Review: 'Missing: Half The Story, Journalism As If Gender Matters'

Essay: Missing: Half The Story, Journalism As If Gender Matters
Edited: Kalpana Sharma
Publisher: Zubaan
Pages: 296 pages
Price: Rs395

Gender, as this book says, has been ‘mainstreamed’ with remarkable success over the last few decades. From being a little used word — and then used mostly with reference to objects in certain languages, such as French, or Hindi — it has taken over much of public discourse, forced changes in public policy and become a separate field of study and research in universities.

This collection of essays looks more closely at some of the political and social developments in India through the prism of gender and the way in which media has reacted to news about women. Or, as some essays point out, failed to react.

This is an important exercise, of course, because media is often discriminatory not only in its language but also in what it considers ‘newsworthy’. However, there seems to be a slight disconnect between what the book seeks to do and the way it is structured.

The opening essay begins with suicide, and one naturally assumes that it is going to critique the way in which media covers suicides, particularly of women. But it discusses women in general — their status at the beginning of human society, and how patriarchy became the oppressive force through which all aspects of women’s lives are controlled. While such an education is probably necessary, one cannot help wondering: for whom?

The next essay critiques narrow definitions of gender, starting with athlete Cater Semenya’s ordeal, and closer home, Santhi Soundarajan’s suicide attempt after she failed a gender test.

The third essay goes back to discussing women’s movements, from Sappho to the Therigatha nuns to modern feminist organisations like Stree Sangathan. Their struggles against dowry are discussed, as well as recent successes like the Domestic Violence Act.

The fourth essay lists some common gender insensitive phrases used by the media and suggests alternatives. Naturally, one is led to believe that this is basically a book targeted at journalists and media students.

If that is the case, such essays are not likely to engage the average journalist, unless he or she already happens to be a committed feminist. Too much space is devoted to discussing the women’s movement and not enough to the daily issues of reportage and editing —issues that journalists might identify with, before they can see what they are doing wrong from a gender perspective.

Besides, the arguments are spread thin over too wide a canvas. There is also some repetition of arguments and quotations. For instance both the first and second essay quote the same sentence attributed to Simone de Beauvoir.

The rest of the essays all deal more specifically with the way Indian media responded to any given women’s issue. Sameera Khan’s essay on violence against women and the way mainstream newspapers have been reporting it is insightful and put together with examples, so that she does not seem to be talking only of concepts but also something that involves the current crop of journalists much more directly.

Kalpana Sharma’s essay on toilets and forests and their significance for women is another incisive piece, as is Ammu Joseph’s ‘Disaster, Conflicts and Gender’.

Reports from magazines like Tehelka or websites like India Togeher that have been chosen for their gendered focus are also powerful — not just for their content but also because they serve as a reminder that there are women’s perspectives to every major news event.

They remind us of facts that too many of us — even journalists and feminists — tend to forget. For instance: “The National Commission for Women estimating… a pair of bullocks works 1,064 hours, a man 1,212 hours, a woman works 3,845 hours in a year”. Or that, “in Pune’s Ruby Hall clinic… 78 patients had triple drug therapy (for HIV/AIDS), only seven of whom were women”.

This book touches on issues journalists must look at as they go about documenting our world, and points at ways to right the gender imbalance in media coverage. However, it might have helped if the introductory essays were less peppered with jargon that might intimidate the average reader.

Annie Zaidi is the author of Known Turf