DISCRIMINATION AS RADIATION
by Tatyana Fedyaeva
The greatest danger is the one that is not immediately noticed and, like radiation, does its damage unbeknownst to anyone. And the longer society is exposed to the unseen threat, the more unpredictable and severe the results are likely to be. But not all is hopeless. Thanks to a round table entitled Counteracting Sex-Based Discrimination in the Media, which was organized and hosted by the East – West: Women’s Innovational Projects regional social organization at the Central House of Journalists, with support from the inter-regional Association of Women Journalists, one of the worst problems is now being discussed—and not just by narrow specialists but by media professionals too.
Being constantly exposed to the stereotypes propagated by the media, society echoes them time and again, entrenching them in new arenas and directing them toward a given political or social situation. The media bears a huge responsibility for the shaping of views, but even the very journalists who mold public opinion are themselves the prisoners of certain opinions.
Nadezhda Azhgikhina, chair of the Association of Women Journalists, opened the round table session by recalling the early 1990s, the abolition of censorship, and the euphoric expectations of journalists and cultural experts who believed that a new Russian Renaissance was coming, which would astound the world with its unprecedented accomplishments in philology and free journalism.
But, while the long-awaited freedom did not, alas, bring new patterns of genius to life, it did contrive to morph into a new mythology. Salient among the other post-perestroika mythologems was the notion of what came to be known as the destiny of women, which was introduced to replace the stale old image of the female activist happily building the world’s most equitable society. The pioneer of that new image of “custodian of home and hearth” and “vehicle of national values” was none other than Mikhail Gorbachev, who was forever saying that “we must liberate women and give them the opportunity to stay home.” The evident intent was to give women the freedom of choice to either have a career or raise children But the media, unaccustomed as they were to discussion at that time, opted to perceive that idea as a mandatory Party line.
Studies conducted by the Association have revealed a manifestly stereotypical concept of women’s place and role in society and the media. The majority of publications reviewed saw women as scandal-sheet heroines or victims of reform or sex objects and “businessmen’s girlfriends.” Women’s social initiatives roused no response whatsoever, while feminists were presented in a conspicuously negative light. And the reason for this was twofold: a dearth of information on women’s initiatives and a lack of preparation on the part of the journalists themselves. The Association of Women Journalists and the Union of Russian Journalists have in recent years been working steadily to educate the public on matters of gender, in particular by sponsoring national competitions, conferences, and seminars on the issue. At the same time, though, experience has shown that extensive media-centered campaigns are what is needed to overcome gender stereotypes and sexism in the media.
A good example of the latter was the appeal made by a group of creative and social organizations to the journalists’ “court of honor”—the Grand Jury of the Russian Union of Journalists—on the subject of a Culture Channel show entitled “Only Men Can Create Masterpieces.” The ensuing Grand Jury session was a notable event in the world of journalism and essentially the first meaningful step taken to ward off sexism.
At about the same time an exhibition called Non-Stop Sexism? was being mounted in St. Petersburg, on the initiative of the St. Petersburg Center for Gender Issues and with the support of the Association of Women Journalists. This event—an ironic reconceptualization of sexist statements in the media—was given extensive press and television coverage and did more to help overcome gender stereotypes than a dozen scholarly conferences. It was hot news, and it succeeded in showing how silly sexism really is.
Can common sense overcome the stereotype-ridden mindset of the creators of profitable programming and the advertisers who buy time on those shows? We are heartened by the example of such countries as Canada and Norway, which have been through similar experiences in the recent past and have created mechanisms for the journalistic community to use in regulating itself. I do not think that we are worse than them, or more stupid. The print and television journalism in this country, which still fulfil a duty and render a service to the reader and the viewer, will find that it is strong enough to beat this crisis.
Not long ago we heard that the Women Journalists Club in Naberezhnye Chelny had taken up the banner of its Petersburg colleagues. Incidentally, that Club brought itself to our attention earlier this year, with an extremely radical campaign against the advertisement of sexual services and pornography in the town’s media, resulting in numerous staff meetings and talks with shareholders. Some media outlets made a public commitment not to accept any more pornographic advertising, and a handful of publishing houses lost their licenses. Will this experience resonate across the country? Only time will tell. But for now one can state with confidence that even the most modest efforts on the part of women journalists, and especially action taken in concert with activist women’s organizations, do produce results. For instance, the participants in a round table held during Russian Press Festival 2003 resolved to approach the governing bodies of the Union of Russian Journalists with a call to launch an energetic national campaign against sexism.
In an article recently published in this magazine, Alla Denisova, Candidate of Philology, formulated the problem under consideration as “Hate Speech in the Russian Media: the Gender Dimension.” [Denisova's article appeared in issue 20/36 and the translation is on this website. She participated in this roundtable and covered some of the same material as in her article. We recommend that you read the text of her article. -- editors] What indeed, if not hate, explains the sharply negative tenor of the discourse between “adversaries”—meaning those who subscribe to different systems of values, be they national, religious, cultural, or whatever? Several Russian social organizations are presently winding up a project to monitor hate speech in the Russian media, which has spun off suggestions for various social projects and outreach to journalists, including the compilation of an ethics handbook for journalists working on topics relating nationality and religion.
Hate speech was here defined as the totality of texts, titles, headers, photographs, and other media elements that directly or indirectly foster national or religious hostility or even ill-will.
The monitoring did not cover the gender aspect, although we feel that hate speech directed at individuals of the opposite sex is so widespread in the media as to invite comparison with the constant background radiation that no one notices until the ill-will between the sexes goes “off the scale,” blatantly violating ethical norms that were lax to begin with. Russian society is not gender-sensitive. It is no coincidence that the contemporary vernacular, without the slightest embarrassment, describes “gender differences” in terms such as “All women are idiots and all men are jerks.” ...
In the conclusion of her presentation on the project entitled The Elimination of Sex-Based Discrimination as the Path to the Realization of Human Rights, Denisova remarked that the media’s ingrained attitude toward women and the hate speech against women that fills our TV screens and our print media have put us in a situation in which women’s rights are routinely violated and—worse yet—society hardly even registers that those violations are taking place. And that makes it all the harder to put a stop to them.
Tamara Lokshina reported on a project to monitor discrimination against women in 20 regions of the Russian Federation conducted by the Moscow Helsinki Group (whose program director she is) and various partner organizations. [A printed report is at www.mhg.ru/english/1EBE2C9 --editor] In particular, she noted that, while not pretending to be a global study, the research does provide a general assessment of the situation and points up basic problems and trends. That is why the focus was not upon the search for a large number of specific instances of discrimination and a detailed investigation of individual cases in which women’s rights were violated, but, rather, upon information gathered using sociological methods that suggested which problems are the most acute and pressing and how people in power view those problems.
The report relies exclusively on information collected by the regional women’s organizations. For the majority of the organizations engaged in the monitoring effort, their involvement was a spur to more active participation in regional politics and particularly in the electoral process. It was also a trial run for the compilation of a complete alternative report on Russia’s compliance with the United Nation Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, [The text of the Convention is at www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/ -- editor] which will be the first integrated overview of Russia’s record in discharging all the obligations it assumed when signing on to that Convention.
The alternative report will be a success only if a whole array of organizations possessing not only the necessary expert qualifications but also solid skills in the sphere of rights monitoring join forces on it. The analysis and comparison of differing types of information (statistical data, official responses from government entities, facts gathered by the NGOs, interviews, questionnaires) already invites conclusions on discrimination against women. Since the project encompassed only 20 of the Russian Federation’s 89 constituent units, we are not technically entitled to extrapolate its findings to all of Russia, but we are, for all practical purposes, convinced that the conclusions drawn and trends identified are indeed relevant to the country as a whole.
In the early twentieth century, Soviet Russia broke new ground in providing a constitutional guarantee of equal rights for men and women, and as time went on, that principle was variously developed in Soviet legislation. Even so, the problem of de facto discrimination against women was an issue throughout the USSR’s history and remains so in Russia today. In fact, that discrimination is worse in the Russian Federation than in the Western countries where the principle of equal rights irrespective of gender was enshrined in legislation later—and in some cases, dozens of years later—than in Russia.
The Moscow Helsinki Group monitoring project gave rise to recommendations for legislation and executive action, to parties, social associations, and NGOs, and on training and education, litigation, healthcare, labor relations, law and order, and the penal system.
The proposals made with respect to the mass media were the following:
* to launch informational publications and programming on the problems of gender equality, on protecting women against discrimination, domestic violence, sexual assault, and sexual harassment;
* to shape a positive image of women in positions of power, in politics, in the professions, and in society; and
* to take steps to halt the printed, broadcast, or commercial use of expressions and images that demean women qua women and assist the dissemination of views and stereotypes that run counter to the principle of gender equality; to draw up a corresponding code of ethics.
Natalya Taubina, director of the Civil Society Foundation and coordinator of an international NGO Network for the advancement and defense of social and economic rights in the Russian Federation, gave a commentary entitled “The Right to Work and to Enjoy Equal and Favorable Working Conditions: Sex-Based Discrimination.” She pointed out that, according to research by the All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion, in 2002 over 70% of Russians considered social and economic rights (the right to have a social safety net, to work, to own property) to be the most important and most frequently flouted, with only 13% rating political rights (freedom of speech and of conscience and the right to assemble) as most important.
An analysis of official employment statistics shows that government bodies are pretty much ignoring the problems of discrimination as a whole and of sex-based discrimination in particular. There are statistics on male and female unemployment but nothing on unemployment among pregnant women and women with young children, even though virtually all regional monitoring reports indicate that they are the most apt to experience discrimination on the part of potential employers. It is very common for women to be questioned in employment applications and job interviews about the number and ages of their children, while men are never asked to give that information.
Another quite common violation of the principle of non-discrimination in hiring practices is when people are discriminated against due to age. And women suffer even more than men in this. So, for the majority of job openings, 35 is the cut-off age for women, while for men it is 45. The government is not taking the appropriate measures to prevent discrimination of this kind, which is a clear violation of its obligation to defend human rights, including the right to work. Most reports also note that women are paid less than men for work requiring the same qualifications.
Nadezhda Shvedova, Doctor of Political Sciences, built her presentation around the idea that “People can be happy when they dump the stereotypes.” She concentrated on the problem of violence against women, emphasizing that it reflects, mirror-like, the disharmony and misalignment of social relations. Given the closed nature of the family unit and the manifest lack of appreciation of the fact that the security of the family is the foundation of the security of society as a whole, the former USSR did not keep and modern Russia still does not keep official statistics on violence in the family. This makes a domestic violence study conducted by Moscow State University’s Council of Women all the more interesting.
Its results are an indictment against Russian society. Seventy percent of women have suffered some form of domestic violence at the hands of their husbands, and about half of those beaten were attacked while unable to defend themselves because they were pregnant, nursing, or caring for a young child. Almost 20% of women are regularly battered by their husbands, and 20% are verbally abused for “freeloading” and the significance of the work they do is crudely belittled.
Why has this happened? Where has this wholesale violence come from? It would appear that an apposite political environment was first needed, to provide a role model for the implementation and the comprehensive reinforcement of a medievally unfair system of property ownership. The upshot is that public opinion actually stands up for wife-beating. And the issue of violence against women feeds right into the problem of gender inequality in Russia: the absence of any meaningful official policy to promote gender equality is another reason why violence in the family is so alive and so very well.
Also speaking on the subject of discrimination, Aleksandr Sidorin, president of the Guild of Architectural and City Planning Journalists, stressed that Russia’s existing Construction Codes and Standards make no allowance for the changes that have taken place in our society. And it is not just that public and private buildings have no places to diaper and feed children but also that almost no small enterprise, for example, has a ladies’ room. In other words, the Codes are out of step with present-day reality. It used to be that all commercial buildings accommodating 100 or more women had to have such facilities, but commercial ventures of that size have more or less disappeared... which apparently means that women no longer need private facilities. The current Codes are in dire need of correction and amendment.
Included among the others who contributed to the discussion were Natalya Berdnikova, President of the East – West: Women’s Innovational Projects Regional Social Organization; Larisa Boichenko, chair of the Karelian Gender Studies Center and member of the Republican Commission on Improving the Situation of Women; Natalya Ilinskaya (St. Petersburg) head of the League of Women Voters Press Service. All spoke in favor of addressing an Appeal from the round table to Vsevolod L. Bogdanov, president of the Union of Russian Journalists, and Mikhail A. Fedotov, chairman of the Union’s Grand Jury, and of passing a Resolution to that effect.
The Resolution summarizes statements made at, and conclusions drawn by, the round table, referring in particular to Article 5 of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Article 51 of the Russian Federation’s Law on the Mass Media, and Article 5 of the Code of Professional Ethics for Russian Journalists. It addresses the Russian Union of Journalists and also makes various concrete recommendations to the government of the Russian Federation, to the State Duma, and to the Office of the Public Prosecutor, and urges the NGOs to monitor compliance.
The Appeal is addressed to Mikhail Fedotov and Vsevolod Bogdanov by name and is signed by Alla Denisova, followed by (in Russian alphabetical order) Nadezhda Azhgikhina, Natalya Berdnikova, Larisa Boichenko, Natalya Ilinskaya, Natalya Taubina, and Nadezhda Shvedova, who make up the designated panel of experts of the Counteracting Sex-Based Discrimination in the Media: No to Sexism! project. It points out the threat posed by media-borne discrimination to the public mindset in a democratic society, argues that sexism is incompatible with socially responsible journalism and contravenes the basic propositions of the Russian journalist’s Code of Ethics, and notes that there have been numerous infringements of Article 5 of that Code. It concludes by asking Fedotov and Bogdanov to take measures expressly focused on the public condemnation of sexism in the media.