Women Need Their Own Alternative Media

Their common response was "a media where women are not treated as a meta" while they agreed on a pressing need for women to create their own media alternative.

Selek: Feminist publications are needed

Sociologist Pinar Selek said the way women were presented in the media was still in the form of displaying them as objects, although the situation had started to change in the recent years with an increase in the struggle of women.

"But", she said, "there was no significant improvement" and the "male dominant system" had not really declined. Selek believes that independent publications produced by women are required. "The nationalist patriarchal expression" said Selek, "continues to dominate the media".

Her own proposal for the media is for women working in the mass media to organize under the women movement and for independent communication networks "that spread like viruses" to be developed.

Demir: They act as if half of the world was not women

Pazartesi magazine Editor-in-Chief Beyhan Demir believes the media is hypocritical when it comes to reporting on women.

Accepting that reports related to women had been on the increase in the recent years, Demir says that a majority of the reports concentrate on "victimized women" while the language used is in fact serving to reinforce the social gender roles.

According to Demir, the media ignores the successful times of women, citing as example expert views asked primarily from men.

Expressing her expectation as "a media that does not ignore women", Demir says that while half of the world is made up of women, she would want to see different news reports in the newspapers.

Sirman: Alternative media is not enough

Bogazici University Sociology Department lecturer Prof. Dr. Nukhet Sirman says women make their presence in the media with their cultural cods. These codes, she explains, are discriminations such as "vamp" or "altruistic" while actually ignoring the very individuality of women.

Sirman believes that women can take a different role in the media but this is achievable through political means and says that women need to have more presence in the parliament.

Saying that offering "social gender training" to media bosses or increasing the number of women in the media were not enough, Sirman agrees that an alternative media could be a solution but that an alternative media should not be seen as being marginal.

Guncikan: Pornographic elements still exist in news on women

Cumhuriyet newspaper's Berat Guncikan says that news report on women generally do not show them as "a news subject" but as "an object of desire". According to Guncikan this approach does not even change in reports on murders. "I believe there is a pornographic side that has not been broken through" she says.

Guncikan accepts that with the increase of women employers there are certain improvements and summarizes her own expectation as "a media where women have the right of say".

Noting that alternative media channels which have a more marginal, more radical approach are required, Guncikan says "I believe that women should leave being producers of the system but conduct journalism that opens the doors for women".

Tosun: Media hides the real perpetrators who are men

Doc Dr. Gulgun Erdogan Tosun says that the language of news reports is a clear representation of the "male character".

"The language of the media which shows honor killings as the fate of women are actually hiding the real perpetrators who are men" she says. "But is this only the language of the media itself? Is the language of politics not male too?"

Tosun believes that a media on the side of women rights should be able to deal with the male language that dictates the media and that the best solution would be for the situation of women to be explained by women themselves".

Tosun says a media initiative that would be created by women for women would give the message to women that another world is possible. (AO/TK/II/YE/EU)