Maria McCloy
IF you’re one of the millions of South Africans who tunes in to any of an ever- growing number of music radio stations each day, it’s unlikely that many of the sexy, soothing, lively or witty DJ voices you hear belong to a woman. Or when you get down in the club of your choice, check out the DJ booth: it’s equally unlikely the DJ is a sister.
If you do hear a woman presenter on air she’s most likely the newsreader. Some people, like Radio Metro producer Christina Scott, feel women are pressed into news and then not easily deployed elsewhere.
Metro and 5fm, two of the country’s most popular radio stations, are hardly leading the way when it comes to empowering (read employing) women as DJs. 5fm’s Michelle Constant, like every other female DJ the Mail & Guardian approached, certainly doesn’t think there are enough women DJs. 5fm has three: Constant, Cleone Cassidy and Ursula Stapelveldt. But they all have only weekend slots. Metro has only one woman DJ, Ethel Malindi, and she’s on at the weekend between midnight and 3am.
Tracy Naughton, who works in community radio, says that the scarcity of women’s voices in commercial and public broadcasting means that women’s issues are not adequately dealt with.
Community radio fares better than commercial radio, though it still has a long way to go. The Voice of Soweto Community Station has nine men and seven women presenters, as well as a female station manager and sports editor – though this is unusual. Voice of Soweto also gets more applications from women for DJ jobs.
By contrast, 5fm station manager Anthony Duke says the ratio of audition tapes the station gets is around 50:1 male to female. Research commissioned by 5fm shows most respondents felt the typical DJ was male. Some felt the male voice transmits better than “the high pitched female voice” – research, he says, that does not guide the station’s selection criteria.
“I do believe they’re still holding the women back,” says Constant. There is no reason Cassidy – who plays mainstream music – should not have an afternoon slot during the week. Constant believes station managers are not “100% behind putting women in primary radio slots”.
Scott’s view is that the lack of women presenters has become a blind spot: “People in power tend not to push very hard – they’re sensitive about racial issues but not about sexual issues.”
Radio Metro station manager Zolisile Mapipa says it’s important that radio becomes more representative, but that his station has only one female DJ because “they’re very hard to come by”.
“I don’t believe it,” Scott says. She notes that when Lawrence Dube was on leave the standard procedure was to replace him with a man instead of a woman, though the male replacements were often below par. “There are lots of capable women out there … and within the station.”
Shado Twala, an extremely popular DJ at Metro and 702 between 1986 and 1993, is now part of a consortium trying to get a licence for Jazz FM. She calls the claims of a lack of capable women “bullshit” and questions why, if this is indeed the case, women aren’t being nurtured and trained. She says she has seen men rise to high positions women could have filled.
That broadcasting has always been male- dominated was mentioned by many of those interviewed. The opening of the airwaves in 1995 and the advent of community stations has begun to open up a few spaces for women.
Unusually for a community, public or commercial broadcaster, Voice of Soweto’s station manager is a woman – Nkuli Kgotsisile. Male chief executive Mpumi Dakile acknowledges that Voice of Soweto has “a higher intake of women than any other station because “we took a decision to employ capable – not token – women”.
Frances Green, a trainer at the Community Radio Training Project, addresses issues of ownership and control when she says it is “highly unusual to find women on station management committees”, which results in more men getting jobs and being sent on training courses.
The stereotype of women being incapable also plagues DJs. Most of those the M&G spoke to said women had constantly to prove they were as good as their male counterparts. And they are also subject to the other sins of a sexist society – like on-air sexist jokes, and that Cassidy was stalked at one stage. Twala says of her one-time late-night slots that “people would see me as a sex object and want to talk dirty”. And what about the rumours of a station manager being fired for “casting couch” tactics?
Stereotypes also affect programming – Twala says women are often relegated to mid- morning slots dealing with children’s issues and the like.
There are some other ways forward. Twala thinks women need to continue working their way up. Nothing will change until those in the stations and public register their discontent.
Mapipa was right when he said: “It will only be when we deliver that people will know we’re serious about it.”
‘THERE are women pilots and women lawyers, so why no women DJs?” asks one of South Africa’s biggest male DJs on the kwaito scene, Oscar Warona. He’s never met a woman DJ, and thinks women either don’t have the confidence or the commitment.
But it isn’t only the kwaito scene that lacks women DJs. Vicki Edwards, a British garage/house DJ who plays at Krypton and Decadance, says she has been shocked by how few female club DJs there are in South Africa. In the 12 years she’s been in the field, she says, the number of women club DJs in the United Kingdom has grown so much that their presence has become commonplace.
Nicky Blumenfeld is a DJ at Tandoor, and plays a range of acid jazz , funk, R&B and Soul African and Latin American music. She started club DJing five years ago, and says she’s never had problems from fellow DJs but has had problems with men in the audience who “aren’t used to the idea of women at the controls”. She has noticed a slight increase over the last year in women DJs playing hip-hop and kwaito.
But do women DJs bring anything new to club DJing? Blumenfeld says the Valentine’s Day session at Tandoor, where there were four women DJs, was an example of “wonderful, gentle energy, so the place can be packed, but not the same level of aggression”.
But both have found that some do not take them seriously. Edwards told of a rave where the organisers set up a “women’s room” – “It was all just a gimmick, a tiny room, crappy sound equipment.” Many people still assume women can’t deal with technology – or that “you’re sleeping with the promoter”.
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