Do women have a future in the newsrooms, or should they simply resign themselves to playing second fiddle? Bongiwe Mlangeni looks at gender politics on South Africa’s newspapers.
The year 2003 was an interesting one for newspaper journalism. It provided a framework for soul searching as issues of transformation and ethics took centre stage.
It was also a year when young black men were appointed editors of significant newspapers. The current blue-eyed boys of the industry are Mondli Makhanya of the Mail & Guardian and Justice Malala of ThisDay. But the continued focus on black men for executive positions and editorships raises questions about the availability of women who can compete successfully for similar posts.
The print media scores high marks for its efforts to redress the racial imbalances which existed in newsrooms before 1994. But it has drastically failed when it comes to gender representation – an equally important aspect of transformation and employment equity.
Will the day come when a woman will be editor of a popular newspaper like The Star, Mail & Guardian, City Press or even Johncom’s cash cow, the Sunday Times? Or will the owners hold tight to the ‘boys club” mentality that rules the industry?
The answers lie with the Connie Molusis and Nazeem Howas of the industry – the men who run the business of newspapers. In answering, they will have to dig deeper than pandering to the myth that there are no capable women. Lack of management skills amongst women can not be used as a reason for exclusion; lack of experience in editing and managing a newspaper hasn’t stood in the way of the appointment of males as editors.
References to the appointment of three women as editors in 1999, who subsequently left for different reasons, also do not make up for the general marginilisation of women from editorship positions.
The appointment of Paula Fray, Lakela Kaunda and Brownyn Wilkinson sent signals that the industry was shifting the glass ceiling to accommodate women as central role players.
Wilkinson was faced with the challenge of starting a daily sports newspaper.Sports Day, which had been launched at the same time as Sunday World, was closed down a few months after launch. Both were bleeding, but Sunday World, which was being edited by Fred Khumalo, was allowed to carry on, and a rescue operation was mounted in 2000.
Kaunda was expected to revive a dying horse – the Evening Post. The year she took over, the Sunday Times wrote: ‘Her faith in the paper is either blind buoyancy or realistically founded in a survival strategy. The Post is near the bottom of the barrel of South Africa’s daily papers – the last audited figures, in October, showed its circulation had dropped by 3,4% since June to 14,703.”
Unfortunately for her, the horse took its last gasp under her leadership.
Fray, who headed up the weekly Saturday Star, also left her job this year after reaching what she viewed as the glass ceiling with Independent Newspapers.
Bad business planning rather than mismanagement on the part of Kaunda and Wilkinson seems to have drawn their fate, while Fray was driven out by ambition. The reasons surrounding the departures of these three can not be used to undermine the rich experience of several senior women with the potential to lead newspapers.
Women such as Robyn Chalmers, Ferial Haffajee, Rehana Rossouw, Zubeida Jaffer, Lizeka Mda, Zingisa Mkhuma and Heather Robertson have proven their worth in the industry. These are women who also may be better positioned to tackle the gender imbalance in newsrooms.
In a study released this year, Gender Link and the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) lamented the under representation of women in newsrooms. The study, which looked at who covers the wide range of news from politics and economics to sports and crime, revealed that women reporters only account for 22% in print, 44 percent in radio, 44% as presenters and 30% in television.
The membership of the South African National Editors Forum (Sanef) also reveals how thin the numbers are of women in senior positions. Out of about 162 Sanef members, less than 50 are women. Most play secondary roles as executive editors, news editors, feature editors, and deputy editors. Beauty and fashion magazines are so far the only place where women are confidently put at the helm of publications.
The editor job in newspapers is likely to get more elusive as head hunting becomes the norm. Rehana Rossouw makes the point: ‘In recent years, there have been a few editorships that have been filled in this way. Men are approached for the position and it is filled without allowing equal opportunity for all to compete for the job. I suppose in all of these instances, the CEO or chairman of the company doing the head hunting is male.”
While the industry lost a few good women pre-1994 because there was no future for them in newsrooms, not much has changed.
No study has been done on why women journalists leave the profession, but Paula Fray believes it is vital for the newsroom to employ senior women.
‘Having more women editors is important if we want to facilitate the transformation of the media. But it is even more critical that those editorships come with management understanding and support of the needs and demands of transformation.”
Obviously to the businessmen, (mark, not businesspeople), women are not real players yet. Is it just possible that these enlightened beings see their female counterparts as inferiors they need to tolerate?
Bongiwe Mlangeni is a senior reporter at the Sunday Times.