Empowering Arab Women through Media Development : A case study

Abstract: The media have power: they create frames of conceptions, influence attitudes and behaviour, and monitor the conduct of government officials. For women, the media can suggest ways and means to defend civil rights and gain access to society’s resources and opportunities. Indeed, Media Development offers three levels of interventions to promote gender equality. (1) Increasing female number and roles in the media labour markets. (2) Promoting the production and circulation of content that challenge stereotypical portrayals of women and men. (3) Addressing the entire society to raise awareness and commitment for equal contributions in sustainable development. However, even though media development efforts have been popular during the last two decades in the global South (UNESCO), the Arab region is ranked the lowest in the world for achieving gender equality (CRS, 2020).  This project aims to investigate the role of media development to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment through a case study of two gender strategies driven by two main models of media development (Scott, 2014; Manyozo, 2012), in the Arab region. One is led by external interventions, the other is supported by domestic authorities and local governments. The time period of the research is limited to the last decade, which has seen radical changes in terms of women’s participation in the public sphere.  The findings are based on 10 in-depth interviews with media professionals directly involved in these strategies across different Arab countries, from Algeria, Iraq, and Palestine, to the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Despite the differences between the strategies in terms of political affiliations and territories of interest, the interviews show that gender (in)equality in the media is not a phenomenon isolated from people’s daily lives. Correspondingly, women’s empowerment is the result of different power struggles in society in which media development could potentially make a real difference if based on gendered pluralistic participatory approaches, which include the internal and external environments of media organisations, as well as all actors of society’s systems and structures.