“Break the Silence! MENA Media Platforms Negate Women’s Narratives”

The titles event was held in cooperation by women representing Middle Eastern and African countries like Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, etc.

The women who spoke in this event were passionate and represented past and current affiliations with advocacy, media of journalism, and news reporting. They described how there are always dedicated sections in print media for women, but the material is only limited to beauty, cooking fir household related subjects. There is no space that is dedicated for women’s issues like harassment, domestic violence or women’s rights. Recently women who are well known in the media circles have stepped forward and initiated their own television shows as anchors. These shows portray talk about problems faced by women in Middle East and Africa regions. Recently a young girl dies while female genital mutilation was performed, and this was given as a front-page news. Just getting this story to the front helped in raising awareness about the issue of female genital mutilation in Africa.

The speakers stressed that it is important for media to cross all boundaries. While there is a positive change in media today about awareness on women’s issue, but women are still represented as a commodity by the media. It is reproducing women as victims rather than survivor, making the position of woman as inferior.

In the MENA region, social media mostly back lashes against feminism and women’s rights. Feminists are attacked, they are called corrupt, and all the blame is placed on the victim of the attack.

Media has discourses images to the young generation and emphasized that violence against women is okay. Media is way behind development on women’s rights, and there is no support in this area by the government. In 2005 and 2014 again, advocates convinced the national convention in Morocco to sign a bill about improving women’s images in the media but to-date no plan has been adopted by the government. Apparently, the MENA region has a long way to go in the area of women’s image created and discoursed by the media.