Gender Mainstreaming in International news: A Case Study of the Inter Press Service

From 1994 to 1999, the global news agency Inter Press Service (IPS) implemented a gender mainstreaming policy in its newsrooms. This study examined organizational changes and news coverage that IPS advocated, as well as methods employed to bring about these changes. It shows that IPS has not been able to mainstream gender into all aspects of the organization and news coverage, and it considers reasons for the lacking implementation of the policy, while documenting IPS's efforts to improve women's access and representation in international news. The inclusion of women as news sources along with gender-based analyses of issues and news events in the mainstream news media continue to be lacking. This is especially true in international news. International news most often reports on wars, disasters, and foreign policy, typically without any focus on women or gender issues.1 With news that is increasingly produced, distributed, and consumed across borders, reporters face the additional challenge of understanding the cultural and social context of gender relations in multiple countries. Locally and globally, women have challenged their exclusion in the mainstream news media in several ways. One approach has been to withdraw from the mainstream media and to create separate media for women only.2 However, alternative or feminist media typically reach a small target authence. The other approach, which has grown in recent years, is to organize and advocate for change within the mainstream news media.3 As a result, women's organizations around the world have increasingly become involved in media activism activities, including media monitoring, to encourage change in the mainstream news media.4 During the 1990s, the concept of "gender mainstreaming" emerged as an important strategy for development organizations around the world. At the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, governments and other groups were urged to "promote an active and visible policy of mainstreaming a gender perspective in policies and programmes."5 What women asked for was to be included in the "mainstream" of organizations instead of remaining at the margins. Gender mainstreaming aimed to ensure women's inclusion in all areas of organizations, including staffing, program planning, and budgeting.6 However, it is still unclear whether this strategy has been a failure, success, or combination of both.7 The Inter Press Service (IPS), a global news agency long associated with the United Nations and the developing world, launched and implemented a gender mainstreaming policy from 1994 to 1999. This article considers the kind of organizational changes and news coverage IPS advocated as well as the methods used to mainstream gender in IPS. This article also evaluates IPS's effort and makes recommendations based on factors that helped and hindered IPS. This article presents the first and most comprehensive study of any news organization attempting to mainstream gender. IPS presents a unique case study because it is not a mainstream, profit-driven news agency, but it is also not a separate medium for women only. As such, it attempted to mainstream gender into news content about the developing world while targeting both male and female readers. The study concludes that IPS has not been able to mainstream gender into all aspects of the organization and news coverage, but that IPS should be hailed for its work to improve women's access and representation in international news. Theoretical Approaches The theoretical background for this article comes from cultural globalization theory; media sociology; and theories of gender, development, and feminism. These theories were used because they consider the particular place of women in the globalization of culture, the impact of various factors on news coverage, and current approaches to feminism in an international context. Cultural Globalization Theory. Theorists of cultural globalization consider the impact of the growing interconnectedness of the world on cultures and are often concerned about the possible homogenization and standardization of culture. …