Women play a pretty dismal role as subjects for stories appearing in SA’s media, according to the Gender Advocacy Programme [http://www.gender.co.za]. The figures spell it out: “women constitute 19 percent of news stories” and “there is no topic category in South Africa in which voices of women predominate – not even in the topic code gender equality”.
What makes these stats worse is that “black women, who constitute about 45 percent of the population, represent some five percent of news sources”, but that’s another debate.
One of the founding values of our constitution is that of equality and non-sexism. This founding value should, as has repeatedly been recognised by our courts, be a pillar of our law and, ultimately, our society.
Section 9 of the constitution entrenches the right to equality:
Everyone is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law.
Equality includes the full and equal enjoyment of all rights and freedoms. To promote the achievement of equality, legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination may be taken.
The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.
No person may unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds in terms of subsection (3). National legislation must be enacted to prevent or prohibit unfair discrimination.
Discrimination on one or more grounds listed in subsection (3) is unfair unless it is established that the discrimination is fair.
Unfortunately, equality (as with all constitutional rights) is not an absolute right and can be limited in some instances. Our law simply requires that people in the same position are treated the same.
The media’s approach to stories about women violates equality, because the choice of story is based on one of the grounds listed in subsection 3 of the clause: a person’s gender. The violation is permissible if it can be shown that this unfair discrimination is justified in an open and democratic society based on human dignity, freedom and equality. This seems highly unlikely. SA’s approach to equality is unique in that it distinguishes between fair and unfair discrimination: here we have unfair discrimination because the basis of the differentiation is a ground listed in subsection 3 of the equality clause. (Discrimination can be fair, such as where the President pardons all prisoners who have children under the age of 12).
Given the importance of equality in SA, it seems obvious that the role women play in the media should be equal to that played by men. Not so – either in relation to women’s roles in stories, or in their representation in senior positions within SA’s media, as has previously been discussed in this column.
Some argue that this inequality is merely a facet of the media’s right to freedom of expression. However, SA law has accepted that the media is obligated to promote expression in accordance with the values of the constitution; and as a result in an open and democratic society based on human dignity, freedom and equality. So the argument fails, because the marginalisation of one gender is simply not justified by the right to freedom of expression.
What is indisputable is that the decision as to what forms the subject matter of a news story is an editorial one, or at least it should be. So, given the dominance of men in the media and many other industries, it is inevitable that the editorial slant when focusing on those industries will be a male one.
There are probably other reasons for the marginalisation of women in our media; maybe women do not want to be the source of news items in the same way men do?
These imbalances, like many others in our country, will probably change with time, with a little help from the women.
Toni Erling is an attorney at Rosin Wright Rosengarten, a firm specialising in entertainment and media law based in Johannesburg. Visit the firm’s website at www.rwr.co.za.