enhancing visibility and portrayal of women in tanzanian media

ii Media council of Tanzania (McT)

Media Research Paper

Enhancing Visibility and Portrayal ofWomen in Tanzanian Media

Contrasting Case Study of Mwananchi Communications Limitedagainst the Yellow Press

A Research Report by Pirita Juppi (Principal Researcher)with Simon Berege and Rachel Yusuph

© Media Council of Tanzania (MCT)

2014

ISBN 978-9987-710-47-8

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abbreviations ............................................................................... viAcknowledgements ....................................................................... viiResearch Team ................................................................................. viiiAbstract ............................................................................................ ix

1. Introduction and background to the problem ..................... 11.1 Power of the Media in Defining Gender Roles ................ 1 1.2 Objectives of the Study and Research Questions ............. 21.3 Research Design .................................................................... 31.4 Significance of the Study ...................................................... 3

2. Literature review ........................................................................ 52.1 Studying Media and Gender ................................................ 52.2 Definitions of Key Concepts ................................................. 62.3 Visibility of Women in the Media ...................................... 82.4 Representations of Women in the Media .......................... 92.5 Coverage of Specific Gender Issues .................................... 102.6 Women in Media Organisations ........................................... 112.7 Indicators of Gender Sensitivity ......................................... 13

3. Data Collection and Analyses Methods .................................. 153.1 Case Study Approach as a Starting Point ......................... 153.2 Mwananchi Communications as a Case Study ................. 153.3 Yellow Press as a Contrasting Material ............................. 183.4 Sample of Newspapers and Items Included ...................... 183.5 Quantitative Content Analyses ........................................... 203.6 Qualitative Analyses of the Core Material ........................ 223.7 Visual Analysis ...................................................................... 243.8 Interviews with Reporters and Editors .............................. 25

4. Quantitative content analyses: Visibility of women in thepapers .......................................................................................... 284.1 Women as Sources of News and Feature Articles ............ 284.2 Visibility of Women in Photos ............................................ 304.3 Differences between Female and Male Reporters ............ 324.4 Reference Groups of Women and Men ............................. 354.5 Topics Men and Women Talk About ................................. 39

5. Qualitative analyses: Portrayal of women in textsand photos .................................................................................. 445.1 Articles about Women and for Women ............................. 445.2 Discourses Constructing Representations in The Citizen .. 45

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5.3 Representations of Women in Photos in the Daily Newspapers .......................................................................... 57

5.4 Representations of Women in Photos in the Tabloids ...... 70

6. Cultural and Practical Challenges Related to Gender Sensitivity ...................................................................... 736.1 Background of the Interviewed Journalists ....................... 736.2 Gender Awareness among Journalists ............................... 746.3 Views on Gender Sensitivity in Tanzanian Media ........... 766.4 Views and Experiences of Gender Sensitivity in MCL .... 796.5 Taking Gender into Account in Practical Work .................. 816.6 Challenges in Getting Interviews from Women ............... 836.7 Explanations and Solutions to Problems with

Interviewing Women ............................................................. 856.8 Awareness of the Company’s Gender Policy .................... 87

7. Conclusions and Recommendations ....................................... 897.1 Summary of Key Findings on Coverage of Women .......... 897.2 Summary of Fey Findings on Interviews with

Journalists .............................................................................. 907.3 Conclusions and Discussion on Findings ........................... 927.4 Practical Recommendations for Reporters and Editors .... 957.5 Limitations of the Study and Areas for Further

Research .................................................................................. 102

References ........................................................................................ 104

Appendices

Appendix 1: Coding Matrix .................................................................. 111Appendix 2: Variables of QCA (Quantitative Content Analyses)..... 112Appendix 3: Interview Questions for Reporters and Editors ........... 118Appendix 4: Size of Articles and Number of Sources in Articles ..... 120Appendix 5: Distribution of the QCA Data in Different Sections..... 122Appendix 6: Articles with Photos in Newspapers and Tabloids ..... 123Appendix 7: Gender of People in Photos .......................................... 124Appendix 8: Reference Groups of Female and Male Sources ......... 125Appendix 9: Topics Female and Male Sources Talk About .............. 126

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Tables

TABLE 1 Female and Male employees in Mwananchi Communications Limited in September 2013 ..... 17

TABLE 2 Data of the Quantitative Content Analyses ......... 20TABLE 3 Number of Female and Male Interviewees

from the Different Offices of MCL ....................... 26TABLE 4 Number of Female and Male Sources .................. 28TABLE 5 Gender of People in Photos .................................. 31TABLE 6 Gender of Reporter(s) of Articles .......................... 33TABLE 7 Gender of People Sources in Articles

written by Female and Male Reporters ............... 34TABLE 8 Gender of People in Photos in Articles

written by Female and Male Reporters ................ 35TABLE 9 Discourses Employed in the Coverage

of gender Issues and Women in The Citizen ...... 46

FiguresFIGURE 1 Gender of People Sources, Comparison

of Different Sections ............................................... 29FIGURE 2 Gender of People Sources, Comparison

between Papers ..................................................... 30FIGURE 3 Gender of People in Photos, Comparison

between Papers ................................................... 32FIGURE 4 Gender of Reporters of the Articles,

Comparison between Papers ............................... 33FIGURE 5 Reference Groups of Female and Male

Sources of Articles ................................................. 36FIGURES 6a–j Most Common Reference Groups of Female

and Male Sources in Different Papers .................. 38FIGURE 7 Topics Female and Male Sources Talk

About in the Articles................................................ 41FIGURES 8a–j Most Common Topics Female and Male

Sources Talk About in Different Papers ............... 42

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Abbreviations

CSO Civil society organisationEAJA Eastern Africa Journalists AssociationEJAT Excellence in Journalism Awards TanzaniaFAO Food and Agriculture Organization of theUnited

NationsFGM Female Genital MutilationGEMSAT Gender and Media Southern African TanzaniaGMMP Global Media Monitoring ProjectGMPS Gender and Media Baseline StudyIFJ International Federation of JournalistsIPS Inter Press ServiceIWMF International Women’s Media Foundation LHRC Legal and Human Rights CentreMCL Mwananchi Communications LimitedMCT Media Council of TanzaniaMISA Media Institute of Southern AfricaMMP Media Monitoring ProjectNGO Non-governmental organisationNSGD National Strategy for Gender DevelopmentOSCE Organization for Security and Co-operation in

Europe.SADC South African Development CommunityTawla Tanzania Women Lawyers Association’sTGNP Tanzania Gender Networking ProgrammeTMF Tanzania Media FundUN United NationsUNDP United Nations Development ProgrammeUNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural

OrganizationWACC World Association for Christian Communication

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By Eno Akpabio, Abdallah Katunzi and Njonjo Mfaume

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Acknowledgements

The research team is grateful to the Media Council of Tanzania(MCT) for the funding which made it possible to carry out thispertinent study on gender and the media.

This study would not have been possible without cooperation ofthe management and editorial staff of Mwananchi CommunicationsLimited (MCL), more specifically of the The Citizen and Mwananchi.Special thanks to the MCL Executive Editor, Bakari Machumu,Editorial Administration Manager Daniel Mwaijega and theMwananchi Managing Editor, Dennis Msacky, for their logistical andpractical support extended to the research team prior and during theresearch period.

We are also grateful to the staff of the Global Publishers andGeneral Enterprises Limited, particularly the company’s GeneralManager Abdallah Mrisho, for providing the team access to theirpublications Ijumaa, Risasi and Uwazi to collect research material forthis study.

We would like to thank the supervisor of this project, Prof PeninaO. Mlama for her insightful comments which helped us to improvethis report.

We are indebted to our employer, the management of theUniversity of Iringa (formerly Tumaini University, Iringa UniversityCollege) for allowing us the time to conduct this study.

Notwithstanding all support availed to us by differentstakeholders, we remain solely responsible for any shortcomings ofthis report.

viii Media council of Tanzania (McT)

Enhancing Visibility and Portrayal of Women in Tanzanian Media

Research TeamThe research team in charge of conducting this study consists of

the principal researcher, Dr Pirita Juppi, a holder of PhD inJournalism and the associate researchers Simon Berege (MA inInternational Public Relations and BA in Journalism) and RachelYusuph (MA in Information Technology Management and BA inJournalism). The research team works fulltime at the Department ofJournalism, University of Iringa (UoI)1.

The data collection and analyses methodology of this study wasdesigned by Dr. Pirita Juppi. The whole research team participatedin conducting interviews with MCL editors and reporters. Theinterviews were transcribed and those conducted in Kiswahilitranslated in English by research assistant Sandra-Eva Lamba, withthe exception of the interviews conducted by Ms Yusuph which shetranscribed herself. Dr Juppi was in charge of analysing theinterviews.

Ms Yusuph and Mr Berege were in charge of conducting thecoding for the quantitative content analyses on the Kiswahili papersand Dr Juppi on The Citizen. Dr Juppi performed the statisticalanalyses of the quantitative data, and analysed representations ofwomen in the photos of the Kiswahili and English papers and in thetexts of The Citizen. Dr Juppi wrote the research report, and Mr Beregeread and edited it.

The principal researcher takes full responsibility for the analysesand interpretations and for the conclusions and recommendationsbased on the findings.

1 At the time of signing this research contract the University of Iringa was still a constituent collegeof Tumaini University (IUCo).

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A Research Report by Pirita Juppi (Principal Researcher) with Simon Berege and Rachel Yusuph

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AbstractThis study aims at improving the position of women in Tanzanian

news media by producing new knowledge and basing on it, offerrecommendations which contribute to 1) increase visibility of women,and 2) have more balanced, diverse and multidimensional representationsof women in the media. The main research questions are:

1. How often do women appear in news and feature items assources compared to men?

2. In which social or professional roles do women appear inarticles and which topics do they get to comment on? Arethese different from the roles and topics assigned to men?

3. How are women portrayed in texts and images? Are theserepresentations stereotypical and/or degrading in nature?

4. What kind of cultural and practical challenges are there onthe way of gender sensitive journalism?

5. What kind of practical solutions can help to improvevisibility and positive portrayal of women?

The research is a case study focusing primarily on two dailynewspapers, Mwananchi and The Citizen, which are published by thesame media house, MCL. Therein, coverage of Mwananchi and TheCitizen is compared to that of three tabloids, Uwazi, Ijumaa and Risasi.

The research project combines quantitative and qualitativemethods. The data of the quantitative content analyses consists of1066 newspaper articles (texts and images), collected from 7 issuesof each paper included in the study. The qualitative analyses ofnewspapers focuses on the photos with women in them in all the fivepapers, and on the news and feature items covering women orgender issues in The Citizen. In addition, qualitative researchinterviews with 30 journalists working with MCL provide insightsinto the cultural and practical challenges in the way of gendersensitive journalism.

Findings based on the quantitative content analyses show that asof 2013, women were very invisible in the media compared to men,both as sources of the news and feature items and as subjects ofphotos. Women were used as sources in 24% of the articles (men in70 %) and they appeared in photos in 28 % of all articles (men in 42%).

In the daily newspapers, women are clearly under-represented assources and in photos compared to men. However, therepresentations of women are diverse and mostly positive. In thetabloids, women receive more visibility, but their portrayal mostly

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negative, stereotypical and degrading.

Interviews with reporters and editors reveal that there is still a lotto do to inculcate gender awareness amongst journalists, both femaleand male. Very few interviewees had received any training ongender, and most of them found it difficult to explain what genderbalance or gender sensitivity mean in the context of journalism.However, on moving to more practical issues and examples, most ofthem still demonstrated understanding of problems related to thevisibility and portrayal of women in the media, and their role inmedia organisations.

Most interviewed journalists showed understanding of theessence of gender sensitivity in rather mechanical and quantitativeterm. To most, it meant simply balancing the number of female andmale sources in a story.

It is most important that media companies provide in-housegender training for journalists.

1. Introduction and Background to theProblem

1.1 Power of Media in Defining Gender Roles

Since 1990s, it has been widely recognised that the media exercisea significant symbolic power in defining gender roles and inreinforcing – or challenging – gender stereotypes. When journalistsreport on gender issues, or portray individual women or men, theyengage in constructing gender representations. Media portrayalscontribute to the understanding of what it means to be female ormale, and they create role expectations for women and men.Stereotypical and demeaning representations of women in the mediacan have a negative impact on how they are treated in their families,communities, workplaces, and in the society at large.

In contemporary mediatised societies, access to the media is vitalfor citizens – both as a source of information and as a forum forparticipation in discussions on public issues. It is a prerequisite foracting as an active citizen exercising her/his rights. In developingcountries, women have less access to the media than men, and evenmore so in rural areas (Gallagher 2002, 2–3). And women have evenless access to media publicity as active participants of public debatewho get to voice their concerns and express their opinions.

In 1995 the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijingidentified women and media as one of the twelve critical areas ofconcern. The Platform for Acton produced by the conference notedthat even though an increasing number of women work in thecommunication sector, only a few have attained positions at thedecision-making level. The Platform for Acton voiced concern alsoover gender-based stereotypes in the media, projection of negativeand degrading images of women, and reinforcing of women'straditional roles in a way that limits their participation in society. (UN1995, Chapter IV, Section J.) Almost 20 years have passed, but littlehas changed – the same concerns are very topical today especially inAfrican context.

In Tanzanian news media, women tend to get much less coveragecompared to men, and their portrayal is often one-dimensional andstereotypical (e.g. GMBS 2003). Gender bias in the media is due toboth socio-structural and cultural reasons. On the one hand, mediacontents reflect the position of women in Tanzanian society at large,since women are still under-represented in decision-making

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positions, e.g. in politics, business and in public institutions andorganisations.

On the other hand, the invisibility of women in the media, andthe stereotypical representations of them, are due to culturallydetermined gender perceptions which also affect judgment ofjournalists. As the Tanzanian National Strategy for Gender Development(NSGD 2005, 7) notes, at the household level men are stillautomatically considered as the head of the family, and the existingpatriarchal structures and traditional understanding of gender roleslimit the possibilities of women to have their voices heard even atthe family-level. Therefore, it is not surprising that their voices arealso not adequately heard in the media.

Oppression of women is not confined to Tanzania, rather, it isviewed as a regional phenomenon. As EAJA Report (2008, 9) puts it,in Eastern Africa men are mostly the ones who control the means ofproduction and resources, and have the decision-making power bothat the household level and in various social institutions. Women, onthe other hand, have generally a low status, and no full access toeducation, training, health care, credit, formal economy or politicaldecision-making. However, there are also considerable differences instatus between individual women.

1.2 Objectives of the Study and Research Questions

The key problems this research projects focuses on are (1) theunder-presentation of women in Tanzanian media, and (2) the one-dimensional and stereotypical roles and representations of women in themedia. This project aims at improving the position of women in theTanzanian media by producing new knowledge and basing on it,offer recommendations which will contribute to 1) increasing visibilityof women, and 2) having more balanced, diverse and multidimensionalrepresentations of women in the media.

The main research questions which this study aims to answer are:


2. In which social or professional roles do women appear inarticles? Which topics do they get to comment? Are thesedifferent from the roles and topics assigned to men?

3. How are women portrayed in texts and images? Are theserepresentations stereotypical and/or degrading in nature?

4. What kind of cultural and practical challenges are there onthe way of gender sensitive journalism?

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5. What kind of practical solutions can help to improvevisibility and positive portrayal of women?

1.3 Research Design

This research project is a case study focusing primarily on twodaily newspapers, Mwananchi and The Citizen, which are publishedby the same media house, MCL. The company is considered a seriousand credible print media house, and journalists of Mwananchi andThe Citizen have received several Excellence in Journalism (EJAT)awards (See MCT 2013a). The interviews were conducted exclusivelywith MCL female and male journalists. In the analyses of mediacontents, however, the coverage of Mwananchi and The Citizen isviewed against that of the yellow press. Three popular tabloids,Uwazi, Ijumaa and Risasi, function as contrastive cases to the primarycases of Mwananchi and The Citizen. The three yellow tabloids are alsopublished by same company, Global Publishers and GeneralEnterprise Limited.

The research project combines quantitative and qualitativemethods. The empirical data consists of newspaper articles (texts andimages) and interviews with journalists. We have also utiliseddiscussions with managing editors and policy documents of MCL asmaterials of the study. The data, the method of its collection andanalyses are described in details in Chapter 3.

1.4 Significance of the Study

There is a wide international consensus that empowering womenresults in extended socio-economic benefits to the society (see e.g.Ministerial Declaration 2010; UN 1995). Yet, in many countries,women are not treated as equal, competent and legitimate citizenswith political and economic rights.

Tanzanian National Strategy of Gender and Development (NSGD)recognises that gender inequality is a major obstacle to socio-economic and political development in the country (NSGD 2005, iv).Even though the Tanzanian Government has taken several steps2 toenhance gender equality and increase women’s participation in theParliament and other categories of public office at all levels, genderimbalances and gender inequities still exist in many areas of theTanzanian society. NSGD (2005, 2) recognises several challenges inthe way of gender equality, among them the patriarchal system,



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2 E.g. amendments to the Constitution in 2000 and 2004, committing to various internationalconventions and declarations for gender equality, Women and Gender development policy in 2000,and as the latest step the National Strategy for Gender Development (NSGD) in 2005 (NSGD 2005,1–2).

customs and traditions, which discriminate women. NSGD (2005, 16,56) regards strengthening the media with gender perspectives andstrengthening gender capacities of media actors as importantstrategies in enhancing gender equality in Tanzanian.

By conducting this study, it is our aim to produce such knowledgeof the prevailing practices in the Tanzanian newspapers, which willcontribute in the efforts to changing problematic practices. Changesin journalistic practices are expected to yield changes in journalisticcontents (visibility and portrayal of women), which should in thelong run have an impact on the position of women in the society.

Empirical research on gender and media in Tanzania has so farconsisted mainly of international and comparative monitoringprojects (GMMP, GMBS), and research papers and thesis projects ofjournalism and mass communication students (e.g. Solomon 2006;Tenganamba 1999; Mfinanga 2005). There are also some morecomprehensive research publications by established scholars(Mwendamseke 2003; Mbilinyi & Omari 1996). These studies mainlyfocus on either analysing media contents form the genderperspective, or on studying the position of women in mediaorganizations (see Chapter 2). They provided useful information forthe purpose of designing this study, since they give a general idea ofsome of the key problems practitioners face in covering of womenand gender issues, and of some practical challenges faced byjournalists, which may affect the coverage of women.

This study aims at adopting a holistic approach, focusing onseveral dimensions of media and gender simultaneously: we studythe visibility and portrayal (representations) of women in the media, theawareness and perceptions of gender issues by both female and malejournalists, the practical challenges that encumber gender-balancedand gender-sensitive journalism, and – most importantly – potentialsolutions to the existing problems. The latter has been the biggest gapin the research on media and gender so far.

Even though this research project is a case study, its results arerelevant and applicable to Tanzanian media on a more general level.We hope that the recommendations provided at the end of thisresearch report will help to enhance visibility of women in theTanzanian media and in producing more balanced and diverseportrayal of women.



2 Literature Review

2.1 Studying Media and Gender

The media and gender issues has aroused a lot of interest for morethan two decades now, both in the academia and among variousCSOs dealing with gender and/or media ethics. For a long time,Western scholars and West-centric perspectives have dominatedacademic research and theory formulation in the field. However, asMargaret Gallagher put it in 2002:

One of the most important lessons from feminist mediatheory over the past twenty years has been that women’sexperience of discrimination, and indeed of identity itself, isheavily determined by differences in terms of class, economicstatus, age, sexuality, religion, race and nation. The inadequaciesof ‘women and media’ studies that conflate the condition ofwhite, heterosexual, middle-class women with the condition ofall women are now acknowledged, and contemporary mediaresearch has tried to grapple with more complexunderstandings of gender identity and experience. (Gallagher2002, 3.)

Gallagher’s viewpoint applies to studying media contents andpractices as well as to studying identities and experiences of women.It is not enough to study gender and media in the context of the Westonly, or “generally” on a global level. Even though some problemswith the access and portrayal of women in the media seem to berather universal, one should not make direct conclusions on thesituation in African countries based on empirical studies done, ortheories developed in the Western cultural context. It is vitallyimportant to produce local knowledge, taking specific social, culturaland political context into consideration.

In Tanzania and other African countries, the subject area of mediaand gender has so far been mostly covered in various global, regionaland national media monitoring projects, and in addition in someacademic research papers. Studies can be roughly categorised underfour broad themes:

1. Visibility of women in the media,2. Representations of women in the media,3. Coverage of specific gender issues,4. Women in media organizations.



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These themes are interlinked and affect one another. As ColleenMorna (2002, 3) puts it, there is “a vicious negative cycle at work. Thegender imbalances in society reflect in the institution of media. Thesein turn reflect on the editorial content of the media that is guilty bothof the sins of omission, that is, stories not covered, and the sins ofcommission, that is the way stories are covered.”

This chapter discusses in short previous studies on the above-mentioned four themes, conducted in Tanzania and other Africancountries. First, however, it is necessary to define the key concepts ofthis study.

2.2 Definitions of Key Concepts

Gender: Whereas the concept of “sex” refers to biologicallydetermined characteristics of men and women, “gender” refers to thesocially constructed roles of women and men and the relatedconceptions of femininity and masculinity. Since gender roles aresocial constructs, they vary from one culture to another and changeover time. (E.g. IPS 2010; UNESCO 2003, 17.)

Gender Issue: Gender issue is a term which is widely used buthardly ever explicitly defined. At a general level, “gender issue” canbe defined as any matter related to gender, i.e. to the sociallyconstructed roles of women and men and to the socially determinedrelations between women and men. For example, according to FAO(2004), gender issues “focus on women and on the relationshipbetween men and women, their roles, access to and control overresources, division of labour, interests and needs.” In practice,however, the specific issues discussed under the umbrella term ofgender issue can vary, and different people may have different ideason what constitutes a gender issue. In this study, we have regardedthe following types of newspaper articles as articles covering genderissues: (1) Articles which discuss gender relations (genderbalance/equity/equality, rights of women and men etc.) in society atlarge or in a specific sector such as in education, (2) Articles whichdeal with specific problems and issues concerning women becauseof their gender, such as gender-based violence, teenage pregnancies,reproductive rights and health, and female genital mutilation-FGM,(3) Articles which discuss appropriate behaviour of women andtherefore are based on gender expectations, (4) Articles which coverwomen’s economic or social empowerment.

Gender Balance: Gender balance refers to equal representation andparticipation of women and men (e.g. OSCE 2006). Gender balance



in the media covers both equal representation of women and men inmedia organisations and equal representation of women and men inmedia coverage as participants of public discussion (i.e. as sourcesof news and other journalistic items).

Gender Sensitivity: Gender sensitivity is a concept that is broaderand more multi-dimentional than gender balance. It refers to aperson’s or organisation’s ability to “perceive, acknowledge andhighlight existing gender differences, issues and inequalities and toincorporate a gender perspective into strategies and actions” (OSCS2006, 3). And UNESCO (2012) has defined it a set of indicators thatcan be used to assess gender sensitivity of a media outlet (see 2.6).

Yellow Press: Yellow press refers to sensationalist andentertainment-oriented print journalism (in Kiswahili known asmagazeti pendwa). The term is often used in a pejorative way to referto journalism of low professional quality and ethical standards. (Seealso Tabloid.)

Tabloid: Tabloid originally referred to the papers size which isremarkably smaller than the broadsheet. Since serious qualitynewspapers used to favour broadsheet size in many Westerncountries, while “yellow press” came out in tabloid size, tabloidjournalism (or just tabloids) has become synonymous to yellow press– in spite the fact that some serious newspapers have always beenprinted in tabloid size, and in recent years more and more respectablenewspapers have switched from broadsheet to tabloid size.

Discourse: Discourse has become a central concept in mediastudies, cultural studies and social sciences. It refers to (1) the practiceof constructing meanings through the use language and (2) to theresulting outcome, which can be defined as a fairly unified system ofmeanings. Discourses are socially and culturally formed and sharedmeaning systems – as opposed to individual views, ideas or ways ofusing language. Discourses provide socially constructed ideas,interpretations and beliefs of the reality; through them people see the“reality” (e.g. gender issues) in a specific way. One and the same issuemay appear very different through the meaning systems ofcompeting and contradictory discourses. Discourses producerepresentations of the objects of reality, and at the same time theyproduce identities to and relationships between people engaged inusing the discourse or being represented by the discourse. Wheneverpeople are engaged in using language, they are also engaged indiscoursive practices and in constructing representations. (E.g.Fairclough 1995a, 1995b; Wodak 1996; Hall 1997c.)



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Representation: Representation refers to portraying a person, issueor phenomenon in a specific way through the use of language(discourse) or through visual images such as photographs. Theconcept refers to the constructed nature of these portrayals or images;object of reality are not presented to us as such, but they are ratherre-presented by someone (for example a journalist in a newspaper).As Stuart Hall (1982, 64) puts it, representation involves “the activework of selecting and presenting, of structuring and shaping; notmerely the transmitting of an already existing meaning, but the moreactive labour of making things mean”. However, as in the case ofdiscourses, representations are not individual interpretations ofthings, but rather more generally recognised and shared culturalformations. Constructing representations is an act involving symbolicpower: power to represent and define something or someone in aspecific way. (E.g. Hall 1997a, 1997c; Woodward 1997a, 1997b.)

Stereotype: Representations produced through discourses or visualimages can be stereotypical in nature. Act of stereotyping reducescomplex, diverse and multi-dimentional objects (such as women andmen, or a specific ethnic group) into over-simplified, one-dimentionalrepresentations – stereotypes. When operating with stereotypes, theworld tends to appears divided and polarised: there is good and bad,normal and abnormal, “us” and “them”; there are opposite categorieswhich are represented as fundamentally different from each other.Shades of grey disappear, there is only black and white. Stereotypesare not necessarily always negative, but – because ofoversimplification and exaggeration of differences – they are harmful.(E.g. Hall 1997b, 229, 249, 257–259.)

2.3 Visibility of Women in the Media

Visibility of women in the media is an area of study that has to dowith questions such as how often are women or gender issuescovered in the media, and how often do journalists use women assources in journalistic articles. In other words, it has to do with accessof women to media publicity and their participation in publicdiscussion in the media.

International comparative media monitoring reports show thatwomen are generally under-represented in the media, especially inthe coverage of “hard news”, such as politics and economics.According to the latest Global Media Monitoring Project from year 2010,women were visible in 24% of items either as interviewees or assubjects of the story. There is some increase compared to earlierGMMP rounds. In the first monitoring in 1995 women appeared in



17% of items only, and in 2005, in 21% of articles. However, the riseof women’s visibility has been mainly due to their presence in “soft”specialized topics such as science & health. The increase was lessprominent in “hard” topics. (GMMP 2010; GMMP 2005.)

GMMP 2010 shows similarities within regions and differencesbetween different regions in visibility of women. In sub-SaharanAfrica, women were present in 19% of all news items. They wereremarkably less visible in items on politics and government (15%)and economy (17%) than in science & health coverage (31%). Womenappeared in journalistic items most often talking about their personalexperience (34% of sources sharing personal experiences), in the roleof an eye-witness (33% of eye-witnesses) or in the role of “ordinarypeople” providing a popular opinion (34% of ordinary people). Only17% of experts and 15% of spokespersons were women.

Tanzanian country report of the Gender and Media Baseline Studyshowed similar results. GMBS focused on analysing only news fromprint and electronic media, from twelve African countries. At thetime, women appeared as sources in 17% of news items in Tanzaniannews media. When women were interviewed, they mostly got to talkabout “soft topics” related to gender and family. Women were alsoidentified in family roles – as someone’s wife, mother or daughter –much more often than men. The only “occupational groups” amongwhich women formed the majority of interviewed sources wherebeauty contestants, homemakers and sex workers. (GMBS Tanzania2003; Made et al. 2003.)

2.4 Representations of Women in Media

Feminist media theorists have focused on stereotypicalrepresentations of women, especially the tendency of representingthem as sexual objects (see e.g. Ross & Byerly 2004, 10). According toMorna (2002, 5), the media tend to portray women in an unfair andinaccurate way. Women are often sexualised, and they are defined interms of their physical appearance rather than abilities. When womenare not portrayed as sex objects and fashion models, they are mostlyrepresented either as victims or as caregivers and homemakers(Morna 2002; see also GMMP 2010).

Tanzanian scholars have expressed the same concern. Accordingto Mwendamseke (2003), in Tanzanian media, women are most of thetime represented as inferior to men. The way sensationalist tabloidstreat women has aroused concern and criticism. According toMtambalike (1996) women have been victims or unethical,



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sensationalist and sexist reportage in tabloids, and therefore the printmedia has reinforced the subordinate position of women insisted ofempowering them.

Besides the tabloids, stereotypical representations of women areparticularly blatant in advertisement – in Tanzania as well as in othercountries (see Shartiely 2005; Rutashobya 1996). Shartiely (2005)examined the linguistic and visual strategies used to constructstereotypical representations of Tanzanian women (and men) in TVcommercials. Shartiely discovered that representations of both,women and men, were stereotypical, and the roles assigned towomen were closely related to home. Women also had the role ofdecoration in commercials: they were presented as beautiful andsensual but rather simple and ignorant creatures, and they wereshown more prominently in commercials than the products that weresupposed to be sold.

According to the findings of the Global Media Monitoring Project(GMMP 2010), in African media only 5% of all items challengedexisting gender stereotypes, whereas 77% reinforced stereotypes – aremarkably bigger portion than the global average of 46%. Some 18%of items did neither challenge nor reinforce stereotypes.

2.5 Coverage of Specific Gender Issues

Gender issues commonly covered by the media include serioussocial problems such as sexual assaults and rape, domestic violence,and female genital mutilation (FGM). Since cases of gender-basedviolence commonly go public when they become the subject of acourt process, or sometimes already during the investigation, theyare often covered in the frame of crime and court news. Genderissues, of course also include positive topics such as women’sempowerment.

MCT’s monitoring project from year 2011 discovered that eventhough Code of Ethics for Media Professionals in Tanzania clearly statesthat journalists must not identify victims of sexual assaults in theirreporting, in practice journalist often violate this ethical guideline incoverage of rape and sexual assault cases in courts. Court reportingin newspapers repeatedly identifies the victim either directly orindirectly by giving specific information such as names of relatives,age and school. (MCT 2012, 12–14.)

In general, the MCT’s monitoring project discovered signs of both,gender blindness and gender-transformative reporting in Tanzanian



newspapers. Empowerment was the most covered gender issueduring the monitoring period in 2011. MCT report criticizes the factthat most of the coverage on women’s empowerment, as well as onother gender issues, suffers from the Single Source Syndrome, whichmight create a perception that women’s empowerment and genderissues are a cause of the interviewed activists only. (MCT 2012, 50–64.)

Even though gender issues may be covered as “hard news” whendealing with crime cases with women in the role of a victim, severalresearchers have noted that in general gender issues and “women’sissues” don’t make it to hard news. According to Lynne MuthoniWanyeki (2002, 2), women’s concerns are marginalised in Africanmedia by granting them only “soft” coverage.

All too often “women’s issues” don’t receive even that. As Morna(2002, 4) notes, when the mainstream media focuses on reportingeither violence against women or domestic issues, a huge range ofdifferent stories relevant to women remains uncovered. Because mendominate the media, they also define what is newsworthy, and whatis “hard news” or “soft news”, gender is easily perceived as only aspecific “niche” issue to which some journalists specialize in softstories (Ammu 2012, 9).

2.6 Women in Media Organisations

The media industry in Africa is in general male dominated.According to a Gender Link’s study (Made & Morna 2009) on 126media houses in SADC countries, media practitioners in southernAfrica are primarily male: 59% of media employees in the includedcountries were male and 41% female. If South African figures areremoved, the portion of women drops to 32%. Senior positions andtop management employ only few females. There are in general veryfew female media owners in the world, but the situation is worse inAfrica than in other parts of the world (Gadzekpo 2009, 74).

The media in Eastern Africa is even more male dominated. In2008, women accounted for only 20% of professional journalists. Menhold the positions of responsibility, decision-making and leadershipin media houses.

Report by EAJA explains this with differences between womenand men in levels of education, and with male dominance in mediabusiness and newsrooms. Some media owners also favuor men andare reluctant to appoint women in high positions because they see,



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for example, maternity leave and family responsibilities as factorsdisrupting the work of women. (EAJA 2008, 11, 14.)

According to the Gender and Media Baseline Study (GMBSTanzania 2003; Made et. al 2003) women are most visible as mediaprofessionals in television, where they constituted a bit more thanhalf of TV presenters and reporters in 2003. Women are mostmarginalised among print reporters: in 2003 only 21 % of printreporters were women.

Eva Solomon’s Master’s thesis Women’s Roles in the Media inTanzania (2006) focused on attitudes of Tanzanian newspaperreporters towards gender issues. Findings from interviews in sixTanzanian newspapers showed that generally, the position of womenjournalists in newspapers was poor: they presented only one fifth ofeditorial staff in newspapers, they had little or no journalismeducation – especially in tabloids – and they worked in lower levelsof editorial hierarchy, mostly as reporters. Interviewed femalereporters were aware of women being covered less than men innewspapers and portrayed in stereotypical roles. (Solomon 2006, 94–98.) Other studies conducted in Tanzania have also noted the poorposition of women in the media industry and have in additionpointed out specific problems faced by female journalists, such assexual harassment (see e.g. Tenganamba 1999; Mfinanga 2005).

Studies have also shown that female reporters are assigned typesof news and current affairs stories that are different from thoseassigned to their male colleagues. Managers tend to assign to femalejournalists “soft” news stories that are stereotypically perceived asbelonging to the domain of women, such as gender violence orbeauty tips. Men are assigned “hard” news stories, investigativereporting and political news. (Gender Link 2009.)

Early feminist media theorists used to think optimistically thathaving more women working in the media, especially in decision-making positions, would result in more visibility for women in mediacontents. Later feminist scholars have been more cautious,recognising that the deeply rooted problem cannot be solved simplyby increasing the number of women in media industry. (Gallagher2002, 4; see also Morna 2002; Ross & Byerly (eds.) 2004; Van Zoonen1994, 1998.)

The Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP 2010), entitledGender and Media Baseline Study (Made et. al 2003) and Solomon’sstudy (2006), however, all indicate that women are more likely to use



women as sources and to report on women or gender issues thanmen. Yet, even though female journalists have a crucial role inimproving gender-balance and gender-sensitivity in the media, theystruggle with many challenges when trying to improve the coverageof women. Among these challenges are the male-domination ofownership and control of the media, absence of women in managingpositions, poor education, poor salaries and facilities, andprofessional practices, such as conventional news values, mediapolicies and the pressure of deadlines causing journalists to chooseeasily accessible sources. (Solomon 2006, 94–100, 103–105.)

Many of the challenges that female journalists in Tanzania face arerather universal. A recent international study, Global Report on theStatus of Women in the News Media (IWMF 2011), surveyed 500 mediacompanies in 59 countries. Findings indicated that women face aglass ceiling in one third of the studied countries, as men occupy avast majority of the middle and senior management positions inmedia companies. International survey carried out at the turn of themillennium by IFJ (2000) showed that women don’t get appointed tothe top jobs, they have less access to training, earn less than their maleco-workers, face job segregation, limited promotion perspectives andsexual harassment and have difficulties with fitting career and familylife together.

2.7 Indicators of Gender Sensitivity

UNESCO (2012) has defined a framework of gender sensitiveindicators for the media, which covers both actions fostering genderequality in media organisations and gender portrayal in the contentsof media. At the level of media organisations (Category A) theframework sets five objectives, each which several indicators:

(A1) Gender balance at decision-making level;

(A2) Gender-sensitivity in work and working conditions;

(A3) Gender equality in unions, associations, clubs andorganisations of journalists, other media professionals andmedia-regulatory bodies;

(A4) Media organisations promote ethical codes and policies infavour of gender equality in media content;

(A5) Gender balance in education and training.

At the level of media content (Category B), the UNESCOframework focuses on:



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(B1) Gender portrayal in news and current affairs;

(B1) Gender portrayal in advertising.

UNESCO Report (2012, 40–46) focuses on five strategic objectivesrelated to gender portrayal in news and current affairs:

1. Balanced presence of women and men – reflecting thecomposition of society, human experiences, actions, viewsand concerns in media coverage of news and current issues;

2. Fair portrayal of women and men through elimination ofstereotypes and promotion of multidimensionalrepresentation/portrayal;

3. Coverage of gender equality and equity issues as animportant and integral part of the media’s acknowledgedrole as a watchdog of the society;

4. Evidence of gender consciousness in different types ofeditorial content and across the spectrum of subject-areasand content categories/sections;

5. Evidence of accurate and holistic understanding of gender-based violence in all its forms as an internationallyrecognised violation of human rights.

The main focus of this study is on journalistic media contents(visibility and portrayal of women). Therefore, the above-mentionedfive objectives especially and indicators related to them are relevantto the study. We have not applied the indicators exactly as formulatedin the report by UNESCO (2012), but most of the indicators are insome form included in our quantitative content analyses or in thequalitative analyses of newspaper contents (see Chapter 3).

For the purpose of this study, the objectives, especially 1, 2 and 4,are relevant, since we are analysing the full range of newspapercontents (different genres, subject areas and sections) from the genderperspective, and not just the coverage of gender issues.

Since gender equality in media organisations, as well as ethicalcodes and policies of media organisations are also likely to affectmedia contents, we discuss these dimensions of gender sensitivity inour case study on Mwananchi Communications Ltd.



3 Data Collection and Analyses Methods

3.1 Case Study Approach

The research at hand is a case study which focuses primarily ontwo newspapers Mwananchi and The Citizen, both of which belong tothe same media house, the MCL. Both are “serious” newspaperspublished seven days a week although, because of different targetaudiences, they bear some differences in style and content.

Of these two newspapers, the English-language The Citizen isclearly targeted at the urbane more educated and well-off population.In their Facebook page3, The Citizen describes its target audience as“exposed Tanzanians in the corporate world, expatriates and youngcollege leavers”. Kiswahili newspaper, the Mwananchi, has a broaderTanzanian target audience and a more colourful outlook comparedto The Citizen. With celebrity news in special sections (Burudani,Starehe), Mwananchi seems to be a kind of hybrid, combiningcharacteristics of a serious newspaper with that of an entertainmenttabloid.

For the purpose of contrast and comparison, contents of threeentertainment-focused tabloids (“yellow press”), Uwazi, Ijumaa andRisasi, were also analysed in this study.

Case studies typically focus only on one or few cases and aim atstudying the cases in-depth and in details, from differentperspectives, and utilising various data and methods. This researchis also based on the so called ”triangulation”, meaning that we haveutilised multiple research data and analyses methods to study thecases, with the purpose of getting a comprehensive understandingof the key issues related to the topic and research problems of thisstudy.

The data includes texts and images from The Citizen andMwananchi, policy documents from MCL, discussions with managingeditors of the two newspapers, and interviews with reporters andeditors in the two newspapers. In addition, the data includes textsand images from Uwazi, Ijumaa and Risasi.

3.2 Mwananchi Communications Ltd as a Case Study

In this case study, we wanted to focus on the media house whichis serious about journalistic professionalism and quality, and has



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3 The Citizen in Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCitizenTanzania/info

ambitions to improve their performance in the area of genderbalanced reporting. The MCL. was a natural choice, as it publishesthe biggest Kiswahili daily newspaper, Mwananchi, and one of thebiggest English-language newspapers in the country, The Citizen4.Moreover, MCL had aspired to improve gender-balance in theirnewspapers and has been awarded as a centre of excellence in genderbalance by the Tanzanian gender equality network GEMSAT(Mwaijega 2013).

The MCL is a private media company, which was originallyestablished in 1999 as Media Communications Ltd. In 2001 thecompany expanded their business and changed the name toMwananchi Communications Ltd. In 2002 the Nation Media Group(NMG)5 bought controlling interest in MCL, which made MCL asubsidiary of NMG (MCL Facebook page). The MCL has itsheadquarters in Dar es Salaam and boasts several regional offices indifferent parts of Tanzania.

The Mwananchi newspaper has been there since 2000 while TheCitizen since 2004. In addition to them, MCL publishes a bi-weeklyKiswahili sports paper, MwanaSpoti which was established in 2001.And then their weekend editions of Mwananchi and The Citizen,Mwananchi Jumamosi and Mwananchi Jumapili as well as The Citizenon Saturday that can be regarded as independent papers in the sensethat they have separate editorial staff. The weekend editions focusmore on investigative stories and analytical articles (MCL Facebookpage.)

Mwananchi has an average daily circulation of ca. 40 000 copiessold across the country6. The circulation of The Citizen sells between4000–5000 copies daily). (Mwaijega, personal communication5.9.2013.) According to a baseline survey by Tanzania Media Fund(TMF 2012), Mwananchi is the most read newspaper amongTanzanians who read newspapers, with 58.2% of newspaper readersreading it at least once a week. Only 3.2% of the respondents whoread newspapers read The Citizen regularly.



4 The other major English-language newspapers in Tanzania are The Daily News (owned by thegovernment), The Guardian, The Business Times, The African, The Express and This Day.

5 The Nation Media Group was founded in 1959 by His Highness the Aga Khan. It has become thelargest independent media house in East and Central Africa (Nation Media Group website).

6 In international comparison, circulations figures of Tanzanian newspapers seem very low. This isdue to the fact that majority of Tanzanians do not read newspapers, and the radio is a much moreaccessible media especially in rural areas. According to the TMF survey (2012), newspapers wereread by 36% of men and 28% of women, and there was a lot of regional variation. As can be expected,reading newspapers was more common among more educated citizens. The proportion ofnewspapers of overall media consumption among citizens was marginal (8.6%) compared to theradio (69.8%) and the TV (21.6%).

MCL joined GEMSAT in 2008. In 2011, the media house signedMemorandum of Understanding, adopting the SADC GenderProtocol. Managing editors of MCL have participated in trainingsorganised by GEMSAT and as a result of the training workshops, thecompany has recently drafted their gender policy document. Inaddition to the managing editors, some reporters have attended ingender training of GEMSAT or other CSOs. There has not been anyin-house training for journalists on gender issues. (Mwaijega 2013;personal communication 5.9.2013.)

One of the SADC Gender Protocol targets is having womenrepresenting at least 30% of staff in every media house. In September2013, MCL had reached that target if all the forms of employment areconsidered. However, in permanent positions the proportion ofwomen was remarkably smaller. Only 16% of permanently employedjournalists were women, whereas 58% of its correspondents andretainers7 were women (see Table 1).

Only seven women worked in editorial management, middle-management and senior positions in MLC: one managing editor, oneconsulting editor, one features editor, three sub-editors and one chiefreporter. Six women work as feature writers. The rest of the womenworked as reporters in various sections.

TABLE 1. Female and Male Employees in MwananchiCommunications Ltd as of September 2013

Position Women f (%) Men f (%) Total f (%)

Permanent journalists 17 (15.9%) 90 (84.1%) 107 (100%)

Correspondents/

Retainers 23 (57.5%) 17 (42.5%) 40 (100%)

Graphic designers 5 (35.7%) 9 (64.3%) 14 (100%)

(permanent)

Graphic designers (casual) 2 (66.7%) 1 (33.3%) 3 (100%)

Proof readers (permanent) 0 (0%) 3 (100%) 3 (100%)

Proof readers (casual) 1 (33.3%) 2 (66.7%) 3 (100%)

Editorial assistant/ librarian 2 (100%) 0 (0%) 2 (100%)

Cartoonists (casual) 0 (0%) 4 (100%) 4 (100%)

TOTAL 55 (31,4 %) 120 (68.8%) 175 (100%)

(Source: Mwaijega, personal communication 5.9.2013.)



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7 Correspondents get paid based on stories, but have also access to newsroom facilities and are entitledto travel allowances for their work-related travel. Retainers are like correspondents, but they arepaid allowances.

The MCL editorial policy guides reporters and editors to providebalanced reporting on gender related issues. Reporters are expectedto include female sources in stories whenever possible. According tothe management, desk editors have the responsibility of making surethat reporters are aware of this and the gender balance principle insources is put into practice. (Msacky, personal communication5.9.2013; Mwaijega, personal communication 5.9.2013.)

3.3 Yellow Press As a Contrasting Material

The tabloids included in this study are Uwazi, Ijumaa and Risasi.These are sister papers published by the same private Tanzanianmedia company, Global Publishers & General Enterprises Ltd. Thecompany was established in 1998 and has its head office in Dar esSalaam. It is the leading media house in the publication of leisure andentertainment-oriented tabloids.

In total, Global Publishers publishes six Kiswahili papers. Inaddition to the ones included in this study, there are the weeklytabloids, Amani and Ijumaa Wikienda as well as a sports andentertainment triweekly, Championi. Different tabloids are publishedon different weekdays: on Monday there are Ijumaa Wikienda andChampioni Jumatatu, on Tuesday there is Uwazi, on Wednesday RisasiMchanganyiko and Championi Jumatano, which on Thursday there isAmani, on Friday Ijumaa and Championi, On Saturday there is RisasiJumamosi. The company distributes its papers through over 20regional agents in Tanzania. (Global Publishers website.)

Uwazi is the oldest of the tabloids published by the company. It isa 16-page tabloid, described by the publisher as a “seriousnewspaper”, with stories focusing on social and political issues. Risasicomes out twice a week with as a 16-page tabloid. The publisherdescribes Risasi as a “social, political and entertainment newspaper”.Also Ijumaa is a “social, political and entertainment newspaper” with16 pages per issue. According to the publisher, the circulation of thethree tabloids (after the returned copies) is currently 30,000, over36 000 and over 40,000 copies respectively. (Global Publisherswebsite.)

3.4 Sample of Newspapers and Items Included

As noted earlier, this study aims at producing detailed and in-depth information, and therefore utilizes qualitative approach tosupplement and deepen the quantitative content analyses. Becauseour aim was to analyse systematically all the articles of the selected



newspapers from the gender perspective, and not just articlesspecifically dealing with gender issues, the sample sizes ofnewspapers needed to be kept relatively small. The samples ofnewspapers and tabloids are both non-probability samples. We usedsampling only to select the issues to be included in the analyses.Within the selected issues, all the journalistic articles (with theexceptions explained later) were included. Therefore the total numberof research units (articles) is extensive, (over 1000 articles), and itenabled us to do quantitative analyses utilizing statistical methods.

Since both Mwananchi and The Citizen both publish different pull-outs (supplements or “magazines” focusing on a specific subject areawithin the main paper) at different week days, it was important toinclude in the sample one issue from each weekday to make thesample representative. From both newspapers, a sample of twoweeks was collected from the period 1.5.–14.5.2013 (14 issues fromeach newspaper). For the quantitative content analyses we includedseven issues (one week 1.–7.5.8), and for the qualitative analyses wecollected all the relevant materials from the two-week sample period.There were no specific reasons for the selection of this specific two -week period – in that sense, the sample was random – but it wasselected and collected for convenience reasons at the time when theresearch proposal was finalised.

The three tabloids are published only once or twice a week. Thesample was collected from each tabloid at regular intervals, pickingthe first issue of each month from January 2013 to July 2013. Thesampling method resembles systematic sampling, except that it waslimited to within the period of seven months preceding the actualdata collection. The data includes seven issues of each tabloid.

In total, in the quantitative content analyses we analysed 35 issues(14 daily newspapers + 21 tabloids) and for the qualitative analyseswe collected relevant articles and photos from 49 issues (28 dailynewspapers + 21 tabloids).

From the selected newspapers and tabloids, only the editorial(journalistic) contents were included in the analyses. In other words,non-journalistic contents such as advertisements and cartoons whereexcluded from the content analyses. Only the articles written by staffwriters (reporters, correspondents, and in case of pullouts, regularcontributors of the newspaper) were included. Articles from news



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8 From The Citizen, the Friday issue published 3.5.2013 was not available in MCL’s offices or inlibraries in Iringa, and therefore the Friday issue published 10.5.2013 was included in thequantitative content analyses instead.

agencies or newspapers were excluded from the analyses.9 Also,reader’s opinions and analyses articles by external experts wereexcluded.

3.5 Quantitative Content Analyses

Quantitative content analyses (QCA) is a method which is suitablefor the purpose of systematic and detailed description andcomparison of an extensive data. It enables quantitative analyses ofqualitative features of text and images. Qualitative features are“quantified” by coding them using predefined categories, whichbecome possible values of variables.

In the quantitative content analysis we focused on the news andfeature items of the newspapers. The data included altogether 1066articles, most of which were news items (see Table 1). For the purposeof this study, we used features in the broadest possible sense, referringto any items which are not news and not opinions/editorials.Therefore, the feature category in this study includes long featurearticles and short “how-to” articles in various sections (e.g. in specificfeature pages or weekly pullouts), interviews or personality profiles,vox pops and stand-alone photos with only a headline and caption.News category includes hard news and news background articles inactual news sections (national news, international news, business,etc.), and also the lighter and more entertainment oriented news intabloids and in the special sections of dailies, such as sports news,and news on celebrities and show business.

TABLE 2. Data of the Quantitative Content Analyses (n=1066)

Newspaper News f (%) Feature f (%) Total f (%)

Mwananchi 413 (82 %) 88 (18 %) 501 (100 %)

The Citizen 269 (77%) 82 (23 %) 351 (100 %)

Uwazi 52 (95 %) 3 (5 %) 55 (100 %)

Ijumaa 80 (100 %) 0 (0 %) 80 (100 %)

Risasi 78 (99 %) 1 (1 %) 79 (100 %)

Total 892 (84 %) 174 (16 %) 1066 (100 %)



9 In Mwananchi and The Citizen, materials from new agencies are utilized mostly in internationalnews, sports and business sections. The Citizen uses lots of materials from AFP (Agence France-Presse), especially in international news and sports section. Also some materials from NMG(National Media Group) are published.

Mwananchi and The Citizen have remarkably more pages per issuethan the tabloids, which explains why their number of articles ismuch bigger compared to that of the tabloids which have much fewerpages, even though the data of the content analyses included sevenissues of each paper. Articles in Mwananchi are on average shorterthan those featured in The Citizen, hence the bigger number of articlesin the former in spite of the fact that The Citizen has more pages perissue (The Citizen 40 pages, Mwananchi 20–30 pages). Uwazi has, onaverage, longer articles than Ijumaa and Risasi, which explains thesmaller number of items in spite of the same number of pages (16pages).

As can be expected, in tabloids proportion of entertainmentfocused pages or other special theme sections was bigger than in thedaily newspapers, where emphasis was more on news, includingnational, international, political and business news (see Appendix 5).

Each individual article in the papers included in the sample wasanalysed as a coding unit (research unit) of its own. If an articlestarted from the front page of the paper or a pull-out and continuedinside, it was coded as one unit. Also sidebars inside an article werecoded as part of that same coding unit. Editorials and opinioncolumns were excluded from QCA, since the focus of analyses wason visibility of women as sources and in photos.

In the QCA of the newspaper contents we focused especially onthe following questions:


2. How often do women appear in photographs compared tomen?

3. How are women identified in articles in terms of their socialor professional roles (“reference group”)? Are these differentfrom the reference groups that men are identified with?

4. Which topics do women get to talk about? Are theredifferences compared to men?

Based on these research questions, the following researchvariables were formulated for the purpose of quantitative contentanalyses (for the explanations and values of each variable, seeAppendix 2):

– Number of people sources (in the article)

– Gender of sources (in the article)



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– Number of photos (in the article)

– Gender of people in the photo(s) (of the article)

– Reference group of women (in the article)

– Reference group of men (in the article)

– Topics women talk about (in the article)

– Topics men talk about (in the article)

In addition to the actual research variables, the followingbackground information was coded for each article:

– The paper (name of the publication)

– Date of publication

– Section the article was published in

– Genre of the article (news/feature)

– Size of the article (measured in paragraphs)

– Gender of the reporter(s)

All the news and feature articles of each issue were coded firstmanually in a coding matrix (see the Appendix 1) and then the datawas entered in the SPSS computer software for the statisticalanalyses. In the statistical analyses the paper, the section, genre andthe gender of the reporter functioned as independent variables(variables which explain changes in dependent variables) and theresearch variables as dependent variables (variables the changes ofwhich may be explained by independent variables). In other words,we expected that there would be differences in visibility and roles ofwomen between different papers (especially between qualitynewspapers and tabloids), between different sections, between newsand feature articles and possibly also depending on the gender of thereporter. Therefore in the analyses we compared different papers,sections, genres and articles written by female and male reporters.

3.6 Qualitative Analyses of the Core Material

The data on the qualitative text analyses is remarkably smallerthan in the quantitative content analyses, since at this stage wefocused only on those texts that explicitly covered gender issues,“women’s issues” or individual women. We utilised discourseanalyses to analyse representations of women constructed innewspaper texts. Since the language of this report is English, in the



detailed discourse analyses we focused on the English languagepaper, The Citizen.

The core material for the discourse analyses included thefollowing materials from The Citizen:

• Weekly pull-out “Woman” (2 issues from the 2 sampleweeks)

• Weekly pullout “Sound living” (2 issues from the 2 sampleweeks)

• Profiles of or interviews with individual women in anysection (e.g. articles published under labels “Success”,“Profile” and “Career profile”)

• Articles dealing with gender issues in any section

Discourse analyses is a method suitable for recognising shared,culturally-determined meanings in various texts and for analysingthe process of constructing these meanings through the use oflanguage. DA has become a very popular method of media analysesduring the past few decades. Discourse analyses focuses generallyon three dimensions of discourses: representations, identities/roles andrelationships between different actors positioned in different roles.Especially the so-called Critical Discourse Analyses (CDA) payattention to power relationships within a certain discourse andbetween different competing discourses. CDA is also interested inthe consequences of discourses in the actual material reality. (See e.g.Fairclough 1995a, 1995b.) CDA is therefore a very relevant methodwhen analysing gender issues.

In the qualitative analyses we focused especially on the followingfeatures of the texts:

– Topics and issues: What kind of gender issues or “womenissues” were covered during the two sample weeks? Whatkind of topics were covered in the pullouts targetedspecifically at women?

– Naming and identification: How are women called andidentified in the articles? Are they anonymous or are theypresented with their name? Are they identified by theirprofessional role/status, by their degree, by theirfamily/relationship status or something else?

– Descriptions: How are women described in articles? Does thewriter describe their physical appearance? Their behaviour?



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Their professional qualifications or merits? Their intellectualcapacities? Which adjectives are used? Which verbs are usedto describe their activities? What kind connotations do theseadjectives and verbs produced?

– Role of women in the article: What kind of positions are womenplaced in in the articles? Do they provide information, expertcomments and analyses, or personal opinions and views onthe issue at hand? Do they act as eyewitnesses to something?Do they talk about their personal life experiences? Are theyjust random examples of the issue at hand?

– Role of women in the described events: How is the role of womenin the events covered represented in the article. Are theyrepresented for example as victims (of crime, poverty,inequality or such) or as villains (aggressors,troublemakers…); as active and initiative actors, or aspassive spectators.

– Interpretations on gender issues: How do articles explaingender inequality/imbalance, gender-based violence orother gender issues? What is portrayed as a cause of theproblem? Do they name someone responsible for theproblem/for solving it? Do the articles analyse consequencesand what kind? Do they suggest solutions and what kind?

3.7 Visual Analyses

All images portraying women in the sample of newspapers andtabloids were included in the analyses. Women appeared in photosin 295 articles altogether. Some articles had more than one photo withwomen in it. Advertisements and cartoons were excluded from thevisual analyses.

Since the number of photos with women in them is extensive, wecould not analyse all of them in detail. Therefore, the strategy was tofirst to go through all the photos to recognise what type of photos arepublished in the papers and what kind of representations of womenare constructed in them. Then we picked some representatives ofeach type of photo for closer, more detailed analyses.

Some of the concepts and perspectives of discourse analyses arealso applicable in analysing images, since in the visual analyses wewere also interested in representations of women and the roleswomen were portrayed in. In addition, perspectives and concepts ofsemiotic analyses were utilised in analysing photos. Semiotic analysis



is concerned about how meanings are constructed by different signs(images, language, etc) which are part of a larger sign system (see e.g.Bignell 1997). It is suitable for systematic analyses of meanings inphotos and other images. In analysing photos, we paid attention, forexample, to the following features in the content and composition ofphotos, so we wanted answer for the following questions:

• Does a photo portray a specific individual or just women ingeneral?

• Are women in the photo named in the caption oranonymous?

• What is their role in the article?

• What are women doing in the photo?

• Do they just pose to the camera or are they actively doingsomething?

• How are they dressed and how are they posing?

• Do they look at the camera?

• Are they alone in the photo or with other subjects?

• As for the composition of the photo; How are womenpositioned in the photo?

• How are they positioned in relations to other people or otherelements?

• What is the view of the photo?

• What is the explicit, denotative meaning of the photo (whatis in the photo), and what kind of connotations (implicit andculturally determined meanings) the photo may have?

• How does the photo interact with the text to producemeanings, especially with the headline and the caption?

3.8 Interviews With Reporters and Editors

For this study, we interview altogether 30 journalists working forMwananchi Communications Limited (see Table 2) in the main officein Dar or in the regional offices in Arusha and Mbeya. Mwananchi,The Citizen and Mwanaspoti share the same office in Dar and inregional offices. Individual journalists work mostly for only one ofthe papers, although sometimes they may write articles for a sisternewspaper. Most interviewed journalists work for Mwananchi or forThe Citizen; two of them work for Mwanaspoti.

The sample of interviewees was selected primarily following thelogic of maximum variation sampling. To bring out different



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experiences and views, we wanted the sample of interviewees toinclude

• Women and men,

• Reporters and editors,

• “Generalists” and specialised reporters,

• Journalists working at the news desk and features desk,

• Journalists from the main office and from regional offices.

TABLE 3. Number of female and male interviewees from thedifferent offices of MCL.

Interviews were done in September 2013 in the editorial offices ofMwananchi Communications Limited in Dar, Arusha and Mbeya.Since there are remarkably less women working as permanentlyemployed journalists in the two newspapers, finding femaleinterviewees proved to be a challenge. In the main office in Dar, ninewomen volunteered to be interviewed. Several others were requestedto be interviewed declined, on the reasoning that their timetable wastoo tight. In Arusha, the only female journalists working in theregional office was out of town at the time of the interviews. In theMbeya regional office the gender division was much more equal,with five women and five men working in different positions, andthat also shows in the gender division of interviewees. (See Table 3.)

Interviews were qualitative semi-structural interviews, in whichthe same themes were covered with all the interviewees, but the exactorder and form of questions varied. (See the list of themes andquestions in Appendix 3). A researcher sometimes skipped some ofthe questions, if the interviewee had already volunteered theinformation, or asked follow-up questions if a specific issue deserved



more attention. For example the difficulties in having interviews withwomen was an issue which required more investigation.

Interviews lasted mostly from half an hour to one hour, and theywere recorded. Interviews were then transcribed. Interviews that hadbeen conducted in Kiswahili were translated into English. Before theinterviews, all the interviewees were informed of the purpose of thestudy and of the fact that the interviews would be anonymous. Forthis reason, when analysing the interviews, we don’t reveal too manydetails of individual respondents; we refer to them simply by theirgender and position in the newsroom (reporter or editor). “Reporter”includes generalists from the news desk as well as specialisedreporters and photojournalists. “Editor” here includes sub-editorsand editors of various desks, chief reporters – whose work basicallyconsists of assisting news editors – and bureau chiefs.

The interviews focused on the awareness of journalists of genderissues, their views on the current situation in Tanzanian mediagenerally and in their own newspaper specifically, and of thepractical problems journalists face when attempting to do genderbalanced journalism. Data from interviews was analysedthematically. We proceeded from a detailed thematic analyses to asynthesis, looking for common themes which appeared in severalinterviews.



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4 Quantitative Content Analyses:Visibility of Women in the Papers

4.1 Women as Sources of News and Feature Articles

In the total data of 1066 articles, women were used as sourcesremarkably less than men. Women were used as sources in 24% ofarticles, whereas men were used as sources in 70% of articles. Some58% of articles where based on male sources only. In 13% of thearticles, all sources were women, and only 11% of articles used bothwomen and men as sources.

The proportion of women sources is even smaller if we look attheir share on the level of sources and not articles. In Mwananchi, TheCitizen and Uwazi, women represent around 20 % of all sources. InIjumaa and Risasi, their percentage in terms of sources is over 30%(Table 4).

TABLE 4. Number of Female and Male Sources



In the studied newspapers and tabloids, the so-called singlesource syndrome was common. In all the papers under scrutiny, aremarkable percentage of articles were based on only one personsource, from a bit over 40% in The Citizen and Uwazi to almost 80%in Ijumaa. The data also included articles which either relied ondocument sources or did not identify their sources at all – in otherwords, articles without any people sources. The other extreme werearticles which had more than 10 people sources. (See Appendix 4.)On average, Uwazi used more people sources than other papers,while the other tabloids used less people sources than the dailynewspapers (see Table 4).

There are some differences in visibility of women in differentsections of newspapers. Women were used as sources mostly innational news (in 27% of articles), entertainment (26%) and specialtheme sections (26%), such as different pullouts of Mwananchi andThe Citizen. Contrary to what one might expect, the sections thatspecifically targeted women in Mwananchi and The Citizen did notuse females as sources more than it used males. Articles in thesepullouts and pages targeted women were often based on other thanpeople sources. Moreover, even in these sections men appeared assources more often than women (male sources 31%, female sources19%). However, in all the other sections, men were much moredominant as sources. (See Figure 1.)

FIGURE 1. Gender of People Sources, Comparison of DifferentSections (N=1066)



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The section in which women were especially marginalised assources was sports (10%). Other sections where women appeared assources less than on average (less than in the total data) were business(20 %) and international news (21%). In politics sections women wereused as sources in 24% of the articles, the same as the average in thetotal data.

Women appeared as sources slightly more often in news items(24%) than in feature items (21 %). Feature articles in the papersincluded in the study relied a lot on other than people sources. Some58% of articles categorised as features had no people sources. This ismainly due to the big number of short articles in pullouts focusingon special themes, which often did not identify sources at all, butwere probably mostly based on other media or other documentsources.

There were differences also between different papers. The tabloidsused women as sources more often than the two daily newspapers(see Figure 2).

FIGURE 2. Gender of People Sources, Comparison BetweenPapers

4.2 Visibility of Women in Photos

Of the total data of 1066 articles, 56% (592 articles) includedphotos. In most cases these articles carried only one photo, but in



some cases articles included as many as 10–12 photos. On average,tabloids had more photos per article, but the total number of photoswas bigger in Mwananchi and The Citizen, since in the sample of sevenissues they had considerably more pages, more articles and morearticles with photos than the tabloids. (For details, see Appendix 6.)

In 19 articles, photos represented something other than people,such as buildings or cars. There were people photos in 573 articles,and in 562 articles their gender could be identified. Photos portrayedwomen only in 117 articles, and men only in 267 articles. A total of178 articles had both women and men in pictures. Therefore, womenwere represented in photos in 295 articles altogether, whichconstitutes 50% of the articles with photos and 28% of all the articlesin the data. Altogether 445 articles had men in photos, whichconstitutes 75% of the articles with photos and 42% of the total data.(See Table 5.)

TABLE 5. Gender of People in Photos (N=1066)

Frequency % Valid % Cumulative %

Valid: No people 19 1,8 3,2 3,2

Women 117 11,0 19,8 23,0

Men 267 25,0 45,1 68,1

Women andmen 178 16,7 30,1 98,1

Not identifiable 11 1,0 1,9 100,0

Total (articles 592 55,5 100,0with photos)

Missing: Articles with no photos 474 44,5

Total number of All articles 1066 100,0

There are some differences between different papers andespecially between the dailies and the tabloids in their use of photos.First of all, tabloids had very few articles without photos, whereas inMwananchi and The Citizen, there were a considerable number ofnews items that were not accompanied by photos. All the photos inthe tabloids were of people, whereas daily newspapers publishednumerous non-people photos. (See Figure 3.)



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When it comes to the gender of people in photos, entertainment-oriented tabloids Ijumaa and Risasi have more photos of women thanthe daily newspapers and Uwazi which focuses more on political andsocial issues than the other two tabloids. Visibility of women inphotos was poorest in The Citizen, where women were portrayed inphotos in 40% of the articles with photos (22% of all the articles). InIjumaa women were portrayed in 65% of the articles with photos,which equals to 64% of all articles. In Ijumaa, women appeared inphotos in one article more than men, whereas in all the othernewspapers, men were portrayed in photos more often than women.(See Appendix 6 for more details.)

FIGURE 3. Gender of People in Photos, Comparison BetweenPapers

4.3 Differences Between Female and Male Reporters

In the sample of daily newspapers and tabloids, almost half of thearticles were written by male reporters. In 26% of cases, the genderof the reporter was not identifiable. Mostly these were articles, inwhich there was no reporter’s byline, but only an anonymous byline(e.g. “The Citizen reporter”). In some cases the gender could not beidentified due to absence of a name. Some 24% of the articles were



written by female reporters, and 3% of the articles had names severalreporters on the byline both female and male.

TABLE 6. Gender of Reporter(s) of Articles (N=1066)

Frequency Percent

Reporter(s) Female 252 23,6

Male 503 47,2

Both 33 3,1

Not identifiable 278 26,1

Total 1066 100,0

Uwazi had only a few articles written by women with their namein the byline. The proportion of female reporters was biggest inIjumaa and Risasi (Figure 4).

FIGURE 4. Gender of Reporters of the Articles, ComparisonBetween Papers



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Our research supports the findings of some earlier studies thatshow female reporters as being more inclined to use female sourcesthan their male colleagues (see Chapter 2). When we compare articleswritten by female and male reporters (those articles where the genderof the reporter can be identified with certainty), there is a cleardifference in the gender of sources. Female reporters used women astheir only sources in 24% of articles, whereas male reporters reliedexclusively on female sources only in 8% of the articles.Correspondingly, male reporters based their articles on male sourcesmore often (60%) than female reporters (50%). Men also based theirarticles more often on sources of both genders or non-people sources.(Table 6.)

Pearson chi-squared test ( test) shows that the difference betweenthe two groups, the female and male reporters, is statistically verysignificant, with a p-value <0,0005 telling that the probability of thedistribution shown in the cross-table being just by chance is very low.In other words, it is highly unlikely that the difference between menand women reporters in their use of sources would be just accidental,and we have a good reason to assume that there is a real differencebetween female and male reporters of these papers also beyond oursample.

TABLE 7. Gender of People Sources in Articles Written byFemale and Male Reporters (N=755)*

Gender of reporterFemale Male

Gender of No people Count 32 79sources sources

% 12,7% 15,7%Women Count 60 41

% 23,8% 8,2%Men Count 131 304

% 52,0% 60,4%Women and men Count 24 69

% 9,5% 13,7%Not identified Count 5 10

% 2,0% 2,0%Total Count 252 503X2(4)=36,3 %p<0,0005 100,0% 100,0%

*Includes only articles in which the gender of the reporter could be identified.



Difference between male and female reporters is clear also whencomparing the gender of people in photos of articles (Table 7). Whena woman reporter writes a story, it is more likely that there arewomen in photos, than if the article is written by a male reporter.

TABLE 8. Gender of People in Photos in Articles Written byFemale and Male Reporters (N=382)*

Gender of reporter

Female Male

Gender of people

in photos Women Count 44 45

% 37,9% 16,9%

Men Count 35 131

% 30,2% 49,2%

Women and men Count 37 90

% 31,9% 33,8%

TotalCount 116 266X2(2)=22,2, %

p<0,0005 100,0% 100,0%

* Includes only articles in which both the gender of the reporter and thegender of people in photos could be identified.

Of course, this comparison does not take into account the impactof the photographer actually shooting the picture, or of thephotojournalist or editor choosing the pictures to be published.However, when out in the field covering a story, the reporter hasher/his say in what kind of photos to take, and already, the choice oftopic, angle and interviewees affect the possible choice of photos.Again, the chi-squared test shows the difference to be statisticallyvery significant and therefore very likely to apply also more generallyin the newspapers and tabloids in question.

4.4 Reference Groups of Women and Men

By reference group, in this study, we mean the professional or socialrole according to which a source is identified in an article by thereporter. Most of the time people sources do not represent just



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themselves in an article, but they rather represent a broader referencegroup or sector of society, such as politics, business and economicsor sports.

In real life, outside the realm of media publicity, each individualhas several different roles and identities. A woman can be at the sametime a mother, wife and daughter; a professional doctor; an activistin a civil society organisation and in relation to some fields andtopics, she can also be an ordinary citizen with opinions and interestsbut no specific expertise. However, in a specific article, a journalisttypically chooses to relate an individual to only one reference group– with an exception of personality profile stories where different rolesof a person may be explored.

The reference group is also related to the position or role given toa source in the article. For example, people representing theirprofessional reference groups get to provide information and expertopinions, where as ordinary citizens, they may have the role ofeyewitness or they may provide their “lay opinion” on the issue.

FIGURE 5. Reference Groups of Female and Male Sources ofArticles (N=1066)



In our data, most of the time sources represent variousprofessional and public reference groups. Politicians are the groupwhich gets to speak in the articles far more often than any othergroup. In our data of 1066 articles, male politicians quoted are overfour time more than females (in 25.30% of all articles) than women(in 5.7 % of articles). Yet, even among women, a politician is the mostfrequent reference group. (See the Figure 5.)

In the over data, the other common reference groups for womenare music/show/fashion business (in 4.3% of all articles), publicofficials (3.4%) , ordinary citizens (3.3%) and professionals (2.5%).Unlike what some previous studies suggest (see Chapter 2), womenwere not represented in family roles very often (only in 0.6% of thearticles).

For men, the most common reference groups after politicians –with a big difference to them – are public officials (7.9 %), sports(including athletes, coaches and sports organisations) (7.1%),music/show/fashion business (6.1%) and business and finance(5.9%).

There is a big difference between the mainstream newspapers andthe tabloids in the reference groups of people sources (Figures 6a-j;see also Appendix 7 for more details). In Mwananchi and The Citizen,the over-representation of politicians as sources is very clear. InMwananchi, almost one third of all its articles has a male politicianspeaking. Politicians are by far the most frequent reference groupamong both women and men, and public officials are the next. At thetime of collecting the sample of daily newspaper (in May 2013), theParliament (Bunge) was in session, and this explains the prominenceof politicians as a reference group and politics as a topic the sourcescomment in the daily newspapers. During some other period of time,the politicians most probably would not be quite as prominent areference group.

The differences between women and men in the top five referencegroups are not very dramatic in the two daily newspapers. When itcomes to men (not women), sports is a common reference group inMwananchi. In The Citizen, ordinary citizens don’t make it to the topfive reference groups among men, and instead sources representingbusiness and finance have a prominent role in the paper.



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FIGURES 6a–j. Most common reference groups of female andmale sources in different papers (as percentage of the total numberof articles in the paper).



Rather than qualitative, differences between men and women arequantitative: due to their general underrepresentation as sources, thepercentages for women are much lower than that of men in almostall reference groups. The only exception is when it comes to ordinarycitizens: in The Citizen, ordinary women speak in 3.7% of the articles,and ordinary men speak in 3.4%. The likely explanation for this isthat it is easier for the reporters who are aware of the importance ofgender balance to find female interviewees among ordinary citizensthan among various societal elites or specific professional groups inwhich women can be very much underrepresented.

The entertainment orientation of the tabloids shows very clearlyin their use of sources: In Ijumaa and Risasi music/show/fashionbusiness is the most frequent reference group for men and womenalike, and in Uwazi for male sources. In Ijumaa and Risasi it is the onlysignificant reference group for women, with a share of 25.0% and24.1% of articles respectively. In Uwazi, different reference groups ofwomen have a more equal distribution, with women mostlyrepresenting their family roles, music/show/fashion business,politicians and ordinary citizens.

Politicians are less visible in the tabloids. then they are in the twomainstream news papers. In Uwazi they speak more often than inIjumaa and Risasi. Uwazi is the only paper where family is a commonreference group for sources, and not just for women (in 9.1% ofarticles) but also for men (12.7%).

4.5 Topics Men and Women Talk About

In the total data of 1066 articles, male sources most often talkabout politics (14.1% of articles), different forms of crime or generalissues of public safety (11.2%), sports (9.2%), or business andeconomics (8.7%). The terrorist attack in Arusha during the sample



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week, when the issues of Mwananchi and The Citizen were collected,made the topic of crime and security very topical and prominent. Itis likely that during some other random sample week, the topicwould not have been this prominent. Prominence of politics as a topicabout which sources talk about is not surprising, considering howoften politicians speak in the media. A lot of coverage is dedicatedespecially to reporting what is said in parliamentary sessions. Also,sports and business and economics get a lot of coverage, since theyhave specific sections and pullouts dedicated to them. Labour Dayduring the sample period affected the coverage of economic issuesto some extent, bringing into the agenda issues such as taxation ofemployers. (Figure 7)

Also for female sources, politics was the most common topic (in3.8% of articles) on which they commented, although again theycommented far less often than men, because of theirunderrepresentation as sources. Other frequent topics with femalesources included business and economics (2.9%), crime and security(2.6%), health care and social welfare (2.3%) and popular culture(2.2%). In the sample issues of daily newspapers and tabloids, genderissues and other human rights issues got very little coveragecompared to other topics, and therefore, were not often commentedby either women or men.

There were two topics that women comment on more often thanmen: family and relationships, fashion, trends and beauty. Both are“soft topics” and as such, the kind of topics that according to somestudies, are more appealing to women than the “hard topics” suchas politics, business and economics. However, it was mostly in thetabloids and Mwananchi that women commented on these topics(with regard to fashion, trends and beauty.



FIGURE 7. Topics that Female and Male Sources Talk About inthe Articles (N=1066)

In the mainstream newspapers, both men and women commentedfrequently on the same hard news topics: politics, business,economics, crime and security. The order varied somewhat, forexample in Mwananchi, politics was more commonly talked aboutthan business and economics while in The Citizen it was vice versa10.Sports was a common topic for men, but not for women. Education,infrastructure, health services and social welfare and agriculture werethe top five in the list of topics women and men alike commented onin the mainstream newspapers.



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10 This is likely to tell about a slightly different emphasis in contents of the Swahili-languageMwananchi and the English-language The Citizen, although we did not directly study topics ofarticles – only the topics sources commented. In one and the same article, in some cases, differentsources may comment different topics.

FIGURES 8a–j. Most common topics female and male sourcestalk about in different papers (as percentage of the total number ofarticles in the paper).



As can be expected, in the entertainment oriented tabloids, thelists of most frequently commented topics look quite different fromthe two daily newspapers. The exact order varies from one tabloidto another, but the most frequent topics include in all of them popularculture (artists, celebrities etc.), family, relationships, crime, securityand sports. Sports was again a common topic mostly for malesources; it made it to the top five list of female sources in Ijumaa, butwith only two articles (2.5%). Family and relationships was on thetop five list of both, women and men, with the exception of Risasi.

In the tabloids, politics was among the most commented topicsonly in Uwazi and only for women. Other topics that made it to thetop five lists of different tabloids were environment (in Uwazi, formen), health and wellbeing (in Uwazi, for women; in Risasi, for men),calamities and conflicts (in Ijumaa, for both women and men), fashionand beauty (in Ijumaa and Risasi, for women), and religion (in Risasi,for both women and men).



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5 Qualitative Analyses: Portrayal ofWomen in Texts and Photos

5.1 Articles About Women and for Women

Even though in the daily newspapers women appear only rarelyas sources of articles and in photos compared to men, they do appearin diversity of contexts: in national and international news, inparliamentary news and in business news as well as in mostlyentertainment oriented pullouts. In some cases, these articles arespecifically about women and gender issues, in other cases womenget to comment general on “gender neutral” topics as sources,especially in news on parliamentary sessions where female MPs,ministers and deputy ministers speak.

Women are most visible as subjects of stories in various specialsections and pullouts such as Johari, Starehe and Burudani inMwananchi, and Sound Living and Woman in The Citizen. Mwananchifocuses more on show business and female celebrities in its specialsections, whereas The Citizen has a lifestyle magazine-like approachwith a range of regular themes and columns and longer featurearticles. The regular elements include, for example, fashion andbeauty tips, columns on parenting and relationships, health news inbrief, home decoration tips, cooking tips and receipts – in otherwords, contents very typical in women’s lifestyle magazines all overthe world. Different pullouts also include personality/career profilesthat feature successful women. Interviewed journalists at MwananchiCommunications Ltd referred to this type of articles as “successstories”. In the tabloids – as the quantitative content analyses showed– most of the women we see and read about are celebrities whoappear in contexts typical of the entertainment-oriented yellow press,namely celebrity gossips and show business news. Women alsoappear in the regular articles dealing with relationships (e.g. “Love& life”, “All about love”, “Let’s talk about love”).

The third type of articles in which women are visible in thetabloids are what can be called “scandal news”. These are news itemsthat cover women in very negative contexts, such as crime oradultery, and that is normally written in a very sensational way11.This is a very negative and degrading type of “genre”, and it seemsthat anyone can become a target and victim of it, from celebrities toordinary women, from a police woman to a politician. What is even



11 Sensational scandal new typically have a very emotional and colourful style of writing, and thecoverage often exaggerates or even misrepresent certain aspects of the subject to make the storymore appealing to the audience.

more disturbing about these articles from the perspective ofjournalism ethics is that, the tabloids are in some cases very activelyinvolved in discrediting women by setting traps for their target andthen being on the scene to witness (and to take photos) when womenfall into the trap. Therefore, even though women are more visible inthe tabloids than in the two mainstream newspapers, the contexts inwhich women are portrayed are much less diverse and much morenegative, stereotypical and degrading. In the following chapters, weexamine the discourses employed in articles covering gender issuesand women’s issues in The Citizen, and the various representationsof women in the photos of the two mainstream newspapers and thetabloids.

5.2 Discourses Constructing Representations of Women inThe Citizen

One can distinguish several discourses used in The Citizen whenwriting about women and/or gender issues. Each of these discoursesfollows their own specific internal logic, provides a differentperspective to gender issues, and construct different kinds ofrepresentations of women. (See Table 9 for a summary of discourses.)

During the two-week sample period, The Citizen published severalnews and feature articles on various gender issues, such as on familyplanning and health issues specifically related to women (maternalhealth and maternal care, prevention of mother-child transmissionof HIV/Aids, prevention of cervical cancer with a vaccine againstHuman Papilloma virus), gender-based violence, teenagepregnancies and behaviour of teenage girls, motherhood, sex trade,Women’s Constitutional Manifesto and women’s economicempowerment. Only two editorials dealt with gender issues, one oncommercial sex (14.5.2013), the other on maternal care (9.5.2013).12

Even though one and the same topic can be discussed in theframework of different discourses, looking at it from differentperspectives, the specific topics covered affect to some extent thediscourses employed when talking about women and gender issues.For example, the discourse named here as Women’s economicempowerment was common in the material, since the economicactivities of women and various initiatives and projects to enhance



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12 Commercial sex can be regarded as a gender issue, since it has to do with socio-economic inequalitybetween women and men in society. It is typically the women in the most vulnerable positions inthe society, with little or no options for earning their livelihood, who end up resorting to sex tradeas a source of income. Sex trade can be regarded as a serious violation against women, since incommercial sex women are abused in various ways. Commercial sex has negative impacts also onwomen in general, since in sex trade women are seen as mere commodities to be traded, which isan extremely objectifying view of women.

their economic empowerment were covered frequently. On the otherhand, gender-based violence is an example of topics whichrepresented in very different ways, employing either human rightsdiscourse or cultural relativity discourse. Commercial sex and teenpregnancies are examples of topics which could very well bediscussed in the framework of human rights discourse, but wereinstead covered using primarily moralizing discourse, which meansthat women were represented as morally corrupt and not as victimsof sex trade and sexual abuse.

TABLE 9. Discourses Employed in the Coverage of GenderIssues and Women in The Citizen



It is important to bear in mind that analysing discourses is notabout speculating on intentions of individual reporters or sources.Individuals often employ a specific discourse, without even beingconscious of the discourse and the meanings it implies andconstructs, simply because it is a culturally familiar way of thinkingand talking about a specific topic, and/or because they adopt thediscourse from their background institution. In other words,discourses are essentially related to socially and culturally sharedmeanings.

(I) Human Rights Discourse

Human rights discourse appears mostly in news articles based onreports produced by and/or press conferences organised by CSOssuch as Tanzania Women Lawyers’ Association (Tawla) and TanzaniaGender Networking Programme (TGNP). The more specific topics ofthe articles deal, for example, with sexual and reproductive rights ofwomen, with the new Constitution and with human rights violations.

In the sample of this study, human rights discourse is almostexclusively employed by representatives of various human rightsorganisations, such as lawyers, researchers and trainers working inCSOs, or people referred to as “human rights activists” in the articles.From the perspective of the human rights discourse, gender issuesare essentially a matter of rights of women and generally, human rights.

“Whether one supports safe abortions or not, the reality isthat women have them in countries where they are legal, safeand affordable or in nations where they are illegal, dangerousand expensive”, said Tawla’s facilitator Annmarie Mavenjina.

Tawla said: “There is a linkage between what we support –the right of a woman to make her own personal and privatedecision about abortion without the government interfering –and what happens when that right is denied.” (Abortion keycontributor to maternal deaths: report, The Citizen 8.5.2013.)

Ms Ussu Mallya [TNGP managing director] said that theirorganisation expects the new Constitution to nullify all laws thatcontradict the fundamental and basic human rights for womenand men. She singled out personal laws and those that allowcultural and social practices which are harmful to women andthose that allow discriminatory practices.

“The new Constitution should spell out principles thatprotect women’s dignity, respect and freedom from gender-



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based violence,” she added. (Network to launch womenconstitutional manifesto, The Citizen 8.5.2013)

Within the system of the human rights discourse, women arerepresented as a vulnerable group and victims who need to be protectedfrom harmful cultural and social practices.

One of the human rights activists from TGNP, Mr DeogratiusTemba, also opined that the new Constitution should providefor the protection of women’s dignity, respect and freedom fromgender-based violence.

“This will include, among others, prohibition of culturalpractices which undermine women’s dignity, such as femalegenital mutilation (FGM), wife inheritance or cleansing,domestic violence, forced marriages and other practices thatundermine the rights of women”, he said. (TGNP calls forinclusive, gender-sensitive parent law, The Citizen 12.5.2013)

Presenting the report [2012 Human Rights Report], LHRCResearcher, Mr Patience Mlowe, said the survey found out thatmore than 1,000 school girls were affected by Female GenitalMutilation (FGM) in Mara Region at the end of last year. He saidchildren and women remain vulnerable groups and victims ofrape and physical torture. (Right violations ‘increased in 2012’,The Citizen 1.5.2013)

In these articles, ordinary women do not usually speak; the“activists” – both women and men – speak for them. In the regularTalking Gender column of the Sound living pullout, also reporters alsodiscuss gender issues and may lean on the human rights discoursein their articles:

In Tanzania, many men still believe a family without a malechild is incomplete. As a result, too many wives who give birthto baby girls in a row find themselves with no choice but to tryto give their husband what they want: a son.

“For my husband, a male child is his priority: He wants asuccessor,” says Rahma, who looks like she is in her late 40s. Shelooks all worn-out and overworked. Her health haddeteriorated since doctors told her she had anaemia.

According to a study conducted recently in Mbeya Region,too many men still disregard family planning, putting a heavyburden on their impoverished wives and families. The study on



the attitudes of men in the region shows that men believe familyplanning is for women only.”

(Daniel Muhau: When a man loves a boy child, Sound living12.5.2013, The Citizen)

(II) Cultural Relativity Discourse

Whereas the Human rights discourse takes universal human rightsas a starting point, the Cultural relativity discourse represents genderissues rather as a matter of cultural traditions and of personalopinions and believes. It is not a common discourse; the sampleincludes only one article which is a clear example of it. However,since it is a rather problematic discourse, it is worth taking a closerlook at the article.

In the ‘Woman’ pullout (4.5.2013), the cover story When love turnssour discusses gender-based violence, but instead of taking a clearstand against it on the basis of human rights, it brings out opinionsof four interviewees, two women and two men; two who are opposedto violence and two who justify it and blame it on women. Three ofthe interviewees are just random “people from the street”, one worksas a lawyer in Tawla and can be regarded as an expert in this subject– but the reporter actually treats him in the article much like othersources, as if he is just giving his opinion on the issue. None of theordinary people interviewed is talking on the basis of their personalexperience. This article on gender violence provides an examples ofcelebrity couples.

Already the lead of the article sets the stage for cultural relativism:it does not take a stand against violence against women, instead itasks a question and lets interviewees answer.

Every single day, we wake up to tales of women who havebeen beaten by their partners. Many are left severely injured,maimed and sometimes the abuse ends up in fatalities. Canviolence bear any fruits? (When love turns sour, Woman, TheCitizen 4.5.2013)

The same question is posed on the cover of the pullout, but withdifferent words: Can anything justify wife beating?

This perspective is explained and justified in the body of the textwith a reference to customary law and beliefs by people:

For a long time now, domestic violence has been a globalconcern. Surprisingly, customary and codified legal system



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particularly in Africa, justify it.

Does a man have any right to his partner? People hold variedbeliefs regarding this and TDHS 2010 [Tanzania Demographicand Health Survey 2010] points out that, 54 per cent of womenand 38 per cent of men age 15-49 believe that a husband isjustified to beat his wife – for certain reasons. (When love turnssour, Woman, The Citizen 4.5.2013)

The choice of words by the reporter is cautious to the point ofbeing absurd. No-one for example condemns violence against women,instead people “are in favour” or “support” gender-based violence,or alternatively “consider it unnecessary” or “unjustified”. In thearticle, it is primarily the reporter herself who employs the culturalrelativity discourse – after all, all the interviewees have rather clearopinions on the issue and they speak from that perspective. Of thefour interviewees, the lawyer clearly uses human rights discourse(typical of people working in human rights organisations, as wasshown earlier), when speaking on gender violence.

The representations of women constructed in the article aresomewhat contradictory. On the one hand, women are clearlyportrayed as victims of gender-based violence both in the text and inphotos. On the other hand, two of the interviewees depict (some)women as disrespectful troublemakers who actually deserve abeating, since they “argue too much with their men”, and are notrespectful enough towards them.

“I am not saying that all women are disrespectful, but as aman respect means everything to us. If my partner is trying tocompromise that, then I use everything in my power to controlit.” (An interviewed man in ‘When love turns sour’, Woman,The Citizen 4.5.2013)

(III) Women’s Economic Empowerment Discourse

In the framework of the Women’s economic empowerment, economicindependence and self-reliance are represented as the core issues inwomen’s empowerment. By educating women and providing themwith entrepreneurial skills, women can be given a chance for a betterlife. The sample data includes several news in brief, where, forexample, politicians (or their wives) “encourage” or “urge” womento employ themselves to become economically independent.

Women in Mbeya Region have been encouraged to engagefully in entrepreneurship activities – such as keeping chicken,



animals and engaging in agriculture – in order to improve theirstandards of living rather than being dependent on men.(Official calls on women to engage in entrepreneurship, The Citizen8.5.2013)

The wife of the Vice-President, Ms Asha Bilal, has urgedwomen to employ themselves in an effort to fight poverty.

“Women are increasingly becoming breadwinners in manyfamilies. This requires us to work hard to acquireentrepreneurial skills and employ ourselves,” said Ms Bilal.(‘VP’s spouse advises women to create jobs, curb abject poverty,’The Citizen 9.5.2013)

Women’s economic empowerment discourse is present also in successstories of female entrepreneurs or women working in good positions,and in longer feature articles focusing on special projects orinitiatives. In these articles, lack of education and entrepreneurialskills are presented as a core problems leading to economicdependency and an economically disadvantaged position of women.

However, a 61-year-old retired teacher mentions a catalogueof challenges facing women in extricating themselves from theeconomic quagmire, including lack of education onentrepreneurship and the government’s aloofness on women isdevelopment. (‘Stronger women’s, girls’ voice for economicindependence’, The Citizen 13.5.2013)

Educating women, and thereby giving them skills needed for self-employment and participation in decision-making, are representedas solutions to major challenges facing women.

In collaboration with government leaders, these womenhave formed groups that will enable them to be economicallyempowered and participate in decision-making, thanks to aproject called Women and Girls Empowerment (Woge)

The Woge project aims to contribute to poverty reduction bystrengthening women’s and girls’ voices for economic self-reliance. (‘Stronger women’s, girls’ voice for economicindependence’, The Citizen 13.5.2013)

The discourse constructs two kinds of representations of women.Those who are still struggling for economic self-reliance areportrayed as a hardworking, but vulnerable and disadvantagedgroup in need of special support:



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“Why women and girls? Because most of them are notindependent. When they are not empowered, they depend onother people to make decisions for them”, says Tano(programme manager of Woge).

He adds that women and girls lack knowledge and skills toarticulate and harness all basic economic resources andopportunities for self-dependence.

Those women, who have already made a successful career, areportrayed in a very positive, even idealising way. They are not onlydetermined and talented, but also generous and unselfish:

Granted, charity work, though fulfilling, is real hard work,and it takes a lot of sacrifice. But Edna says she has discoveredthe secret of being kind and generous.

“I always feel that when helping people, there is somethingthat is added to you, something that a better, more generous andmore resourceful you. More so, by helping others you are morelikely to meet interesting people, discover more importantthings about life, and experience new things that improve thequality of your life”, says Mrs Hogan, a charming lady.

A chic, sophisticated woman, with a deep sense of humour,Edna also loves writing. In fact, she is also set to launch her bookentitled ‘Poems of heart’. (I know the secret of being kind, Profile,Sound living, The Citizen 5.5.2013)

(IV) Moralising Discourse

Moralising discourse constructs very normative representationsof women, by suggesting directly or indirectly what are acceptableroles and behaviours for them. In The Citizen, moralising discourseis present mostly in articles discussing parenting and motherhood orbehaviour of young girls. In our data, reporters themselves relystrongly on the moralising discourse in feature articles, withcollaboration from their interviewees.

Mother’s day on Sunday 12th May brought the issue ofmotherhood strongly on the agenda of The Citizen, both in the‘Woman’ pullout on Saturday and in Sound Living on Sunday. Thismaterial provides an interesting opportunity to scrutinise therepresentations of motherhood and mothers. After all, motherhoodis one of the most traditional roles of women and this gender role isloaded with strongly emotional meanings and often represented in astereotypical way.



Feature articles on motherhood construct representations ofappropriate and acceptable mothers, on the one hand, and badmothers, on the other. Good mothers are depicted as being self-sacrificing, loving and devoted to their children and their mother’srole:

A mother is a protector, disciplinarian and friend. A motheris a selfless, loving human, who must sacrifice many of herwants and needs for the wants and needs of her children. Beinga mother is perhaps the hardest, most rewarding job a womanwill ever experience. Mothers have unconditional love for theirchildren. (Mother’s Day: What does it mean to be a mother in thisage? Sound Living, The Citizen 12.5.2012)

Motherhood is a lifetime job many women cherish everysingle day. It is said to be one of the best experiences ever in awoman’s life. (‘Bundles of Joy’, Woman, The Citizen 11.5.2013)

According to Ms Neema Ibrahim, an entrepreneur based inDar es Salaam, the old generation mother’s selflessness nature[sic] is what makes her the model mother to today’s mum. (Havemodern mothers stopped being self-sacrificing parents? SoundLiving, The Citizen 12.5.2012)

“Our mothers were superwomen; they had many roles toplay, and yet they gave us full attention without complaining.”(A comment of an interviewed woman in ‘Have modern mothersstopped being self-sacrificing parents?’ Sound Living, The Citizen12.5.2012)

When talking of these “old generation” mothers or just otherwisetraditional type of self-sacrificing mothers, the representations ofthem are not only stereotypical, but also idealising. Mothers are“superwomen”; they are “angels” and “gifts from heaven/God”, asa foster mother of six foster kids is described by the reporter and theinterviewed foster children:

It’s such a heartrending life that two beautiful siblingsendured until an angel came into their life in the form of a fostermother.

“Our life has changed. We are so happy to have a mother likeher. We are grateful because God heard our prayers. MotherConsoler is a gift for us from heaven.” (‘Our foster mum is a giftfrom God’, Profile, Sound Living, The Citizen 12.5.2013)



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Juxtapositioning of the traditional, unselfish mothers and themodern working mother is clear. The latter are described as selfishand self-centered. A cover story by Sound Living (12.5.2013) isprovocatively titled in the cover of the pullout as ‘Modern mothers –Are they self-centered or simply doing the best they can for their youngones?’ The headline of the actual article asks: ‘Have modern mothersstopped being self-sacrificing parents?’ The article starts with a longintroduction where the reporter very clearly reveals her take on theissue:

Yet, motherhood has changed over the years. Unlike the old,traditional mother, today’s mum is considered self-absorbedand not as caring as her predecessors.

Many parents today want so much for their children: the besteducation, the best clothes, and freedom of choice that easilytranslate to tolerance for, mostly, reckless behaviour. Otherpeople see much of the modern mothers as lacking in self-sacrificing for her children.

But are modern mothers really self-absorbed? Or just doingwhat’s best for their children? It is a widely undisputed fact thatteenagers and children today are behaving in a generallyunacceptable manner, raising many questions about the roles ofmothers in raising their children. (Have modern mothers stoppedbeing self-sacrificing parents? Sound Living, The Citizen 12.5.2012)

Another article in the ‘Woman’ pullout (11.5.2013) createsnormative representations of acceptable roles and behaviour ofwomen by sharing a “confession” of an interviewed woman, who is“cured” or “redeemed” from a selfish and promiscuous lifestyle of asingle woman by becoming a mother:

“Before I had children, I used to think only of myself, butnow that has changed. My family comes first.”

Partying and having fun was part of her past. She enjoyedlife, went out with wealthy and good-looking men. In deed sheconfesses that she had no room for paupers.

“Honestly, I exchanged men at will depending on theirwallet size. Image was everything to me and so I followedfashion trends. But after starting my own family, all that ishistory.” (Bundles of Joy, Woman, The Citizen 11.5.2013)

Also teenage girls get their share of the moralising discourse. In



‘Young Citizen’ (5.11.2013) magazine, students from various schoolsgive comments on whether teen mothers should be allowed back inschool. Those interviewees who are opposed to it, use moralisingdiscourse to justify their views. In their views these girls are notvictims, but rather deviant and morally corrupt, and they may alsocorrupt the “normal” students around them.

[One interviewed girl:] Girls who become pregnant inschools should not be allowed back because they promotepremarital sex among students. By mingling among normalchildren, they share their experiences with them.

[Another interviewed girl:] To give young mothers a chanceto school is likely to send the wrong message to other girls whomay not see any harm in getting pregnant. (Teen mothers shouldbe allowed back in school, ‘Young Citizen’, The Citizen 5.11.2013)

Another cover article of Sound Living (5.5.2013) talks about younggirls wanting to grow up too soon. Again the discourse is moralizing:young girls are represented as promiscuous and as something otherthan the “innocent girls” in the past.

You will be forgiven to think that they are young women intheir 20s. But they are just little girls, teens, a generation of girlswho for once, have stopped being the innocent girls, and nowfeel the pressure to grow up sooner and sexier than ever before.

Gone are the days when little girls had fun playing simplegames. Now, the social media has replaced social games. (It’s anew breed of young girls who dream of being adults, Sound Living,The Citizen 5.5.2013)

Same kind of representations of sexually promiscuous andmorally corrupt girls or young women are also constructed in a newsarticle covering sex trade, based on the views of MPs and the Ministerfor Community Development, Gender and Children, Ms. SophiaSimba. In this article, which is strongly based on the moralisingdiscourse, young girls are not represented as disadvantaged orabused victims – they are the seducers and predators who prowl onmen in night clubs “half-naked”.

In her response, Ms Simba said that the first solution was formen to stop entertaining any kind of seduction from girls, andto stop going to nightclubs where those girls go to entertain menand get cash from them. (Men ‘hold key to curbing sex trade’, TheCitizen 13.5.2013)



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Reporting the views of MPs, the article even suggests that the waywomen dress instigates rape and other sexual offences, implying thatwomen themselves are to be blamed for these crimes:

MPs said that it was now the norm for young girls to wearskimpy outfits that left them half-naked, adding that this wascontributing to moral decay and an increase in sexual offences,including rape. (Men ‘hold key to curbing sex trade’, The Citizen13.5.2013)

An editorial on the same topic the following day was a bit morecareful with its wording and arguments. In the editorial, the concernabout the “moral standing of citizen” is not targeted only at women,but also at men who buy sex. However, even in the editorial, womenengaged in commercial sex are represented as sexually promiscuousand morally corrupt rather than as victims of life conditions and lackof options.

Why is this trade flourishing? Why do more girls keepjoining in the so-called “oldest profession”? Do those practisingit do so just because they like it? We would like to believe thatthe answer is a loud and clear “Certainly not!” (It’s a deepernational issue, Editorial, The Citizen 14.5.2013)

Weather talking about mothers or young girls, when discussingreasons for the changing roles and behaviour of women, articles pointa finger at foreign influences, namely the evil West.

As expected, it all begins in the West, and then through themedia it trickles all the way closer to home. (It’s a new breed ofyoung girls who dream of being adults. Sound living, The Citizen5.5.2013)

Mrs Sella Victor, a trainer at the Women Centre in Mabibo,Dar es Salaam, blames the mixing of African and Europeanlifestyles on the tendency of today’s mother to be lax with theirchildren.

“Modern mothers copy their parenting styles from Europewhere there is a whole generation of teenagers without normsand values.” (‘Have modern mothers stopped being self-sacrificingparents?’ Sound Living, The Citizen 12.5.2012.)



5.3 Representations of Women in Photos in theMainstream Newspapers

In the two mainstream newspapers, representations of women inphotos are diverse and mostly positive. In the news pages, readersget to see mostly either women in power, traditional hardworking womenor active citizens participating in public life. In some instances womenalso represented as caregivers or victims in news stories. In the pulloutsfocusing either on entertainment (artists, celebrities, etc) or onwomen’s issues and home, women are portrayed in photos mostlyin the traditional role of caregivers (mostly mothers), or as successfulcareer women. Pullouts represent women also as decoration andsometimes even as sex objects.



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Women in Power

News pages (national and international news, politics andbusiness news sections) of Mwananchi and The Citizen represent intheir photos women in various power positions. There are MPs,ministers and deputy ministers speaking in parliamentary sessions,women in expert and management positions in economic institutionsspeaking in meetings or press conferences, and women in importantpublic office positions giving interviews to reporters. Most of thesewomen are Tanzanians, but some are representatives of a foreigncountries, or in the case of East-African or African news pages,powerful women in the neighbouring countries.

There are several things in common with regard to these photos.First of all, in almost all the pictures, women are shown speaking,either publically or to reporters. This is clear from both, their facialexpression and the body language, especially their use of their handsto emphasise a point. These non-verbal cues make women appearvery confident and in some cases, aggressive.

Secondly, in these pictures, women typically do not look at thecamera, but at the audience they are talking to. In other words, theyare not posing to the camera, but are focused on what they are doing.Photographers usually take the photo rather from the side thanstanding directly in front of their subjects.

Thirdly, pictures are mostly either medium close ups or mid shots,which means we see either only the head and shoulders of the subjectin photo, or the whole upper body from the waist up. This means wedon’t actually see the audience, we just know the audience is therebased on the context provided by captions, headlines and the articlesand/or the picture itself showing women directing their eyes andwords at someone.

Mid shots allow us to see the hand gestures of the speaker andgive us some idea of the place the subject is speaking to by showingsome background. The impression is more active and dynamic thanin middle close up, where the main point is showing the subjectherself. Middle close ups of women appear mostly in interviewarticles and personality profiles, where the person is in the centre ofthe focus also in the article. Mid shots are used, for example, inphotos from parliamentary sessions, where the person in the pictureis not necessarily always even mentioned in the text of the article.

In all of the pictures of women in power, women are identified inthe caption with their name and title, sending the message that they



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are not just some random people, but it is important to know whothey are.

Traditional Hardworking Women

In the news pages there are also quite some pictures oftraditionally dressed women working either in fields, factories or asstreet vendors. Some of these pictures are from rural areas, fromvillages, some from the streets or factories in different towns. Thesephotos probably correspond most closely to our everydayexperiences of encounters with ordinary Tanzanian women.

In these pictures, it is clear that what is considered important isthe activity women are engaged in rather than the individual subjectsin the pictures. That is why the view of the photo also variesaccording to the action that needs to be shown. There are long shotsshowing not just the woman but also the field she is working on, andthere are mid shots which include the essential elements such as thegroundnuts women are selling. In most of these pictures, womendon’t look at the camera, but in some shots the frozen and static poseseems to suggest that women are aware they are beingphotographed. In some photos women seem very engaged in theirwork and have not necessarily even noticed the photographer.

Women in these pictures are almost always anonymous. Captionsrefer just generally to a group of people, such as farmers, pettytraders, groundnut vendors or workers. In some cases thephotographer or reporter has clearly talked to the women, sincespecific information is provided such as the price of the products theysell. Therefore, also the names of the women could have been soughtand readers duly informed. However, since it is not the role of thesewomen to represent themselves in the article, but to represent somebroader phenomenon the article is dealing with (mostly differenteconomic activities of women), apparently journalists do not findnaming these subjects important.

Women as Active Citizens

Photos of women as active citizens are typically group photos ofmeetings and collective actions taken in public places. They are longshots which show several people and also some of the setting atwhich the photo has been taken. Photos from schools can also beincluded in this category, since they show women educatingthemselves, which can be seen as a precondition of engaging inpublic affairs and practising one’s citizen rights.



As in the case of the traditionally hard working women, also inthe photos of active citizens it is not the individuals in the photo thatare important, but rather the event and activity they are engaged in.Therefore, the captions again do not identify women – or men, sincemany of these pictures include both women and men – but rather theplace and the event in question. Women are shown for exampleparticipating in political meetings or marching during the LabourDay.



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Women as Caregivers

Photos of women in caregiver roles include two different types ofphotos. In the news pages, women are shown undertaking the roleof professional caregivers, mostly as nurses. The bomb attack inArusha explains a fairly big number of pictures from hospitals duringthe sample period, and in most of these photos we see women takingcare of patients. Professional caregivers are focused on their activities,and the camera is following them from the side. There is no posing,rather the situations seem natural.

Pullouts present very different types of caregivers: mothers(including women taking care of children as foster mothers or othervolunteers). These photos are completely different from the photosof professional caregivers. Women pose for the camera together withchildren, looking directly at camera, smiling and hugging children.Women in this context are beautiful and smartly dressed; childrenare cute, clean and healthy. These photos are an embodiment of astereotypical ideal of a good mother, and they are very much in linewith the moralising discourse appearing in the relevant articles.

Women as Victims

Pictures representing women as victims were not very commonin the sample of mainstream newspapers, although the role of victimis regarded as one of the stereotypical roles of women in the media.Several of the photos representing women as victims were related tothe above mentioned incident in Arusha. Therefore, women in thesepictures were victims of the terrorist attack – either wounded orsuffering from the loss of loved ones. The victim wounded in theattack was identified with her name in the caption and in theadjoining article. Another photo representing a woman as a victim,identified by her name, was one of a poor mother of several children,abandoned by her husband, struggling to support herself and thechildren.

Women were also portrayed as victims of harmful beauty normsand chemicals used to lighten the skin, and as victims gender-basedviolence, in photos related to articles dealing with these topics. Inthese cases women in photos are anonymous. In The Citizen’s‘Woman’ cover story on gender-based violence, photos of batteredwomen were from archives and therefore not representing any realpersons mentioned in the article. Foreign news also included picturesof victims of conflict, featuring both women and men.





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Women as Successful Career Women

Since success stories are one of types of stories covering womenin the daily newspapers, also photos include some representations ofsuccessful women who have made their career either as self-employed or as employees in a good position in an organisation.Politicians were not included in this category, but in the category of“women in power”. There is quite a lot of variation in these photos,depending on the woman and the type of her career. Since thesephotos are part of profile articles, women in the photos are naturallyidentified and the whole article focuses on them.

In The Citizen there are also other types of photos of successfulcareer women. These ones, which are from photo archives, haveanonymous women in them and don’t have much informative value.Rather, but they are symbols of success, giving colour to the articlesin questions. They could also be interpreted as photos representingwomen as decoration, except that the style of photos and women inthem is very different from those photos where women are justsupposed to be “beautiful”. At the sametime, the archive photospresenting anonymous, urbane, modern career women are ratherstereotypical in their own way: they represent confident womendressed in smart jacket suits and business-like outfits, looking allbusy in an office environment with their mobile phones and laptops.This is probably the kind of representation with which majority ofTanzanian women would find it hard to identify with – but thenagain, The Citizen does not target the majority of Tanzanians.

Women as Decoration or Sex Objects

Pullouts of the two dailies use women also as “decoration”,Mwananchi clearly more than The Citizen. Representing women asdecoration means that the only role of women in the photos is to lookbeautiful. These photos don’t have much of an informative value buttheir only function in the paper seems to be to please the eyes of thereader. Women in these pictures are mostly celebrities.

An illustrative example of the use of woman to “decorate” paperis from Mwananchi’s pullout Starehe (Leasure). The pullout hastypically a woman posing on the cover page, in a big picture whichfills basically the whole page. Even the front page of the main paperhas a small photo of the woman with a headline (in case of theexample issue 4.5.2013, the woman was former Miss Tanzania NancySumari). Based on the front page and the cover of the pullout, onemight expect that the woman is the subject of a long main article in

the pullout, a so called “cover story”, but no – inside the pullout,there is a tiny article size of one column. So the woman as a personis not that important – what is important is her beautiful face.

Also other pullouts use big pictures of women on their cover, bothin Mwananchi and The Citizen. The style of photos varies, though, forexample The Citizen uses typical fashion photos with women wholook like professional models. ‘Sound Living’, on the other hand, usesphotos related to the cover story, so their use has a journalisticmotivation.

Mwananchi also publishes photos where women are representednot just as decoration, but as sexual objects. The line between the twotypes of representations is sometimes very thin, since in a mainstreamnewspaper even the photos which sexualize women are rather subtle.Clothing is not as revealing and poses not as provocative as in thetabloids. But the way women pose for the camera brings sexualconnotations to the pictures (more about sexual posing in thediscussion on photos in tabloids). These are all photos of celebrities,such as actresses or artists, either Tanzanian or foreign, and thewomen posing in them are identified in the caption and in theadjoining article.

Even though cartoons are not included in our actual data, onecannot avoid mentioning them here. It is in the cartoons ofMwananchi where one would see the most stereotypical andsexualizing visual representations of women. Cartoons, of course,often have caricatures of people, with exaggerated and distortedfeatures – although this depends on the style of the cartoonist.However, the important question is: which features are the onesexaggerated. In case of one of the Mwananchi cartoons, it is the breastand/or bottoms of women.

Strong and Fit Women

Even though women are not frequently used as sources in thesports section, there are still quite some pictures of women athletesengaged in different sports – even more if we would include also theforeign sports news materials from news agencies. In addition,women (or girls) are also occasionally seen involved in ball games orother sporting activities. also outside the actual sports sections ofMwananchi and The Citizen, for example in the ‘Young Citizen’pullout.

In sports pictures, women are represented as active, capable,physically fit and strong. There is a lot of intensity and movement in



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the pictures and there are exceptionally lot of vertical photos, whichmakes them dynamic, enhancing the impression of active women.Women do not pose for the camera; they are focused on theirperformance, whether it is running, swimming or playing golf orbasketball. Photos of the fitness competitor are of course anexception, since in fitness competitions posing in bikinis to show themuscles is part of the game. Yet, compared to the traditional idealsof what women should look like, these pictures of a strong andmuscular female body have the potential to challenge stereotypes.

In photos of physically fit women, women and girls are not onlycompeting, but also doing sports for fun, for example in the school.Compared to the static posing pictures representing women asdecoration and sex objects, these photos seem very empowering.





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5.4 Representations of Women in Photos in the Tabloids

The range of different representations of women in photos in thetabloids is clearly more limited than in the daily newspapers, and therepresentation are mostly stereotypical, negative and even degrading.Photos of women in tabloids can be categorized into four main types:women as decoration, women as sex objects, women as morallybankrupt and women as victims. All these represent women aspassive objects of gazingat, and of admiring, moral contempt or pity.Only rarely do we see women actively doing something, such assinging or doing sports.

Representations of women as victims do not appear often in oursample, and when they do, they are victims of gender-based violenceor sexual abuse. Since women in these photos could too easily berecognised, these example photos are not included in this report andwe don’t analyse them in detail. Obviously, the tabloids are not doingmuch to protect the identities of victims in photos.

Women as Decoration and Women as Sex Objects

Photos of women as decoration and as sex objects are usedcommonly in the tabloids in connection with the articles discussingrelationships. These are photos of models and therefore, anonymous,with no direct connection to the article. Also Tanzanian and foreigncelebrities are represented in the photos of tabloids as sex objects.

As in the case of daily newspapers, the line between women beingused as decoration of stories and being portrayed as sex object issometimes thin. As opposed to the daily newspapers, the tabloidsalso publish pictures with clearly sexual connotations. In thesepictures women are presented with very revealing clothing, and theypose in provocative positions with strongly sexual connotations.Photos representing women as decoration differ from the abovementioned sexualising photos, both in clothing of women, which isnot as revealing, and in the posing.

In the sexually suggestive photos women look directly at thecamera. In most pictures – especially those where models are posing– women have their eyes half closed and mouth slightly open whichis usually interpreted as a sexual sign. They pose at least partiallysideways to the camera, in positions which accentuate their breastsand behind.

Women as Morally Bankrupt

Another common type of photos in the tabloids represents women





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as morally corrupt. Women are shown in various embarrassing andhumiliating situations, such as drunk, half-naked and/or caught inthe bedroom with a stranger.

The tabloids do not try to protect the identity of women in photos(the faces of women in the illustrate photos have been covered by thewriter of this report), but are rather actively involved in exposingwomen, for example by pointing out who is in a picture from whichit might be difficult to recognise people. In the photos representingwomen as morally bankrupt we see celebrities as well as ordinarypeople.

The texts adjoining the photos direct interpretations of readersand make the photos appear even more degrading. In the texts,women caught in bed with a man in a hotel room are for exampleaccused of prostitution. There is no doubt, that these are the mostharmful type of representations of women in the media.

6. Cultural and Practical Challenges re-lated to gender sensitivity

6.1 Background of Interviewed Journalists

Altogether, 30 journalists working for MwananchiCommunications Limited were interviewed for this study. Most ofthem work for Mwananchi and The Citizen newspapers while twowork for Mwanaspoti. Twenty interviews were conducted in the mainoffices in Dar, and ten in regional offices in Arusha and Mbeya.

Most of the interviewees work as general news reporters or asspecialised reporters. Twelve interviewees work in various editorialpositions, i.e. as sub-editors or editors, as bureau chiefs or as chiefreporters. Most of the interviewees working in editorial positionswere men, since there are only few women working in editorialpositions at the media house.

The youngest interviewees were in their 30s, oldest in their 60s.Journalistic work experience of interviewees varied from one year upto 40 years. Most of them have a permanent job with MCL, but twoof the interviewees work as correspondents and one as a trainee.

Most of the interviewees had done a Bachelor’s degree either inthe field of journalism/mass media/mass communication or in someother field. Those who did not have any university degree or whohad done their undergraduate degree in some other than media-related field, had done a journalism diploma, advanced certificate injournalism or had participated in journalism training programmeprovided by Nation Media Group (NMG) in Kenya. Only threeinterviewees (all editors) told that they hold a Master’s degree. Onlya few of the interviewees said that they had received training ongender issues either as part of their degree studies or as trainingorganised by CSOs focusing on gender issues and/or media.

For the purpose of evidence and illustration, the followingssections include a lot of quotes from the interviews conducted withjournalists. Recorded interviews have been transcribed as carefullyand exactly as possible (and in case of interviews conducted inKiswahili, they have been translated into English). Researchers havefollowed the customary research conventions and ethics in the useof quotations: if any changes have been made to the originalquotation, changes have been marked using [brackets]. Combinationmeans that some words or sentences have been left out in the middle



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of the quotation, either because they are irrelevant to the theme inquestion, or for the purpose of avoiding repetition and making thequote more understandable to the reader. Putting a [word] in bracketsmeans that either the word has been added to the original quote tomake the sentence complete and understandable, or the word hasbeen changed into the grammatically correct form, such as fromsingular to plural form. No such changes have been made to thequotations which would alter their original meaning. When aquotation has a triple point without brackets, it marks hesitations andpausing by the interviewee.

6.2 Gender Awareness among Journalists

Awareness of interviewed journalists on gender issues and theirunderstanding of concepts of gender balance and gender sensitivityvaried a lot. Some of the interviewees were not able to explain at all,how they understand gender balance or gender sensitivity and whatthey could mean in the context of journalism. Journalists found itespecially difficult to say, whether there is any difference betweengender balance and gender sensitivity and what that difference mightbe. Most of those who were somewhat familiar with the concepts,connected gender balance to the balance of women and men in themedia organisations, rather than to media coverage:

Gender balance is to look at equality… maybe in numbers, howmany women are there, how many men, how many in the newsroom,workers, in editor positions, things like that. (Editor 8, male)

Some interviewees thought about gender balance in terms of both,media organisations and media coverage. For them, gender balancewas about equality in newsrooms and equal representation of womenand men as sources:

When you come to the newsroom, how do you balance the use ofthe work that has been done between men and woman, and as well thesources, how do you incorporate women, how you incorporate womenin the coverage? (Editor 1, male)

I think it’s news reporting that is based on two sides as in not menonly. It’s that in news reporting that even women are capable of beingjournalists and they can do it. (Reporter 7, female)

Yes, I know, [gender balance] is when a person tries to consider theimbalances of genders in the story and tries to eliminate them.(Reporter 16, male)



When asked what gender sensitivity could mean in media coverage,interviewees mentioned for example avoiding any kind ofdiscrimination, being considerate to both genders, being unbiasedand impartial, and having a sensitive and sympathetic approachtowards interviewees:

So covering these stories [gender issues ] is not like covering anyother stories[…], you need to be, to have that focus, you need to beimpartial, you need to be objective and at times you need to evensympathise with somebody that you interview which I find it has gonemissing among many journalists in the country. You know womenare so much put down, even us […] the media people, we are the mainculprits of that, because we tend to shun, we tend not to focus muchon the women. But it is very true that women have compelling storiesto tell and if we decided to gather special attention to let their voicesbe heard then that’s what I think will be gender sensitive. That is myfirst perception of gender sensitively. (Reporter 1, male)

[…] gender sensitivity also comes in when you talk about, maybehow… how you do your stories, of the content, because there’s someissues that… as a journalist you should be able to know how [coverage]is going to affect the other gender. (Editor 5, female)

Gender sensitivity was mostly understood as something positiveand worth pursuing by the interviewed journalists. However, one ofthem seemed to connect gender sensitivity to emphasisingdifferences between genders and saw it as something that worksagainst equality:

Gender sensitivity… oh my, it’s quite wide... […) I am not sosensitive on these gender issues because I try to think we are all equal.Any moment you try to say a lady cannot do this, because she is a lady,I think you’re becoming gender… maybe too sensitive, I mean aboutgender. You see, for example, you say maybe a lady cannot dosomething to this level, I mean, I find it quite odd because I believe ifwe have all the basic, the similar qualifications, I think the gender issueshould not come across. (Reporter 4, male)

When interviewees were asked to tell what they consider to begender issues, they mostly mentioned things related to economic andpolitical rights of women and issues which are visibly on the agendaof various CSOs, such as female genital mutilation (FGM), gender-based violence and widow inheritance.

[Gender issues are] those specific to male or female with theintension of harmonising interests of the two genders. For example



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equal access to education, political power, right to own properties,respect, engagement to development, and so on. In some societiespeople tend to abuse the other gender, for instance females may beconsidered as powerless, disadvantaged group, tool to be used by male,which is very wrong. Issues such as female genital mutilation areintolerable. (Editor 12, male)

For example the issue of location of resources among women andmen, men tend to have the upper-hand of resources compared to thewomen. This is magnificent rural areas, so when we go there you’d beshocked to see how women are harassed and being violated by the menand that is where things like gender based violence are so common and,women are not allowed to speak in front of the men. (Reporter 1, male)

Violence against women, women’s access to education, what theyinherit and their participation in decision-making. (Reporter 13,female)

Widow inheritance, female circumcision, women deprive fromschooling and alike. (Reporter 14, male)

6.3 Views on Gender Sensitivity in Tanzanian Media

With a few exceptions, the interviewed journalists were critical ofthe current situation in Tanzanian media. Most of them felt that thereare widespread problems in gender balance and gender sensitivity.Even though many journalists had difficulties in explainingtheoretical gender concepts, they were still able to provide illustrativepractical examples of the existing problems. In their examples,journalists focused mostly on media coverage. Problems that werementioned included over-representation of men among sources andin general in coverage and negative and stereotypical portrayal ofwomen.

I think still there is male dominance. There is male dominance,because… actually if you read many papers, the sources are men […]Where people go and take stories, it is male dominant, and readersthemselves most of them are men who buy the paper. (Editor 2, male)

If there was [gender sensitivity], why stereotyping and superiorityprevail in our daily newspapers’ stories? […]Even in our media, thereis no gender balance, every time men dominate our stories and rarelywomen come into the platform, and most of them are politicians andnot ordinary citizens. (Reporter 15, male)

Some interviewees referred towhat they describeed as double



standards in the media: women and men are treated differently, withwomen receiving more negative publicity.

Pictures of men are the ones that represent hard news; serious newsrun pictures of men, but you find pictures of negative exposure… likea lot of negative exposure, negative exposure are of women. You willnot find a man has been photographed wearing shorts and all, no, aman is featured wearing suits. Even in cartoons, a man is wearing asuit and all. But a woman – if a woman is drawn, she will be drawnwith big breasts and bottoms that… I don’t know… is shaped like this.(Reporter 6, Female)

Photo ethics should be considered, why having bad pictures ofwomen, for example, who were caught committing adultery withsomeone’s husbands, were they alone? No adultery without both sexes,why men’s images are not portrayed? (Reporter 17, male)

Reporters are also well aware of the differences between tabloidsand mainstream newspapers in their coverage of women.

It’s even worse with the yellow…tabloids, because…they’ve beenso unfair with women since that… women have been represented ascommodities. For example today is a Friday […], on Fridays we havepopular tabloids. Today’s paper, I was outside, I saw it. It had a hugephoto of a lady skimpily dressed. It says that this lady sells herself toget money. So not only that even… at times these guys will use thosekinds of photos to sell their papers because they think that, they havethis mentality that Tanzanians love to read so much about leisure andsex and so when we put across these photo we will sell. So to themwomen sell more than men so there has been a very negativerepresentation of women in the yellow newspapers, tabloids ascompared to serious newspapers. (Reporter 1, male)

Interviewees explained the imbalance in media coverage bystructural reasons, namely over-representation of men in powerfulpositions and as spokespersons of various organizations.

The system itself tends to discriminate females and favour males.[…] men dominate the system, everywhere you find them havingbetter positions compared to females, and when you find females don’tdoubt they are just there under their influences, they [women] arethere because of them [men], so in most cases they become their tools.(Reporter 17, male)

Because…because in most positions you have the spokesmen aremen. […]. So if you see in the media… it’s almost most of the time is



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men or male spokesmen or sources, it’s because in most cases moremen in most offices, you have men who are holding the position to talkto the media. (Editor 3, male)

The society’s system favours men a lot. (Reporter 11, female)

Education imbalance, women are not well represented inParliament, etc. (Reporter 12, male)

Some interviewees who had historical perspective due to theirlong experience in the field felt that things have improved during thepast decade or two, both in terms of gender balance in thenewsrooms and visibility of women in media coverage.

For my part, I am saying that they [women] get the chance to beinterviewed, to be listened to, even to be on television… appear ontelevision, to give their opinion, to speak out their opinion. […] menand women are both interviewed. Before… 2005 things [were] notgood, but nowadays both are given equal chance. Things have beenimproved compared [to] 1996–1997 when I joined the profession ofjournalism. (Editor 4, male)

Currently I think a little bit better than before. Because nowadaysthere are more women who are… so much active in various fields sothere are more women who are sources of news right now than someyears ago. Within the media I think currently women are in a betterposition to do much, to perform, than before. (Editor 6, male)

Only one interviewed male journalist felt that there had not beena problem to start with, and women have sufficient access to bothmedia coverage and media organisations:

I think in Tanzania we are real fair. It depends on what you arespeaking. If it’s newsworthy, you will be covered. As a matter ofcovering, as a matter of coverage I think there is no gender imbalance… as for employment, if a female is interested in journalism as areporter, we have a lot of them as you can see here, we have a lot of…it’s almost balanced. We have girls and boys who join as journalistsand we don’t…we don’t…normally to my experience we encouragegirls... women journalists, we encourage them to work, as they canjust as us men do. So there is nowhere you can find a newspaper whichsays we cannot employ for instance a woman because she is a woman,but I think she will be employed because she is a reporter. We don’tsee sex as something to qualify for this profession, that is myunderstanding. (Editor 3, male)



6.4 Views and Experiences of Gender

Sensitivity at MCL

When assessing the performance of their company andnewspaper in terms of gender balance and gender sensitivity, almostall interviewees considered MCL a better media house than others inTanzania.

I think we are better compared to other media house, as we takedeliberate moves to recruit more females that we think can influencefemale interviews for our stories. (Editor 12, male)

I think we are doing better, here there is a policy, first of all thecompany policy allows that for equal opportunity to all regardless ofthe gender. I think that gives women more field to play. (Editor 6,male)

However, most interviewees also admitted that there is room andneed for improvement in their newspaper.

Compared to other media houses, I think we are better though I amnot proud of the achievement, we need to make some efforts to improvemore. (Reporter 15, male)

Well, we try but we haven’t reached where we want… I think atleast… This is, it’s basically propagated by big guys, top guys there.[…] We have a special pullout called ‘Woman’; it comes out everySaturday, at least that’s the platform where women now can speak.But if I pull out The Citizen newspaper and I would come across allthe stories and count the number of sources, women sources, youwould be shocked. So that’s why I am telling you, we have a long wayto go, a very long, long way to go. (Reporter 1, male)

Several interviewees referred to ‘Woman’ pullout magazine andother pullouts dealing with women’s issues when justifying theirassessment that MCL is doing better than the media in general withrespect to gender sensitivity of coverage.

I think Mwananchi is doing better because of… we have specialpullout for women in The Citizen and Mwananchi every weekend andI don’t see it in other newspapers, so Mwananchi I think we are doinggreat, we give it priority. (Reporter 2, female)

Today is Saturday, we have a pullout, it’s called ‘Woman’, a lot ofissues, success stories of women are in that pullout, so if you cannothave them as a news story pieces, which are always short, we have avery big platform to explain a success story about a woman in thatpullout. The same happens with Mwananchi, they also have theirs.(Reporter 4, male)



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I think The Citizen is doing better, yah, in my assessment, I thinkit’s doing better, because for instance here we have a specific pulloutmagazine which just deals with women issues, it’s called ‘Woman’,it’s all about women’s issues from lifestyles to success stories. (Editor6, male)

It seems that male journalists have a more positive conception ofgender balance and equal opportunities in the company than femaleemployees. Female reporters and editors were clearly very wellaware of the marginal positions of women in the organizationstructure, and many of them brought it up in the interview. Situationclearly arouses some discontent.

In the setup of our media, still a woman has no chance, because 95percent of the top leaders in media are men. For example here, here youwill find those going to meeting of editors are two, [names of twowomen]. (Reporter 6, Female)

Of course we need to make it better, because even when you lookfor example a company like ours, if you look at gender balance example,women are fewer than men in Mwananchi, even. (Reporter 7, Female)

In journalists, for example for us here in Mwananchi, I don’t thinkit’s fair, because for example when you see even our structure forMwananchi, we have only maybe two or three [woman] editors whenyou compare to men, men are many. (Reporter 11, female)

Coming to Mwananchi I could say that… even by looking you’reable to tell that the number of… I mean men outnumber women hereand to some extent it has gotten to the mind of the women, so theydon’t see the need to fight to be felt, you know. (Editor 5, female)

Interviewed men attribute the scarcity of women in editorialpositions to lack of competence and qualifications and/or confidenceand determination among women. In other words, male journaliststend to blame female colleagues for their low position in theorganisation. It also seems that men have perhaps an over-optimisticidea of the treatment of women at their workplace. Some malejournalists emphasised that they give special attention and supportto junior female reporters in their organisation, but the other side ofthe coin is that women sometimes feel belittled by their malecolleagues and they may be silenced by them for example in postmortem13 meetings.



13 Whereas in its normal medical and science context “post mortem” (‘after the death’) refers to theexamination of the cause of death, in the context of newspaper journalism it refers to the morning-after meeting of reporters, editors and editorial management, where the issue of newspaper onwhich journalists worked the day before and which is now out is reviewed.

It’s very, very, challenging very, very, challenging especially whenyou’re working with many men like here. You know very many meneven at the post-mortem [if] you speak, they say “No”. I say “Whyno?”, I am a reporter, I work, I have a right to speak, to give my views.If they are wrong, you’ll correct me, you’ll tell me “This is right”, butlet me speak. (Reporter 10, female)

According to some interviewed women, female journalists areeasily placed in the features desk, rather than in news desks, and ingeneral they have less room for serving different positions comparedto men. At the same time, some male colleagues may be reluctant tocover issues which they consider “women’s issues”. And when awoman do “too well” in her job, male colleagues may remark thather article has not not been written by the woman herself.

[…] when my story comes out, my nice stories comes out, you say,you say, “no how come you do this story, no it must… someone musthave helped you”. (Reporter 10, female)

On the other hand, many interviewed women were happy withthe opportunities provided for women, with the support they getfrom male colleagues, and in general with the atmosphere andculture at their workplace.

I don’t know from others but for example us [in MCL], I think weare given equal opportunity; there is no one who is discriminated, Ihaven’t heard of it and I haven’t seen. In our office, we all do our workwell, woman, man, we all do our work well. We are assigned the same,we are being involved in a lot of things, we are enabled, so we are allequal in our company. (Reporter 7, Female)

Yes, in terms of giving value to your work, I have not seen anyform of discrimination, no, none that I know, and I am talkingspecifically about my desk, and that’s the only place I know, yah, I havenot really seen any issues, I’ve not had any issues, yah. (Editor 5,female)

6.5 Taking Gender into Account in Practical Work

Most of the interviewed journalists, whether reporters or editors,said they take gender into account while doing their actual work.However, interviewees seem to have a rather narrow, evenmechanical idea of gender balance or gender sensitivity. To theinterviewed journalists it is almost entirely just a matter of balancingthe sources, i.e. interviewing as many women as men or interviewingat least some women for a story.



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Yes I do [think of gender]. Like today, I went to investigate more onthe causes of car accidents in our city, I interviewed three women andthree men for my story, see. (Reporter 12, male)

Yes, sometimes I think of that, because there’s a time, within ournewspaper, we once spoke about it, how come our sources, we interviewonly men? Is it like women do not know sports and all, so we said wemust balance. (Reporter 7, Female)

By balancing men and women in my interviews, I keenly observethe number of people and try hard to balance the gender. (Editor 1, male)

Only a few interviewees mentioned some other considerations inaddition to the use of sources, such as what impacts their story mighthave in society, or which kind of topics and angles enable them tobring out the voices of women.

[Question by interviewer:] When you are planning the contentsfor the next issue, do you ever consider gender balance at this phase?

[Answer by the interviewee:] Yes, because the contents, topics orstories give a guideline on which gender is more suitable compared toanother, so you can just tell who will be your interviewees, taking forexamples mothers’ day is obvious for women. (Reporter 17, male)

It depends on the nature of the story, but I take into considerationmany factors, such as what the occasion is, why I should pick a certaingender, what impacts will story bring to the society and so many othersthat guide me into right decision. (Reporter 15, male)

While reporters are the ones who actually do the actual work offinding and selecting sources in the field, editors can influence theirwork through initial discussions and instructions when giving theassignment and at the point when reporters submit their articles forfurther processing. In these discussions, the issue of the gender ofsources sometimes comes up, and editors may encourage or evenpush reporters to find female sources or to look at the topic fromwomen’s perspective.

It’s a democratic assignment, we hear from the reporter: ok whatyou think, how can you handle this story? “Oh I do this, I do this, andthis”, then we say ok, for this story look for this source, go to the libraryfor background info, that’s how we do here. […]

We insist that if possible get a woman in this story, at least two…if we have five, at least two, if we can get three, if we can get four, thenit’s ok too. (Editor 1, male)



I am just wondering what the problem is. Does it mean picking,for example, two males and two females in a story of four peopledifficult? I am telling you my reporters should learn how to balancethe gender otherwise no publications of their stories. (Editor 11, male)

[…] in some cases the editors stress on balancing the genderespecially when it is Women’s Day, May Day and other occasions.(Reporter 15, male)

I don’t kind of think of a gender issue on this, I just think if thisidea comes up, I have this idea, I then discuss with my boss and thenhe can say, ok, this idea is good, but then it can be maybe better story,if you look at it from this angle, the gender issue, maybe how it isaffecting women, how women are affected by this story. (Reporter 4,male)

6.6 Challenges in Getting Interviews from Women

Journalists, regardless of their gender, work experience, positionor desk reported about problems in finding female sources for theirstories. The main problem is reluctance of women to be interviewed,especially if their name is to be published. From the experience of theinterviewed journalists, this is common in all walks of life, frompolitics to public offices, from professionals and experts to ordinarypeople.

The biggest challenge is the women themselves for they are notcooperative, they shy away and seem not to understand the role ofmedia to them. (Reporter 12, male)

I don’t know why they’re worried, even if you go to the professor,she will…she will say “No, don’t mention my name, no!” (Editor 1,male)

Even an MP, our women MP, when you want to ask somethingabout them, they fear to talk to the media, we don’t know why.(Reporter 11, female)

Some of the interviewees felt it was easier to deal with ordinarywomen, whereas some felt that professional women give interviewsmore freely.

You see these professional women, many of them have ambitionsand they know this is opportunity, and the journalist is here, this isan opportunity for me to talk and flaunt what they have. It’s easy forthem to talk, they talk and they want you to write very, very nice



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things about them, because they have something, they have plans andfuture. (Reporter 2, female)

In my experience, it’s even much easier to deal with the ordinarycitizen than professional women, yes, it is way easy. Well, sometimes,especially those who think you’re supposed to pay them, if they giveyou stories, you might encounter those… those hard-ons. But undernormal circumstances I would say that it’s easy to just walk to awoman on the streets, explain to her who you are and why you wantto interview her and she will grant an interview on the spot, but itwill take 2-3 weeks of back and forth email trying to explain yourselfif you want to interview a woman boss […]. (Editor 5, female)

Several interviewed journalists also mentioned differencesbetween urban and rural areas. Whereas, especially in Dar es Salaamwomen might be comfortable with journalists and media publicity,things get most challenging when going to field trips in rural areas.

I think everybody will tell you that in Dar everybody, they justtalk, talk, but [when] we go on the other parts of the country, it’s noteasy for women to talk. You see this woman, she’s in trouble, you knowsomething bad is happening to her, but she won’t talk, she won’t tellyou. […] You know, these stories sometimes affect their relatives, theirhusband, you know. If a woman tells you that “my husband beats me”,it’s trouble for her husband, or “I have been raped by my uncle”, it’sa problem with the whole family. (Reporter 2, female)

Interviewees referred to the protocol and bureaucracy involvedwhen they want to talk to women working in various organisations,making it difficult to get interviews from women even if they werewilling to speak.

The problem is when you go to these professionals who of course…I think our laws are not in order if I may say so. Such may tell you,“We have our spokesperson, go to our spokesperson”. But look, you’rean expert of this specific thing which I’m to talk about, why should Igo to a journalist or a fellow public relations officer to tell me atechnical thing which she doesn’t understand or he doesn’tunderstand, you’re in the position to… “Ah, look, this will have…cause problems to me. So if maybe want talk to me, you need to go todirector general, ask permission, write a letter to him or her asking ifI can volunteer these…” Sometimes it’s just like that. (Reporter 3,male)

Now there is a protocol… of most of our spokesperson… most ofthem are men, so that when you find somebody to want to ask things,



you have to face men not women. So that [it is] not us or women theydon’t want to speak, no, that is the system how [it] is. (Editor 4, male)

Many interviewees also said that there would be a “gender factor”affecting the interaction between a journalist and potentialinterviewee and the likelihood of getting an interview from a woman.Journalists who brought the issue up where almost unanimous thatwomen give interviews more easily to male journalists, though theycould not quite explain why this would be so.14

It’s easier to call a woman and ask her for information and shewould be more helpful If you’re a man, and if you’re a woman,sometimes I don’t know what really goes on, it’s a bit problematic tointeract with women. […](Editor 5, female)

Some editors also felt that female journalists are more reluctantthan their male colleagues, to interview fellow women. This is ofcourse quite contradictory with the findings of our content analyseswhich showed that women appear more frequently as sources inarticle written by female reporters.

Female reporters tend to like to have male interviewees [rather]than females ones, while male reporters can take on both genderswithout any problem at all. (Editor 12, male)

6.7 Explanations and Solutions to Problems with Inter-viewing Women

Interviewed journalists spoke on the reluctance of women to giveinterviews mainly because of cultural reasons and women’s distrusttowards the media and journalists. Cultural sentiments are explainedby the way women are raised and to their subordinate role infamilies, communities and Tanzanian society in general.

Maybe our background… our backgrounds. Values, background,and I think with values are the most of them our tradition values sincethen women were not speakers, they were just in the kitchen, feedingthe children, cooking for men; so I think that is still haunting themnow, regardless of how far she’s gone. (Reporter 3, male)

I don’t know why, maybe our culture, you know Tanzanian cultureis different from that of European’s; for us the man is the head of thefamily and so the women fear men. (Reporter 11, female)



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14 In much of a same way some editors said that female journalists get interviews and informationfrom male sources more easily than male journalists.

Many interviewees sympathised with women who don’t trustjournalists and believed it is because women in general haveexperienced negative coverage on them in the media.

They don’t trust the media in reporting them. I think the way themedia has been reporting them has been bad for so long, they werenormally reported in rape cases, or portrayed as men’s instrumentsand they hated it. (Reporter 16, male)

Shying away of women from media is a results of how badly theyhave been portrayed for so long. In order to rectify the problem, weneed to change the way we portray them, if the media will help thewomen to fight for their rights, campaign for them when they contestfor different positions especially the political positions, women willhave positive image of what the media is doing and the media will gaintheir trust. (Editor 12, male)

[Distrust in journalists] is because of that habit of wanting to writeeverything negative. You know I used to quarrel even with my editor,you know, when he tell me to write everything in the negative. I tellhim ‘No’, why we… there is positive angles as well, why do you wantus to write negativity, always negativity, negativity? (Reporter 10,female)

Because women are reluctant to speak to journalists, a reporterneeds time, patience and people skills to gain their trust and convincethem to give an interview. Once a female source has the first positiveexperience with a journalist and media coverage, she will givecooperation later. One female reporter tells of her experience with afemale source, whom she finally succeeded to meet and interviewafter a lot of hesitation and delays on part of the interviewee:

I didn’t give up until I got her. She was happy when I talked to her,actually she felt very happy… she said, “You know I am afraid ofjournalists, when you just say ‘journalist’, actually I get afraid, youknow journalists tarnish your name. You can say a thing, a very smallthing, but for a journalist, they can make it very big and it can tarnishyour name, your company, and so I feel very afraid… I don’t want toengage with media that much.” […] actually when it [story] cameout, she even told me, I want the… part of this story, I like it. Nexttime you have any problem, you want anything from me, come. Soshe’s now my friend. (Reporter 10, female)

Some reporters hope that they could get more support and helpfrom editors with the “difficult cases”. One female reporter suggestedthat editors could use their prestige to convince reluctant



interviewees.

I think editors, they have a big influence, editors need to supportus. For example, let’s say I go to someone and the person agrees togrant me an interview but holds on [asks the reporter not to publishthe story at least yet]. […] so I think the editor too needs to call thatperson. […] You know everyone wants to be a king, someone calls youand you’re talking to an editor, they see clearly they have worth. I ambeing called and he insists that your story will be treated well.(Reporter 9, female)

Also, other reporters shared their experiences on how to approachwomen in a way which does not scare them off and whichencourages them to speak. They warned fellow journalists overarrogance and aggressive approach.

At times it takes the power of persuasion, you talk to them nicelyand you tell them what you want to write about, tell them it would beof special interest to them if just that they are willing to talk, you arewilling to help so that their voice becomes heard and definitely thegovernment will help them; so when you play along those lines, youwill definitely get their feedback, so at times it entirely depends on yourapproach. (Reporter 1, male)

I’m a woman too, so… I knowwe tend to put ourselves in theirposition, you just change. I become a part of her, I just change, I amno longer a journalist, I’m a woman now. […] so you need to befriendto them, you need time, you shouldn’t be in hurry. (Reporter 2, female)

However, since reporters especially news reporters, work undera lot of pressure because they have to beat the deadline, reluctanceof women to be interviewed may easily lead to a reporter simplymoving on to more easily available and cooperative sources – oftenmen.

[The biggest challenge in our work is] chasing for interviewees whowill be quickly interviewed for my stories without wasting time. […]Yes, especially when your focus is to get female interviewees […], theyknow how to waste time. […} They may tell you that they need to calltheir husbands to get permissions to do interviews, or parents. If theysound like that, I normally dump them. (Reporter, male 16)

6.8 Awareness of the Company’s Gender Policy

The gender policy of Mwananchi Communications Ltd has beenformulated in 2013 as a result of the training workshops organisedby GEMSAT. It is clear that the process has not been very inclusiveand participatory, since most interviewed journalists were not even



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aware that their employer has put in place a gender policy. Someinterviewees had heard about the policy, but mostly at the level ofhearsay.

I started hearing about it not that long [ago], this year, like twomonths have passed,. However, I have heard it’s something that’s beenaround a long time. It’s around a long time, but it’s underground, ithasn’t been open for everyone to know […]. (Reporter 9, female)

According to the management, it is the responsibility of editors tomake sure that the gender policy is put to practice and reporters areaware it. However, the non-participatory nature of the process maycause problems, since it is possible that all editors don’t see theimportance of the set guidelines or understand the reasons behindthem, but the policy is seen rather as a set of arbitrary orders fromthe management.

[Question by interviewer:] You too as an editor, when you assignyour reporters, do you sometimes tell them make sure female sourcesare present when interviewing people?

[Answer by interviewee:] No, to tell you the truth no, but now inthe office they have said that women should be given a chance, it’s oneof the new policies which have been introduced brought by the office.

[Question:] Is it written or just spoken words/statement?

[Answer:] It’s written… I don’t have it, but I have it at home. Butit’s written that in any story there should be at least one woman, it’snecessary to have a woman. (Editor 8, male)

There is clearly need for training to disseminate information aboutthe new gender policy at MCL, reasons for formulating it and itspractical implementations, to editors as well as reporters. It seemsthat currently some reporters don’t even see the connection betweengender balance and the requirement to include both women and menin a story:

[Question:] How do editors help reporters in the question of gender,for example when they send you to a seminar, do they tell you tointerview more women?

[Answer:] That happens many times, depending on the nature of[the] story, but very few… I don’t think… when they say interviewtwo women and two men, I don’t think they have that sense of genderconsciouness. (Reporter 6, Female)



7. Conclusions and Recommendations

7.1 Summary of Key Findings on Media Coverage

Analyses of the journalistic contents of the daily newspapersMwananchi and The Citizen, and the tabloids, Uwazi, Ijumaa and Risasishow in 2013 women are quite invisible in the media compared tomen, both as sources of the news and feature stories and as subjectsof photos. On average, women were used as sources in 24% ofarticles, whereas men appeared as sources in 70% of the 2013 articles.Women were visible in photos in 28% of the articles.

In the two daily papers, women are clearly under-represented assources and in photos compared to men. However, when womenappear in articles or photos, the representations are diverse andmostly positive. Some of the representations are more traditional innature; some are more modern; some representations are passive andobjectifying while some represent women as active actors.

There are several rather stereotypical representations of womenin the two MCL newspapers, namely those depicting women ascaregivers, victims, decoration or sex objects. There are, however, alsoseveral representations which have the potential to changestereotypical conceptions of women. These include representationsof women in power, women as active citizens, successful career women, andstrong and physically fit women. The representation of traditionalhardworking women is traditional, but not particularly stereotypical,and it is active and positive in nature, since it shows women as activesubjects struggling to improve their livelihood.

It is mostly the moralising way in which gender issues andwomen are covered in some articles in The Citizen that give reasonfor concern. Articles which rely heavily on the moralising discourse,represent women as moral bankrupts, i.e. as indecent, promiscuousand morally corrupt women. Moralising discourse has a tendency ofblaming the victim: it turns young school girls impregnated byelderly men into objects of moral contempt and despise; it turnsvulnerable women forced to resort to selling their bodies into overly-sexual predators hunting for men in night clubs; and it turns victimsof sexual violence into indecent sluts “asking for it”. For women, thisis the most harmful and dangerous discourse, since it can havedangerous real-life consequences on them.

In the tabloids, women are more visible than in the dailynewspapers, both as sources and in photos. However, in the tabloids



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the representations of women are mostly stereotypical anddegrading. Women – mostly celebrities and models used to visualisearticles focusing on relationships – are portrayed as beautifuldecoration or as sex objects with revealing clothing and seductiveposes. Alternatively, women are represented as moral bankrupts invarious embarrassing situations: appearing drunk and/or half-naked, or caught cheating their partner or having sex with a stranger– even accused of prostitution. Only in very rare occasions womenappear in active and positive roles in the tabloids. The way tabloidstreat women is, all in all, very disrespectful and demeaning; from theperspective of professional code of conduct and journalism ethicstheir coverage is very poor.

7.2 Summary of Key Findings on Interviews withJournalists

Interviews with a total of 30 reporters and editors of MCLprovided us with some insights into why women are so poorlyrepresented even in the newspapers of a media company which, ona policy level, aims at gender balanced journalism and has beenrewarded as a centre of excellence in gender balance.

It seems journalists working with MCL are not very well aware ofthe gender policy oftheir employer. Most of the interviewed reportershad not even heard of the policy. Journalists working in senioreditorial positions were better informed of its existence, but it seemedthat the policy had not yet been fully internalised and integrated intothe daily practises of the journalist.

Interviews revealed that there is still a lot to do in genderawareness of journalists, both women and men. Only a few ofinterviewees had received any training on gender, either as part oftheir formal studies at a university or as training organised by CSOsdealing with the issues. Those who seemed to be more aware of whatgender entails were comfortably able to articulate the essence ofgender balance and sensitivity in the context of journalism and howthey took it into consideration in the course of their work.

Most interviewees found it difficult to explain the concepts ofgender balance and gender sensitivity, but when moving on to morepractical issues and examples, most of them showed understandingof problems related to visibility and portrayal of women in mediacoverage and their role in media organisations. Interviewees sharedthe view that gender awareness among the media professionals isonly moderate, and journalists in their organisation would need and



benefit from in-house training on gender issues and perspectives.

The interviewed journalists understood gender sensitivity mostlyin quantitative terms, as a matter of balancing female and malesources in a story. Only a few said they consider gender whenthinking of topics and angles of stories, or of the consequences andimpacts of a story. This rather mechanical understanding of gendersensitivity as a mere balance in the gender of sources does not alwayslead to the best outcome. There are cases when abandoning thegeneral principle of balancing sources is very well justified on a levelof a single article, such as when doing a feature story on an issuewhich mainly affects women, in which women are the best experts.Balancing of sources on the level of different sections and the wholepaper is much more vital and requires coordination and activeinvolvement of editors.

Interviewed journalists explained under-representation of womenin media coverage – in their own newspapers as well as moregenerally in the Tanzanian media – by structural, cultural, historicaland practical factors. These explanations can be summerised asfollows:

Structural reasons: Women are under-represented invarious visible power positions such as politics or asspokespersons of various organisations and public offices.Therefore, women are also under-represented as sources ofnews, as reporters routinely look for persons with officialstatus and authority to be used as sources.

Cultural reasons: Tanzanian women are not used to voicingtheir opinion and speaking publicly, since in families,communities and in formal education they have been raisedto be silent and submissive. Women are concerned of thepossible adverse consequences of speaking out publicly, tothemselves and their families. Therefore, it is much moredifficult to get interviews from women than from men,whether they are professional experts or ordinary women onthe street or villages.

Historical reasons: Women have been treated unfairly anddisrespectfully by journalists before, and the previous badexperiences – whether oneself or other women, have led todistrust towards journalists.

Practical reasons: Limited time causes journalists to turnto sources from whom it is easy to get an interview. If women



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who are approached are reluctant to give interviews,journalists simply skip them and settle for men, instead ofspending time to find other female interviewees who could becooperative.

7.3 Conclusions and Discussion on Findings

Findings of our research show that visibility of women innewspaper coverage has not improved much over the past decade.However, it seems that in mainstream newspapers, there is now morediversity in the portrayal of women and less stereotypicalrepresentations of women than previous studies indicate (seeChapter 2).

There is no denying that to a certain extent, theunderrepresentation of women in Tanzanian media is a reflection ofunderrepresentation of women in politics and other position ofpower, authority and expertise. However, journalists should not justsettle for reproducing inequalities in the social structures in theircoverage. Journalism is not a mirror which just passively reflects thesociety – journalism is a result of countless choices and decisionsmade by reporters and editors, informed by professional ethics andcode of conduct and underlining values. If gender sensitivity isaccepted as an important ethical guideline for journalism, thenjournalists should take it into account while making practicaldecisions on their work.

Gender sensitivity is not only a matter of who to interview, eventhough gender balance of sources is one important aspect of it.Gender perspective should permeate the whole work process startingfrom looking for ideas for news and feature stories and narrowingdown topics into more specific angles, and extending to the structureof the story, quotations used, and the choice of words and imagesused to describe and represent women and men.

Based on our interviews with journalists, it is clear that the under-representation of women as sources in not entirely a result ofjournalists ignoring the gender perspective. Many intervieweesemphasise that they do their best to find both female and malesources for their stories. However, the reluctance of women to giveinterviews is a real problem for journalists and it contributes toinvisibility of women in the Tanzanian media.

Since difficulties in getting women to give interviews appear tobe at least partly a result of deep-rooted cultural factors related to the



position of women in Tanzanian society generally, journalists alonecannot change things. A more general cultural and social change isrequired. However, each time they get interviews from womenjournalists, write positive stories about them, portray women indiverse roles and write articles on gender issues which contribute tobetter understanding of them, they are in effect facilitating thiscultural change. Our analyses confirmed what others have notedbefore (see e.g. MCT 2012; MCT 2013b, 3–4): journalists on their ownare not very active in promoting gender issues, but the initiative – inform of press conferences, publications or such other initiatives,–typically come from CSOs dealing with gender issues. And thisnormally results in rather superficial coverage of gender issues basedon only a single source.

Journalists also seem to have a rather limited idea of issuesconcerning women. It is of course important to publish successstories on which can function as empowering examples for otherwomen. And there is nothing wrong with serving female readerswith a special pullout targeted them. However, it is not enough tohave only some special dedicated columns and pages on women. Itis important for journalists to understand that all societal issuescovered in various news sections concern women just as they concernmen – even though implications can sometimes be different.Therefore, coverage requires gender sensitivity and inclusion of thegender perspective. As Joseph Ammu (2012, 9) puts it:

There is still an assumption within the profession thatgender is, at best, a “niche” issue that can be left to those whochoose to specialise in such “soft” stories and need not concernthose who cover “hard” – read weighty – news. It is not yetwidely recognised that coverage of events and issuestraditionally categorised as hard news – such as conflicts anddisasters, politics and business, crime and punishment – canactually benefit from a gender perspective.

Commitment of the editorial management is a precondition to anyadvancement in gender sensitive journalism. It is not enough to writegender policy papers; relevant recommendations need to actually beput into practice. That requires investments in training the editorialstaff and sufficient resources for journalists to be able to do their workwell. The editorial management of the two daily newspapersincluded in this study is aware of gender issues and their importance,and therefore there is a good reason to believe that with training andcoaching on gender sensitive journalism, positive developments canbe achieved.



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It is much more difficult to say what should and could be done toimprove portrayal of women in sensationalist tabloids. As long aspeople keep buying these papers, regardless of how badly they treatwomen, there might not be enough incentives for the editorialmanagement and staff to develop the contents and practices towardsa more ethical and gender sensitive approach. Therefore, it is notenough to educate just journalists; the public also needs to beeducated on gender issues and the role of the media for them tobecome more critical and media literate consumers. Here the mediathemselves can again have an important role, since a well-plannedmedia campaign might be an effective way of sensitising theaudience to gender issues and gender perspectives. More specifically,a media campaign might make the public more aware of the role ofthe media in constructing gender representations and stereotypes,and of the harmful consequences of stereotypical and negativegender portrayals.

Finally, the role of journalism training institutions is of utmostimportance. Covering gender issues and theory and practice ofgender sensitive journalism should be an integral part of the curriculaof journalism and mass communication programmes at any level ofeducation. Currently gender issues are covered in the degreeprogrammes provided by universities,15 but journalists who enter inthe profession after completing a certificate or diploma programmedon’t necessarily have any training on gender.16

Introducing courses on gender and media in the journalismcurricula would in a long run contribute to enhancing gendersensitivity and of the future generations of journalists. However,unless the editorial management and staff currently running themedia outlets are also sensitised to gender through shorter courses,it will take a long time before we can expect to see real changes in themedia practices and contents.



15 In the University of Dar es Salaam School of Journalism and Mass Communication, BA in Journalismand BA in Mass Communication programmes contain a course Gender and the Media (see UDSM2012), and the MA in Mass Communication includes a course Media, Gender and Society (see UDSM2013). In the University of Iringa (formerly Tumaini University, Iringa University College), the BAin Journalism includes a course Sociology of Gender Issues, and the new MA in Journalism and MediaManagement to be launched in 2014 will include a course Media, Gender and Minority Groups (seeUoI, forthcoming 2014). BA in Mass Communication of the University of Saint Augustine Tanzaniaincludes a course Gender Issues, but the MA programme does not include courses focusingspecifically on gender (see SAUT 2013).

16 Media Council of Tanzania has noted that various schools providing journalism training at thecertificate and diploma levels have big discrepancies in their curricula and teaching methods, andto enhance the quality of training, MCT has prepared a standardised competence based journalismtraining curriculum in collaboration with the National Council for Technical Education, NACTE(MCT 2013c).

7.4 Practical Recommendations for Reporters and Editors

A. Practical Recommendations for Reporters and Editors

AI) From Event Coverage to Issue Coverage

Currently, the news agenda of mainstream newspapers is to alarge extent set outside the newsrooms, meaning that the paperscover events (parliamentary sessions, press conferences, court andpolice beats etc.) and statements given in them, rather than issues. Forexample gender issues mostly make it to the news when CSOsdealing with gender issues or more generally human rights publishreports and organise press conferences or seminars. This is especiallya problem of news desks; feature journalists are more used to lookingfor their own original story ideas.

A more active approach would be beneficial not only for thevisibility of women and gender issues, but also for the quality andindependence and integrity of journalismin general. More activeapproach means in practice that journalists actively look for theirown news ideas, not just “collect”, “cover” and “report” news. Itrequires following actively what goes on in various sectors of societyand in various communities, and taking initiative to investigatevarious issues and topics. Investigative journalism should not besomething left only for investigative reporters: all journalists wouldbenefit from good skills in investigating issues, in collecting andcritically analysing information. For example, the so-called datajournalism could be an approach which would enable newsrooms tofind their own original news and feature stories. In the era of theInternet, journalists have access to vast amounts of information – butinvestigation and analyses of information, of course requires time,and it means that media organisations need to invest resources to thisend.

AII) From Elite-orientation to Citizen- and Community-based Approach

Elite-orientation in news reporting is closely linked to event-orientation. News reporters are used to think that what various elitegroups, such as politicians, business managers or experts, say anddo, is important and worth covering (the so called “prominence newsvalue syndrome”). This is certainly true to the extent that decisionsmade by politicians affect all citizens. However, different elite groupsrepresent a very small part of the population and as such are stronglyover-represented in the media, and basing coverage only on theirviews produces a very narrow representation of the reality. Relying



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primarily on elite sources also means that the news media reflectsand reproduces the gender inequalities present in the socialstructures. If women are under-presented in politics, they will alsobe under-presented in the news.

The so-called public journalism or civic journalism movement hassince 1990s challenged this “top-to-bottom” elite orientation bypromoting a citizen - and community-based “bottom-to-top”approach. Civic journalism approach means that journalists recognisethat ordinary citizens and various communities are best experts oftheir own lives and everyday realities and as such, they have valuablethings to say. Instead of just conveying information from elite sourcesto the citizens, it is just as important for journalists to convey concernsof the citizens to the decision-makers and to enable dialogue amongcitizens and communities and between citizens and decision-makers.It is also important to report how various political initiatives anddecisions discussed and made in political cabinets affect ordinarypeople – and specific groups, such as women, children, people livingin rural areas, or elderly people. Since all decision made by politiciansaffect either all citizens or some specific subgroups, each news storycovering a political decision could be turned into or supplementedby a story examining the impacts of it from the perspective ofordinary people. And that is where finding women for interviewsshould be much easier than finding them among the political elites.

Again, the alternative approach of civic journalism requires timeand resources, and therefore investment and commitment on the partof media organisations. Reporters cannot find “ordinary citizens” inphone catalogues, databases of regular expert sources, or – in case ofTanzania, where the majority of people don’t have access to theInternet and consequently, the social media. Reporting on concernsof local communities and ordinary citizens and the impacts of variousdecisions on them requires doing fieldwork. That means leaving thenewsrooms, landing on the streets, and travelling to rural areas.

AIII) Expanding the Expert Source Network

Journalists throughout the world are guilty of the same sin: usingthe same sources over and over again, and not only that, but alsousing the same sources all the other media are using. Phoning thesame familiar source whom you have known for long, and who youknow is willing give an interview, is easy and saves time. But it alsomeans that the diversity of voices in the media becomes more andmore narrowed.



Whereas ordinary people are mostly not to be found in theInternet, many expert sources are. Journalists need to develop theirresearch skills also in finding people sources. Many Tanzanianuniversities (or other organisations) don’t list their staff on theirwebsites yet, but spending some time for phoning the numbersprovided their in and asking around may enable you to find the bestexpert for your story – such as the lecturer or researcher who hasactually done some work on your topic. In some cases the socialmedia can work even better: many experts and professionals cannowadays be found in the professional social networking websiteLinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) and many researchers share theirfindings and papers, for example, in Academia.edu. By doing asearch in these websites country-by-country or the topic, a journalistmay find experts she/he needs. Of course, it is better to startdeveloping the source network well on time and not to look for thebest expert hours or minutes before the deadline! At least forjournalists working in a beat, i.e. specialised in specific area such aseconomics and business or sports, preparing beforehand for the needof experts on a specific topic should be possible.

AIV) Practices and Ethics of Interviewing

Since getting interviews from women is clearly a big challenge forreporters, it is worth paying extra attention to the practices and ethicsof interviewing people – even more so, if the topic is somehowsensitive and there is a possibility that the media coverage could havesome negative consequences for the interviewee.

According to the experiences of some of the interviewedjournalists, the way a journalist approaches women can make all thedifference. Reporters should not act aggressive or arrogant, but ratherbe respectful and friendly – which does not mean the same as actuallymaking friends with interviewees. Accommodating the style ofcommunication or even the outfit according to the place and thepeople is often a good idea – one does not talk to a farmer in a ruralvillage the same way one talks to a university professor at a campus.

The interviewee should be informed of what the interview will beused for: what is the story going to be about; what is her role in it andhow her statements will be used in it; which newspaper and sectionis the story going to be published in. If a potential interviewee is notfamiliar with the media outlet in question, it may be a good idea fora reporter to carry a copy of the newspaper with her/him, so that ahesitant interviewee can get an idea of what kind of stories thenewspaper publishes. If the story is going to be a “success story”, it



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may be a good idea to show the potential interviewee examples ofprevious success stories.

A potential interviewee may feel more comfortable if she knowsshe has a chance to preview the story before publication. If timepermits, a journalist could, for example, email the story or read thestory over the phone to the interviewee before publication, so she canfeel safe that she won’t be misreported or misquoted. There is noharm in this practice, as long as the interviewee understands that itdoes not mean giving her the right to rewrite the whole story or toprevent its publication it, but only to verify that her comments havebeen understood correctly.17

And at the end of the day, it is also good to remember that beinginterviewed should be voluntary. No matter how much a journalistwould like to have the interview, if the interviewee, after all theconvincing, still does not want to talk out of the fear of negativeconsequences, that decision should be respected.

AV) Adopting a More Holistic Understanding of Gender Sensitivity

Gender balance in the use of sources is one important aspect ofgender sensitive journalism, but it is not the only one. Reporters andeditors should move from a rather mechanical and quantitativeconception of gender balance (as “how many women, how manymen to interview”) to a more holistic and multi-dimensionalunderstanding of what gender sensitive journalism is or could be.

In practice, this means permeating gender perspective throughoutthe journalistic work process, from finding story ideas to actuallywriting the story:

Topic: It is important to look for ideas for news and featuresactively, also from various groups of women and from sourcesproviding data or research findings concerning women (see AI).

Angle: Whatever the topic, there are always several anglesavailable. A gender sensitive journalist should remember to askher/himself the following questions: Are women affected by the



17 Guidelines for Journalists of the Council for Mass Media in Finland actually include these guidelinesunder the heading “The rights of interviewer and interviewee”. Guidelines advise that interviewees“have the right to know in advance the context in which their statements will be used. They mustalso be told if the interview will be used in multiple mediums. The interviewee must always be toldwhether the conversation is intended for publication or will be used exclusively as backgroundmaterial.” Guidelines also say that “It is worthwhile consenting to interviewee’s requests to readtheir statements prior to publication, if the editorial deadline permits. This right only concerns thepersonal statements of the interviewee, and the final journalistic decision cannot be surrendered toany party outside the editorial office.” (CMM 2011)

issue or event covered differently than men? Could women have adifferent perspective or different experiences on the issue inquestion? How can women’s perspective be included in the story?

Sources: It is worth working extra hard to also get womeninterviewees for your story (see AIV), especially when the issue athand concerns women. Most issues do. However, there are alsostories, in which experiences of one gender are more relevant thanthose of the other. If a journalist is covering, for example, violence orsexual offences against women, it is important to interview women– but not necessarily men. If a journalist is covering a football gamewith male sides and coaches, introducing female sources could beartificial. Gender of sources can be balanced also on the level of thenews page, section and the whole issue of newspaper, not just withineach individual article.

Photos: Whether the journalist takes photos her/himself or workstogether with a photographer, it is important to make sure that thereis a variety of pictures to choose from. This way the moststereotypical ones can be abandoned. It is useful to discuss with thephotographer what would be the most obvious ideas for photos –and then, try to think how it could be done differently. The captionsof photos should also be paid attention to. “Ordinary women”deserve to have their names mentioned too, if they can be recognisedfrom a photo, even if they are not interviewed in the accompanyingarticle.

Writing the story: The way the story is structured reflects theimportance the journalist puts on different aspects of the issue or thedifferent interviewees. Whose thoughts are quoted first in the story?On whose views are the headline and lead based? Who gets mostspace in the article? Who gets the final word? The reporter and theeditor should pay extra attention to the use of language in the article:How are the people or groups of people and their actions named anddescribed in the article? How are individuals identified?

B. Practical Recommendations for Editorial Management

BI) Permeating Gender Policy Through the Newsroom

Gender policy in a media organisation is a good start, but it notof much use unless it is actually put into practice. The first absoluteprecondition to this is that everyone working in the organisation,from junior reporters to editors, from photographers toadvertisement and HR staff, is aware of the gender policy and has acopy of it. A recommendable approach for launching a new gender



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policy is to combine it with in-house training on gender issues, tomake sure journalists not only know the policy exists, but alsounderstand its implications to actual journalistic work and thepurpose of the policy and practical guidelines.

BII) Recruiting More Women in Newsrooms

The findings of this research support the widespread conceptionthat female reporters are more inclined to use women as sources.Whether it is because they are more aware of the importance ofbringing out fellow women’s voices, or because they are moresuccessful in getting interviews from them, clearly women are morevisible in the articles written by female reporters. Recruiting morewomen in newsroom is therefore vital, not only for the sake of genderbalance in newsrooms, but also for gender balance in mediacoverage.

BIII) Supporting Female Reporters Through Scholarship and MentoringProgrammes and a Career Track System

Currently, one cannot say there is gender balance in thenewsrooms. Even if the percentage of women working as reportersmay be fairly high, there are very few women in senior editorial andmanagement positions. This is sometimes explained and justified bythe lack of qualified women – which as an argument is becoming lessand less credible since journalism programmes at the university levelnowadays have a remarkable proportion of female students.

If formal education is the issue, employers could support theirfemale employees in achieving higher educational qualifications bysetting up a systematic scholarship programme. Through ascholarship programme, an employer could send, for example, oneor two journalists at time to complete their BA or MA studies, inexchange to a commitment on part of the employee to continueworking for the same employer for a time specified in a writtenagreement. Scholarship programmes do not of course need to betargeted only at women, but the striking gender imbalance innewsrooms would justify positive discrimination of women.

Alternatively or simultaneously, newsrooms could establish in-house mentoring programmes, where each junior journalist at thebeginning of their career would have a mentor appointed among thesenior staff. The experienced senior journalists would support theirjunior colleagues in the daily work by supervising them in theirassignments and giving them thorough and constructive feedback.Currently, this happens in newsrooms to some extent in an



unorganised and informal way, but to make it more effective, mediaorganizations could formalise the practice. That would also requirethat the mentors would have time allocated for these activities so thatthey would not be just an unpaid extra workload for them.

Along with the increased numbers of graduates from variousjournalism or mass communication programmes in universities,media organisations are likely to get more and more new employeeswho have formal educational qualifications but only little practicalwork experience. Besides the mentoring programme, employeescould establish a “career track” system (crf. academic tenure track inAmerican colleges and universities) for reporters with a degree,where after a certain time of working in the organisation, juniorreporters could apply for a career track position. Career track systemwould basically mean that the employer would spot early the mostpromising junior journalists and coach them to become editors andat some point possibly to be promoted into top management.Coaching would in practice mean, for example, sending reporters tovarious training workshops and courses – plenty of them areavailable for journalists, some of them free of charge – and makingsure they will work in different desks of the newsroom for a periodof time, and gradually in more demanding tasks to get familiar withdifferent desks and positions. For junior reporters themselves, beingselected to a career track position would basically mean that they canexpect to move on to senior positions provided that they have firstdemonstrated their competence at the previous level.

This is, again, something that takes place in newsrooms alreadynow, but formalising it as a career track system would make it moretransparent and predictable to employees, and provide extramotivation for junior reporters and the ones selected to career trackpositions to work hard for their professional development. Againpositive discrimination of women would be justified for the purposeof coaching them to be promoted for management positions.

However, it is important to recognise, that even though positivediscrimination of women through scholarship and career tracksystems would bring more gender balance in media organisations,that would not automatically lead to gender sensitive mediacoverage. Female journalists also need to be sensitised to genderissues and perspectives in order to positively contribute to changesin the visibility and portrayal of women in media coverage.

BIV) Adopting Regular Self-assessment of Gender Sensitivity



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It is recommendable to mainstream gender perspective as anintegral part of self-assessment and feedback to journalists whichroutinely take place in daily post mortem meetings in newsrooms. Itmay be a good idea to appoint one of the editors as the person incharge of reviewing the daily newspaper from the gender perspectiveand of giving feedback to colleagues in the meetings.

To follow the changes over time in the gender balance of sources,or more generally in the coverage of women, it may be a good ideato use quantitative content analyses as a tool for analysingsystematically a small sample at regular intervals, such as all thearticles of one issues (and of different pullouts published at differentdays) four times a year. The coding matrix we have used in thisresearch project can be easily adapted for that purpose, and when thedata is small enough, calculation of frequencies and percentages caneasily be done without any computer software.

BV) Providing In-house Gender Training for Journalists

There is no doubt that journalists in any Tanzanian media housewould benefit from training on gender issues generally and gendersensitive journalism specifically. CSOs dealing with gender issueshave been doing invaluable work in this field, but their seminars andworkshops reach only a very small group of journalists.

The best approach for permeating gender awareness throughnewsrooms would be to organize in-house training targeting alljournalists working in the organisation. Training would naturallyneed to be arranged in a way which does not interfere too much withthe daily operations of the newsroom. However, it is recommendableto organise training during the working hours of journalists, as partof their regular work. This way the employer can expect and requireeach member of the editorial staff to take part in training.

Training should introduce journalists to fundamental genderissues, concepts and theories – as well as the practical implicationsof gender sensitive journalism. It would be a good idea to combinesome coaching/mentoring activities to training for a period of timeto make sure that journalists will try to apply what their learn in theirroutine work, and when doing it, will have support for that.

7.5 Limitations of the Study and Areas for FurtherResearch

‘Gender and media’ is a broad and multi-dimensional topic, and



in one research conducted in a fairly short period, it is possible tocover only a small part of what is required. In this case, our strategywas to focus primarily on one case, Mwananchi CommunicationsLimited, and in addition compare and contrast the contents ofMwananchi and The Citizen to the contents of three tabloids. Becausethe contents analysed in this study are from five newspapers of twoprivate publishing companies, the findings cannot be directlygeneralised to all Tanzanian newspapers, let alone all the media.

That said, we believe that through the analyses of the contents ofthe five newspapers and the interviews conducted at the MCLnewsrooms, we have been able to identify some crucial tendenciesand problems in the coverage of women, and to diagnose somereasons causing these problems, which also apply more generally tothe media in Tanzania, especially the print media.

It would be interesting and important to continue this research intwo directions: to expand systematic quantitative content analyses toother major media products in Tanzania to get a more comprehensiveidea of the visibility of women and of the possible differencesbetween different categories of media: print, electronic government-owned or privately owned. At the same time, it would be interestingto go deeper into the qualitative analyses of coverage of women andalso analyse articles of Kiswahili papers in more detail.

The most important area for further research, however, should bean action research project aiming at accomplishing real changes innewsrooms. In other words, it would mean putting to practice at leastsome of the recommendations presented in this study in somenewsrooms and evaluating their impacts on visibility and portrayalof women.



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APPENDIX 1: CODING MATRIX

Each row represents one coding unit = one newspaper article



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APPENDIX 2: Variables of QCA (quantitative content analyses)

1. Newspaper

1= The Citizen

2= Mwananchi

3= Uwazi

4=Ijumaa

6= Risasi

2. Date of Publication

3. Section

1= National news (including Tanzanian regional news)

2= International news (including East-Africa/Africa sections)

3= Politics (e.g. The Citizen’s Parliament news pages and the pulloutPolitical Platform)

4= Business (Business pages and pullouts, such as The Citizen’sBusiness Week)

5= Entertainment (e.g. pages focusing on celebrities in tabloids,The Citizen’s pullout The Beat)

6= Sports (regular sports pages and sports pullouts)

7= Women (The Citizen’s & Mwananchi’s weekly pullouts targetwomen)

8= Other special theme sections/magazines (e.g. pullouts such asThe Citizen’s ‘Success’, ‘Sound Living’, ‘Young Citizen’, ‘Insight’ andpages like “local features”)

4. Length of the article (measured in paragraphs of the actual text,excluding the headline and caption. N.B. stand-alone photos withonly a headline and a caption were coded as having one paragraph.)

5. Genre

1=News (short news and longer news backgrounds, newsreportages or investigative news stories)

2=Feature (for the purpose of this study: anything which is notnews, editorials or opinion columns; i.e. interviews, personality



profiles, travel features, local or international features, stand-alonephotos with a headline of their own, vox pops etc.)

6. Gender of the Reporter(s)

1=Woman

2=Man

3=Both (=several authors)

4=Not identifiable (=no name, e.g. “The Citizen reporter”)

7. Number of people sources in the article (and separately n:o ofdifferent female and male sources)

For the purpose of this study, people sources are those individualswhose statements are quoted in direct quotes or indirectly in reportedspeech (X.X. said that…, According to X.X.…). People sources includeinterviewees, people whose public speeches are quoted orindividuals whose written statements are quoted (“X.X. issued astatement saying that….”). Collective sources referring to anorganizations (e.g. United Nations has critized…”) or a group ofpeople (“Experts have suggested…”, “Critics have said that…”) arenot categorised here as people sources, unless there is an individualperson speaking for the organisation/group. Document sources suchas reports are not a subject of analyses here.

8. Gender of Source(s)

1=Women

2=Men

3=Both

4= Gender not identifiable (= individual but anonymous sources)

N.B. If there are several people sources in one article, and one can beidentified as a man/woman and other is anonymous, gender is codedaccording to the sources which can be identified. “Not identifiable” is usedonly when the gender of non of the sources can be identified.

9. Number of Photos in the Article

10. Gender of People in the Photos (of an article)

0= Number people in the photos

1=Women



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2=Men

3=Both

4= Gender not identifiable

11. Reference Group(s) of Female Sources*

1= Politicians: Includes MPs, Ministers, President, Vice President,elected leaders at the local (village/municipal/district) level,representatives of political parties, representatives of parlamentarycommittees etc. (also those who are referred to as a “former”something).

2=Public officials: Includes authorities in various public officesat international national/regional/district/municipal level.

3= Business and finance: Includes e.g. CEOs or managers ofcorporations, entrepreneurs, representatives of employers’ unions,representatives of banks and other finance institutions.

4= Security officers: Includes representatives of police force,security service (TISS), military (TPDF), or fire and rescue services.

5=Juridical system: Includes judges, attorneys, public defenders,solicitors etc.

6= Church/religion: Includes all formal representatives of achurch or a religious community.

7= CSOs: Includes various civil-society based, non-profit groupsand organizations (NGOs, associations, informal citizen groups andsocial movements), also trade unions. Also references to “activists”or “campaigners” are included in this category. Excludes sportsorganizations, which belong to category “Sports”.

8= Professionals: Includes other than above-mentionedprofessionals, who comment the issue as experts or spokespersonsof their own field/profession. Also self-employed.

10= Music/show/fashion business: Includes artists and otherrepresentatives of music business, fashion models and designers, TVor movie stars.

11= Sports: Includes athletes, coaches, managers of teams/sides,and representatives of sports organisations.

12=Family: Includes persons who are referred to as awife/girlfriend /mother/daughter (for women) or as a



husband/fiancé/boyfriend/father/son (for men) of someone.

13=Ordinary citizens: Includes persons whose role is to commentthe issue at hand as a “man/woman in the street”, typically referredto as “a resident of…”, or in plural e.g. “women in rural areas…”.

14=Students: Includes primary or secondary school pupils andstudents in vocational training or university. Usually referred to as“pupils”, “students”, or for example “school girls”.

15= International organisations: Includes various internationaland regional organisations such as international developmentagencies, monetary organizations, and political and economic unions(e.g. UN, ILO, WHO, WTO, WB, IMF, ADB, EU, AU, EAC ).

16=Other: Includes kinds of identifications of persons which donot fit to any of the categories above (e.g. “war veterans”, “teenmothers”, “illegal immigrants”, “suspects”, “rebels”).

* Reference group = the social or professional role according to which asource is identified in the story by the reporter. One source/silencedparticipant can be coded only into one category, the one which is mostlyappropriate. If there are several female or male sources in one article, therecan be also several reference groups in one article.

12. Reference Group(s) of Male Sources

See the categories above.

12. Topics Women Talk About

1=Politics: Includes topics such as parliamentary sessions, budgethearings, political initiatives, actions or statements by politicalparties, good government/governance, political corruption; alsoforeign affairs, international relationships and cooperation (apartfrom foreign financial aid, see n:o 2).

2=Business & Economics: Includes topics such as economicdevelopment, national economy, finance, international trade,taxation, loans, foreign aid, particular economic activities orbusiness(es) (with the exception of agriculture, see n:o 16),entrepreneurship, employment and unemployment, worker’s rightsand safety.

3= Religion: Includes topics such as personal faith, religiousholidays, events or ceremonies, activities of churches/parishes,religious tolerance, religious conflicts.



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4=Education: Includes topics related to all levels of educationfrom preschool to higher education, such as quality of education,funding of education/schools, training/qualifications of teachers,form four exams, importance of education etc.

5=Health Care & Social Welfare: Includes topics such as qualityof health care, performance of health clinics, health centres orhospitals, maternal care, maternity leave, immunization, status ofvarious diseases and their treatment, day care of children, supportfor disabled, pension funds.

6= Infrastructure & Technology: Includes topics such as publicconstruction and housing projects; electricity, sanitation and waterissues; traffic and road construction related issues; ICT, technologicalinnovations.

7= Environment: Includes topics such as sustainabledevelopment, environmental conservation, climate change, variouslocal environmental problems (e.g. water shortage, pollution),environmental assessments, national parks, game reserves, poaching.

8= Gender Issues: Includes discussions on genderbalance/(in)equality/(in)equity, women’s rights, women’sempowerment, and specifically gender-related issues, such asgender-based violence, pregnancies of school girls, FGM, andmaternal health.

9 = Human Rights: Includes discussions on human rights ingeneral, on a specific human right (e.g. freedom of speech) or of rightsof a specific group, such as children’s rights, or rights of a minoritygroup (with the exception of women’s rights which belong to thecategory “gender issues”).

10= Crime & Security: Includes topics such as killings, violence(other than gender-based violence, which belong to the Gender issuescategory), crimes against property, economic crime, illegal trade,terrorism, crime prevention, investigations of a crime or terrorism,public safety issues in general.

11= Family & relationships: Includes topics such as raisingchildren, romantic relationships, sexual relations, marriage,friendships, and family relationships.

12= Health & wellbeing: Includes discussions on physical ormental wellbeing on an individual level, such as various healthproblems, mental distress and mental disorders, benefits of a healthy



diet or of doing physical exercise, methods for relaxation and mentalwellbeing.

13=Fashion, Trends & Beauty: Includes topics such as fashion,interior design, and beauty tips.

14= Popular culture: Includes discussions on artists, music,concerts, celebrities, movies etc.

15= Sports: In practice all articles in sports pages and pullouts,dealing with different sports and games.

16= Agriculture: Farming, food production, food (in)security, foodshortage, livestock keeping, fishing.

17= Calamities & Conflicts: Comments on accidents, deaths,floods and other natural disasters, or on armed conflicts and politicalconflicts.

18=Other: Only occationally appearing topics which do not fitunder any other categories (e.g. charity, tourism/travelling,whichcraft, immigration, citizenship)

13. Topics Men Talk About

See the categories above.



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APPENDIX 3: Interview Questions for Reporters and Editors

I BACKGROUND

Work history:

Current position in the newspaper?

How long have you been working in that position?

How long have you been working in Mwananchi/TheCitizen?

Previous journalistic work experience?

Educational background:

Highest university degree (if any)?

Which field/discipline?

Journalistic training?

Did it include gender issues?

II AWARENESS OF GENDER ISSUES

How do you understand gender sensitive or genderbalanced journalism? What could it be in practice?

In your opinion, what kind of issues are “gender issues”?

In your opinion, how well does gender balance work inTanzanian media in general?

What kind of problems are there?

What is causing those problems in your opinion?

How is your newspaper doing compared to otherTanzanian media?

III PRACTICAL ISSUES AT WORK

Do you try to take gender balance in account while doingyour work? How?

Reporters:

When you are assigned to a story, do you ever makespecific efforts to find woman interviewees?



When you are assigned to a story by an editor, do you everdiscuss any gender considerations related to the story togetherwith the editor?

If you can choose between equally qualified or relevantmale interviewee and female interviewee for your article,which one do you select? Why?

Is it easy to find woman interviewees?

In your experience, do women agree to give interviews aseasily as men?

Why do you think that is?

Editors:

When you are planning the contents (topics, stories) for thenext issue, do you ever consider gender balance at this phase?

When you assign a story to a reporter, do you ever discussgender considerations? Like should they interview women ormen?

What kind of practical obstacles or challenges are there indoing gender sensitive journalism?

In general, how would you evaluate your own journalisticperformance in terms of gender balance and gendersensitivity?

IV INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT

Are you aware of any gender policies in your organization?

Have you received any training on gender issues?

What could be done to improve things?

What kind of support would you need from your ownorganization?

Would in-house training on gender issues be beneficial?



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enhancing visibility and portrayal of women in tanzanian media

Documents