BULLETIN NO. 11

The Image of Women in the Mass Media
Second and last part

By Sara Lovera

The Feminist Voice is Born

With the apparition of what is called "new feminism" in the 1970s, feminist criticism disqualified the mass media. In the 70's globalization was just on the horizon. Women feminists intervened timidly in traditional media like newspapers, radio and television. Our contents were subversive and transgressive, our criticism of patriarchal institutions was verbalized in an ideological language, we shouted, often with sharp diatribes and disqualifying the world of men. We demonstrated our disapproval, we demanded our rights vociferously. Our demands included themes like the right to abortion, the denunciation of sexual violence and each individual's right to choose their own sexuality. This dangerous path generated the creation of our own language. Thus was born the feminist language, a cryptic language, we could not contain our indignation following each discovery, each new bit of knowledge. We confronted power without thinking twice. The result was very clear: the social rejection of feminists.

Thus we were expelled from the mass media. We had just begun to intervene, as I said, timidly. From these experiences various programs emerged, like the Women's Forum in Radio Universidad (UNAM), the Women's Bar in Channel 13 (then owned by the government), the Cause of Women in Radio Educación and the now legendary magazine FEM (with 22 years of existence). In a parallel fashion, we showed ourselves for what we were and we created networks of personal communication. In 1978 there was a really interesting debate in the magazine ¡Siempre!. We began to name rights that before were silenced, we wanted to denounce everything and everyone that oppressed us. In the early 1980s some feminists began to write in mainstream newspapers like El Universal, Excelsior and Unomásuno. Initiatives like Cine Mujer were set up, and we began working with other women from different social classes, whom we called the grass roots women, who taught us a new language that got mixed with the one we were beginning to create. Some feminists became socialists, which generated further social rejection.

The major part of the feminist movement decided to create its own publications. From our own spaces, we created our first alliances and gave testimony of our experiences. Hundreds of pamphlets and other publications on gender, health and patriarchal violence began to circulate. We helped each other and learned from the current called "popular education", and we created pamphlets and didactic material for the grass roots women. We also edited specialized publications, now a mural, then a testimony or a novel, and the results of numerous meetings and congresses were all published. Both from the academy and the struggle for social justice, we spoke profusely about creating an alternative language.

Meanwhile, the mass media were going through their own processes, the monopolies were reshuffled and their technological advances were made known among the general population. Computers invaded the editing rooms of the newspapers, radio news programs multiplied; radio talk shows began to appear. Thousands of women entered the media as workers.

In the society, civil protests were growing. Many women participated, but the media were absent from our movement. We were first expelled, then we became marginalised, and during a long time we were simply absent. In the mass media, traditionally controlled only by men, an alternative revolution began, with the arrival en masse of women to work there, in all kinds of activities, from reporting to locutor, production and programming, writing editorials, designing content and opinion, even in management posts.

But the media continued to hide our proposals, things were done in the patriarchal way, contents were echoes of the status quo. The massive arrival of women to the media- obviously, not always to management posts- did not bring any important change in the presentation of feminine and masculine images. The media generally were negative about the proposals and work of the feminist movement; our experiences in the 1980s did not have much impact in the content of the mass media. And in the women's movement there was a general accord against participating in them.

This was the time when soap operas appeared and prospered, and a million copies of different women's magazines were printed weekly. Both these media projected a new image: that of the modern woman: a good housewife, a wonderful mother, slim and beautiful, interested in the outside world, a professional or even an executive, with impeccable make-up. That image of the perfect superwoman is still etched on the consciousness of many women.

Now, that we on the point of entering the 21st century, we women have to appropriate the new communications technologies for ourselves, while in the media, a democratizing process is badly needed. The 21st century has been dubbed that of women, and this means taking up our cultural creativity, our vitality and our proposals to reform the world in favor of human development. The new technologies offer a useful tool. But they will not be sufficient, if we do not use these media with all our will to change this violent, unjust, unequal world.

From diverse forums women have elaborated their agenda for the new century, and we have published our herstory. Pilar Riaño (Chilean communicator, writing for Isis International) says: "the women's movement and academic feminist research have shown over the last two decades that women have a subordinate position in the structure, organization and programming of the communications industries… This includes the lack of control by women over the media, the permanence of a sexist image of women, their absence in the content of news bulletins and their unequal access to the new communications technologies."

This is still true, even though women's participation in making up the content of media messages is as high as 38% in Botswana and 40% in Great Britain, 37% in Zimbabwe and 43% in Mexico (according to the UN). This implies the great possibility that these women can produce a deep change in the content and democratization of the media, with a new non-sexist vision of gender.
We should elaborate a code of ethics for the media so that these recuperate their role as a public service, we should call for a new alliance of media workers with the women's cause, and the society at large should intervene in shaping a new citizenship that propitiates these changes.