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka), who also came on their own steam. Ten media students and two international observers from outside the region also attended the meeting.

Day 2 |  10 February

The first working session of the day was a panel discussion on “The Media, IT/ITES/ICTs and Gender.” Social anthropologist Carol Upadhya, who has been researching various aspects of the IT industry and IT workforce in Bangalore, presented an overview of gender issues in the Indian software outsourcing industry. Psychologist Manika Ghosh, who has been involved in counselling ITES sector employees, provided a glimpse of the range of issues faced by female call centre workers. Kavitha Kadambi, a software professional, spoke from her personal experience and observation of the role and impact of women in the IT industry over various stages of its development. Anita Gurumurthy, founding member and executive director of IT for Change, spoke of the need to look beyond the IT/ITES industries to appreciate the potential of information and communication technologies for women’s empowerment, especially at the grassroots.

In the next session, Sri Lankan journalists Dilrukshi Handunnetti (Editor, Investigations Desk, The Morning Leader) and Seetha Ranjani (senior journalist and member of the Free Media Movement) spoke about the long-standing and now escalating conflict in the island nation and media coverage of it both within the country and in neighbouring India. While Dilrukshi provided background information on the conflict and critiqued media coverage, Seetha’s presentation focussed on her work on the nearly 38,000 war widows in Sri Lanka belonging to different communities, including widows of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan armed forces.

Day 3 | 11 February

The rest of the morning was devoted to discussions among participants on issues relating to the network at the local and national levels, as well as plans for the future. There were animated debates about the network’s structure, systems, membership, communication (including via e-groups and the website) and activities.

The discussions included the possibility of working towards a network of women media professionals in South Asia (which had been mooted during the 2006 NWMI meeting in Kolkata when media women from the region participated in a panel discussion). Aminath Najib of the Maldives spoke about the overall media situation in her country and the importance of such linkages, while Seetha Ranjani talked about the fledgling network of women journalists in Sri Lanka and their eagerness to establish contacts across the region. Sahar Ali, a journalist currently working with Panos in Pakistan, described the background to the proposal to facilitate a coming together of women in media in South Asia.

Sunday afternoon witnessed two parallel sessions: one titled “Production, Property, Propriety and the Media,” and the other on emerging opportunities and challenges in media professions. The former, conceptualised and presented by the Alternative Law Forum, featured presentations by Lawrence Liang, Namita Malhotra and Siddharth Narrain on different aspects of the interface between the law and the media in a rapidly changing media landscape. The latter had media professionals from public and private broadcast media, new media, as well as publishing, speaking about their respective fields: Malavika Ganesan of Zee Kannada, Chandramouli from Doordarshan, Padmavathi from All India Radio, Jimmy Xavier of Radio Fever, Subbu Vincent of India Together (e-journal), and Jamuna Rao of Dronequill Publishers.

A final wrap-up session revisited decisions made in the morning session, assigning specific tasks and deadlines to different people. Thanks to the enthusiasm of the sizeable contingent from Pune, it was decided that the next annual meeting would take place there in February 2008.

A more detailed report on the NWMI meet will follow as will the texts of speeches and presentations made available for posting.