Khadija Magardie raises important points about women intellectuals and their lack of access to public discourse in her commentary (“Where are all the clever chicks?”, February 6). Her critiques of gender machinery and the hollow, official rhetoric around gender issues are justified and compelling.
Yet, I have to challenge Magardie’s analysis of South African women as “intellectual pussies who cannot think beyond their own”. With this crass generalisation, Magardie dismisses the work of scores of independent writers, artists, academics and thinkers who are changing perceptions of women — and women’s lives — through their work.
These intellectuals include Gabeba Baderoon, Pregs Govender, Amina Mama, Zimitri Erasmus, Shamim Meer, Desiree Lewis, Lebogang Mashile, Sheila Meintjes, Pumla Dineo Gqola, Zine Magubane and many, many others.
Many of these women are internationally respected and often cited, as Magardie would have learned had she done a simple Internet search. To tap into feminist intellectual politics she could have visited a number of excellent websites produced in South Africa, including Agenda Journal (www.agenda.org.za), Feminist Africa (www.feministafrica.org), Fito (www.fito.co.za) or Chimurenga (www.chimurenga.co.za).
But I suspect that Magardie is more interested in spewing vitriol than hearing intellectuals or fostering debate. After all, she has at her disposal a book with the names of 300 “smart” women who she could easily have consulted to answer the question posed in your headline. Having declared women “intellectual pussies”, Magardie’s argument inexplicably shifts. She lightens up on the mis-ogyny, concedes that at least some South African women are deemed worthy intellectuals, and points out that these women are simply not heard or cited.
While acknowledging the media’s role in marginalising women, Magardie fails to examine her complicity as a journalist and opinion-maker in deciding who is or isn’t a public intellectual. Instead, she chooses a hands-off approach, and proceeds as if the media is a value-free conduit that gives equal access to all people.
Where Magardie has the opportunity to lay bare the ideological processes that govern supposedly neutral news values, she declares, instead, that journalists will start quoting “smart” women “just as soon as we start knowing who they are”. In other words, women are to blame if they are not heard in the media. And journalists have no responsibility for sourcing and reflecting a diversity of opinion.
Her article comes in the wake of the third Global Media Monitoring Project study being launched in London on February 15. The study, first conducted in 1995, will show yet again that women’s voices are systematically excluded from the media. While South Africa has shown some improvement, the playing field is still far from even.
If Magardie is truly interested in hearing a range of women intellectuals in the media, she should stop berating and do something. She is, after all, privileged in her access to the commentary pages of this paper.
Magardie could start by persuading her bosses to insert one or two women into the exclusively male gallery of M&G columnists. Then, she could ask her editors to stop equating “women” with sex and the body, as they do each week by publishing women’s writing under the “Body Language” rubric. Finally, Magardie could stop reducing women to their “pussies” and “tits”.
Let’s raise the bar a little higher than mean-spirited misogyny, and start a meaningful debate on this issue.
Barbara Boswell is a graduate student and Fulbright Fellow in the United States. She has worked as a journalist in South Africa. This article is part of the Gender Links opinion and commentary service