Sarah Macharia
Program Manager, Media and Gender Justice, World Association for Christian Communication (WACC)
RCCongress 2010 Workshop:
Gender, Media and Social Change: A case study of the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP)
Sarah Macharia is a feminist political-economist with extensive work experience in the field of “gender and international development.” She is a contributing researcher at the International Secretariat for Human Development at York University and editor of Media and Gender Monitor, a biannual publication of the World Association for Christian Communication. Sarah holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from York University.
Gender, Media and Social Change: A case study of the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP)
Where gender stereotypes are propagated in and through media, they reinforce inequalities in gender power relations and provide justification for discriminatory practices based on gender. The workshop will discuss the gender dimensions of media through a review of the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), the longest-running widely participatory research on selected indicators of gender in news media worldwide. The GMMP is the only initiative in the world of its kind, engaging academic researchers, gender and communication associations, grassroots groups and other concerned civil society organizations in a world-wide effort to monitor their local news media from a gender perspective. The global media monitoring day for the 4th GMMP takes place in November 2009.
A gender responsive “communication for peace” approach will problematize and redress constructions of masculinity and femininity, to transmit, propagate and perpetuate a different logic that opens up possibilities, shapes new thinking about alternative attitudes, behaviour and courses of action that may make a culture of peace 