Survey: Arab Arab Women and the media
Regional, Culture, 10/29/2003

A recent survey was conducted by the center of Arab Women for Training and Research CAWTAR, which has Tunis as a headquarters, on Arab women and the media.

CAWTAR's survey is on Arab women and the media. A field survey in Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates.

This study, dealing with the same topic "women's image in the media," by presenting the discourse of media professional women as well as their perception on the co-relation between women and their work and the position of women in the field of mass communication.

The study has enumerated 173 articles published in the sampled four countries, namely articles dealing with various issues related to women.

Among interviewed women, the majority mentioned working in more than one media field indicating the media professional women do not restrict their production to one domain, and rather dedicate themselves to diversified topics.

The proportions of media professional women dealing with political, national and international issues are 47.3% in Yemen, 36% in Jordan, 32% in Tunisia and 2.1% in the United Arab Emirates.

As for questions directed to each woman in the selected sample concerning their preferred topics, answers indicated that social issued are the most preferred ones( 19%) followed by women's issues as their second choice (13.1%), then international issues (12.1%) and finally cultural issues ( 11.7%).

Media professional women's feeling of being discriminated against, compared to their male colleagues, is rather alleviated. About 14 to 16% of women have such a feeling in Jordan, Yemen and in the United Arab Emirates, and only 4.2% in Tunisia. Interviewed women stated that their choice of practicing media proficiency is accepted by more than 90% of their family and social environment.

The reportage type is ahead of all other types, scoring 42.4% of the total space reserved for the articles included in the analysis. The article type indicates that, despite the official celebration of International Women's day and the considerable number of events organized in relation to this event, there are only two editorials dedicated to women issues in Tunisian newspapers. On the other hand, such editorials are totally absent from the press publications of Jordan, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates. It is a fact that the editorial is the column in which a specific press publication expresses its choices and opinions. Having neglected to deal with the issue of women in the publications "editorials" of the selected four countries, reveals their weak commitment to promote women conditions and to adopt their problems. Moreover, content analysis exposed the rarity of analytic articles which represents no more than 20.2% of the total published ones.

A schedule conducted by the survey shows the weak commitment of well educated people, experts and associations' activists in enriching media contents with issues related to women conditions even on temporary bases. Further, the distribution of articles according to gender shows that the number of written pieces attributed to women represents 55.7% of the total in the four selected countries.

As for the space unit indicator, it is observed that the space preserved for articles assigned by women is larger than that preserved for man; even if the number of men's articles are more than that of women's articles as in the case of Jordan.

Previous Stories:
  Arab adolescent girls: reality and prospects   (10/28/2003)
  Mrs Mubarak address women's conference in London   (10/27/2003)
  Topics and participants of the annual meeting of the Arab network for gender and development   (10/27/2003)

Please add a link on your webiste pointing to ArabicNews.com and bookmark ArabicNews.com & subscribe to our daily email news bulletin.

Search