Three landmark documents for gender-fair, sensitive portrayal in mass media launched

The Media and Gender Equality Committee (MGEC), chaired by the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) launched on March 22 at the National Telecommunications Office, the three document-outputs, landmarks toward gender-fair mass media.

The three documents are: the Gender Equality Guidelines, Guidelines to Protect Women against Discrimination in Media and Film, and Code of Ethics for Media formulated by the MGEC to achieve gender-fair and sensitive portrayal in mass media and art productions.

This was gathered during the local validation of the Women’s Economic, Development, and Gender Equality Plan or Women’s EDGE Plan for 2013-2016 led by the Philippine Commission on Women.

The Gender Equality Guidelines is also applicable to schools of journalism, communication and information to help prepare students become gender sensitive.

On the issue of media’s self-regulation, the Code of Ethics for Media is offered as a “guide” which media organizations can use in reviewing existing policies and Code of Ethics.

The Guidelines to Protect Women against Discrimination in Media and Film contains provisions that promote the dignity of women and their roles and contributions in the family, community and society.

Those who attended the launching were the PCOO, its attached agencies, Philippine Commission on Women, NTC, Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas, Women Feature Service, Optical Media Board, Movie and Television Review and Classification Board, Film Development Council of the Philippines, Film Academy of the Philippines, and National Commission for Culture and the Arts.

The Magna Carta of Women requires the state to formulate policies and programs for the advancement of women in collaboration with the government and non-government media-related organizations. The law also requires government to raise the consciousness of the general public in recognizing the dignity of women in the family, community, and the society through the strategic use of mass media.

Moreover, the Magna Carta of Women encourages government to ensure allocation of space, airtime, and resources, strengthen programming, production and image-making that appropriately presents women needs, issues, and concerns in all forms of media, communication, information dissemination, and advertising.

The law also requires all media organizations and corporations to integrate into their human resource development components regular on gender equality and gender-based discrimination; create and use gender equality guidelines in all aspects of management, training, production, information, dissemination, communication and programming; and convene a gender equality committee that will promote gender mainstreaming as a framework and affirmative action as a strategy, and monitor and evaluate the implementation of gender equality guidelines.