巴基斯坦的可持续发展目标取决于媒体性别转变

The male-dominated sector must broaden its vision to spark debate about women and development, says Tasneem Ahmar.

The world has spent years debating the successes and failures of the千年发展目标(MDGs). But in Pakistan, most people — women in particular — did not even know what they stood for. Even the mainstream media were mostly unaware of the eight goals the country committed to meeting by 2015.

一个nd things have not changed with the可持续发展目标(SDGs): political debates, the war on terror, violent extremism, corruption and治理take up most of the media space and time. What space is left goes on trivial issues such as Valentine’s day or debates on who is a better Muslim and how.

On top of this, male domination of the media bringsgender冷漠，不敏感和偏见几乎没有范围通过性别镜头讨论发展问题。

一个s a result, the media in Pakistan not only failed to report on why the country missed its MDG targets, they also failed to focus on the fact that women were missing from MDG efforts. Women were not equal partners in the process of working towards the goals, their concerns were overlooked and their success stories were left untold.

“Women can only be equal partners when they are heard, loud and clear.”

塔斯尼姆·艾哈迈（Tasneem Ahmar）

Pakistan’s media need to be more responsive to gender inequality, adhering to international commitments such as the1995 Beijing Platform for Action。But for the SDGs to mean anything for women in Pakistan, they must first be informed about what they mean.

Narrow media vision

Pakistan is lucky to have a free and pluralistic media, but, at the same time, the vision of that media is hugely narrow. This is because it is a male-dominated sector.

拓宽视野,该国的地方、国家nal and regional media have some questions to answer.

首先，巴基斯坦能否实现任何发展目标，而不会与一半的人口互动？答案是否定的 - 我们需要通过性别镜头来研究每个问题。

The media need to closely monitor government actions on issues of women’s health, education, mobility, equality and equity — and do so regularly, not merely as tokenism. There has been no shortage of training by NGOs on gender sensitivity and development journalism. It is time to put it all into practice, both to critique government actions and to give the public a voice.

The second question is whether women are equal partners as implementers as well as beneficiaries of development plans in Pakistan. Again, the answer is no, but they need to be.

一个2015年有关该国媒体部门的报告found that women make up just 16 per cent of reporters in print, TV and radio combined. [1] Some news organisations have taken积极的步骤, but more should be done to bring more women into media professions and provide them equal opportunity for training — including in gender-sensitive reporting — along with their male colleagues.

Women can only be equal partners when they are heard, loud and clear. This applies to other areas too: to create a better, gender-sensitive society with balanced and non-biased information, we need more women as experts, analysts and mentors.
The next question is, of course, how to achieve this.

Radio clubs

There is a need to mobilise the media at all levels, particularly to use radio and informal messages (from sources other than the state) effectively through innovative and inexpensive means. ‘Listeners’ clubs’ — community spaces where people gather to listen to radio programmes — are one way of doing this.

These clubs have been successful in many developing countries and are now taking off in Pakistan.Uks非政府组织、媒体我领导,形成了男人y such clubs, where groups of 30-35 women and men (sometimes in mixed groups) gather to listen to radio programmes thatwe produce in-house, on issues of interest to their community such as all forms of violence against women. Participants then discuss the content of these programmes and, above all, put into practice the lessons learned.

“Pakistan’s media must create public awareness and initiate informed debates about gender and development.”

塔斯尼姆·艾哈迈（Tasneem Ahmar）

我们提出了将对性别的强烈意识编织到所有俱乐部的活动中，增强妇女的知名度及其参与决策的能力。这种方法并非仅仅专注于女性：我们强烈鼓励男性参与以及男女需求的表达。

Reporting language and media reform

More focus on the role of language as a barrier will also help. There is a stark difference between Pakistan’s vernacular and English language media in how they handle stories about women.

For example, when reporting on sexual crime, most vernacular media will focus on the woman involved rather than the crime itself. Images of rape victims or survivors, as well as judgemental language about them, continue to be used in crime reports that lack any investigative or analytical value.

The language used may even appear to ‘sympathise’ with the victim or survivor, which may sound positive but in fact has a huge negative impact on the development and empowerment of women: although it may help gain support, it negates the resilience and strength that women display during times of crisis, disaster and violence.

巴基斯坦的媒体需要制定一项广泛的战略，为妇女，少数民族，年轻人和儿童的关注提供空间。为此，媒体可以使用庞大的材料档案从UKS在线获得, which, every day for almost two decades, has recorded women’s issues and how the country’s media report on them.

This can help educate media professionals to consider gender issues and develop critical media literacy — including how to counter gender discrimination and sexual harassment at work. Uks has also developed a gender-sensitivecode of ethics, which we encourage other media to adopt through networking activities.

Pakistan’s media must create public awareness and initiate informed debates about gender and development. But change starts at home: the media themselves need to first become more focused and informed. Or else years later, we will be discussing our failure to achieve the SDGs as well.

Tasneem Ahmar是UKS研究中心的主任，也是巴基斯坦伊斯兰堡 - 卡拉奇UKS广播的执行制片人。可以在[email protected]