Media Action Insight Blog Feed

Online violence against women and girls in Nepal: what we have learned

2022-03-02T16:40:00+00:00

Our researchers conducting interviews in Nepal

Cases of online abuse against women and girls have spiked in recent years. However, the legal and policy initiatives to address it do not seem to delve deep enough into the grave and changing dynamics of online violence in Nepal, or how this perpetuates gender-based violence in the offline world.

The development in internet and communication technologies has connected people in a way that was unimaginable a few decades ago. On one hand, this has opened endless opportunities to exchange ideas, share information and stay in touch with loved ones; on the other, it has given birth to new dangers that humans have never faced before. One such danger is the rise in online violence. As found by Plan International, women and girls are the main victims of trolling, abuse and hate speech everywhere in the world.

This scenario is not different in Nepal, where the rates of digital adoption are high. With increasing internet and social media users, we are witnessing a rise in cases of online abuse and violence against women and girls, which can take the form of physical threats, stalking, sex trolling, sexual harassment, and Zoom bombing. In January 2022, there were around 14 million social media users (with Facebook being the primary reported platform) and social media penetration has increased by 2 million since January 2020.

Virtual victims – the physical and emotional effects.

Between 2016 and 2020, a total of 5,574 online harassment cases were reported to the Cyber Bureau of Nepal. The prevalence is estimated to be much higher than reported. We spoke with around 80 adolescent girls and boys about their experience of online abuse as part of our recent research study for a gender equality project, funded by Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). We were surprised to find that quite a few adolescent girls that we spoke to either had experienced sexual harassment on different social media platforms themselves, or knew someone who had. While only few boys mentioned experiencing or knowing someone (either boy or a girl) who have experienced this.

"I have experienced online sexual abuse. At one time I was even asked to share a picture of my breasts. This incident made me feel uncomfortable," one of girls told us during a focus group discussion.

Regardless of the nature (online or offline), violence takes a toll on the physical and mental health of survivors. Violence against women and girls still remains a culturally accepted practice, deeply rooted in harmful gender stereotypes and attitudes stemming from the continued acceptance of patriarchal societal norms.

As digital technologies play an increasingly central role in our everyday lives, some research suggests that women are often blackmailed by their partners or former partners, especially when couples in relationships share their passwords. Blackmail is mostly conducted through photoshopping women’s images, where men misuse women’s pictures to create new accounts to trick other men.

Silencing girls’ voices.

In a society like ours, where women and girls are expected to act in a particular way, our research found they tried to cover up any sort of violence, as they feel they will get blamed for sharing their personal life on social media sites. They fear that sharing such incidents can have a devastating impact on their mental health, reputations, relationships, access to education and employment, or even expose them to physical violence. Most of the time, women are questioned about their online behaviours, and a huge burden is placed on them to accept that they were at fault for putting themselves in a vulnerable position.

From our conversations with adolescent girls during our research study, we found that often they did not share these incidents with anyone, not even with their friends. As a solution, they simply ignored and avoided the perpetrators by blocking or unfriending them on their social media platforms. We discovered that these girls feared the consequences of sharing with their families and friends. They did not trust their friends to keep their secrets, and they thought they would be blamed for the incident if they shared it with their family members. This is also why many cases of violence against women and girls go unreported in Nepal.

"No. There is no way we will share such things with others because people we share such things (cyberviolence incidents) will not keep it to themselves. I have experienced a similar scenario previously, where I shared something with one of my friends, and she shared it with others too. So, we cannot trust anyone to keep our secrets," says a girl from our focus group discussion.

As part of our research, we also spoke with government officials, women rights activists and representatives from non-governmental organisations working on women and girls' rights. Many of the participants raised concerns such as the increasing use of social media to connect to the potential victims of human trafficking. Previously, traffickers used to travel to villages to connect with their potential victims. But these days they can connect and befriend potential victims through a simple friend request on social media platforms, liking or commenting on a post, before they meet in person.

What have we learned?

The key takeaway from our recent study was that adolescent girls using social media platforms are more at risk of experiencing online sexual abuse than boys, and for us, this highlights that their safeguarding should be a priority. We also identified an urgent need to engage with adolescent girls, and their friends and families, to help break through the barriers and fears associated with sharing their experiences.

Similarly, it is also very important to understand that internet platforms – while insecure - are not the only cause of such violence. Low levels of digital literacy contribute to the issue, and not least, the bad behaviour of people who hide behind online profiles and misuse these platforms. At last year’s UN Generation Equality Forum in Paris, four of the world’s largest tech companies – Facebook, Google, Twitter and TikTok – made bold commitments to tackle the abuse of women on their platforms and improve women’s safety.

Our findings point to the need to inform and empower women and girls in Nepal about the safe use of internet and digital media platforms, so that they can protect themselves from potential harm online.

Moving forward with holistic action

Considering the severe impact of online violence, Nepalese laws already have some provisions aiming at control of such activities. When a complaint is registered, Nepalese police are required to immediately search for the alleged perpetrator by tracking their IP address. Then, depending on the severity of the case, they either make the two parties compromise to resolve the issue, or file a case. However, there are many loopholes in the system. We feel that both legal changes and understanding the root causes are required to address this violence.

Actions must go beyond calling for improvements to the platforms’ own Community Standards, and their reporting systems and policies on removing content that breaks the rules. We also recognise this is an uphill struggle, particularly in non-English languages where the bots are not trained to recognise local languages, slang and dialects, and often end up removing legitimate content instead.

But we know that media and communication is in a unique position to challenge social norms and help address the root causes of why these cases go undiscussed and therefore unreported. In India, Myanmar, Tanzania, Zambia – using media and communication - we’ve seen positive changes for women and girls by engaging, informing, and sparking conversations on taboo topics both online and offline.

Our innovative Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights project in Myanmar called Ma Shet Ne (Don’t be shy!) was designed to help open discussions and break down barriers. We found that sharing interviews with female celebrities who spoke openly about the issues they had faced, and equal representation in content, helped to challenge the gender divide that had previously stopped women speaking out. Audiences were significantly more confident than non-audiences to talk about relationships and sexual health offline with medical professionals, friends and partners – a key achievement.

In Nepal, we recognise that creating safer environments like this, where women and adolescent girls can confidently share their experiences with friends and families without fearing the consequences, is vital. So far, we have supported local radio stations to produce digital content on various gender-based violence issues through training, editorial guidance and support to build the capacity of our local partner stations. But much more needs to be done.

Addressing online violence requires collective efforts. Broad-based, multi-sectoral partnerships need to be established to reach out to families and communities at scale. It is also important to bring systematic changes in mentality where it requires social institutions such as education, media, religion, the judiciary and political systems to be gender sensitive. With the advancement of digitalisation, it is crucial that women and girls are well informed. Sharing positive stories of those who have used formal support mechanisms and found help - and not suffered social discrimination as a result - is necessary to enable this shift.

We believe that collective efforts including stronger cybersecurity, media to support gender equality, changing attitudes and changes to legalisation all need to happen to address this problem.

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Learn more about:
Our work in Nepal and with women and girls
Our new promise on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

How can digital technology empower women without worsening inequality?

2022-02-25T15:26:28+00:00

As use of mobile technologies surges in low and middle income (LMICs) countries, a pressing question has emerged: can the digital revolution be harnessed to empower women – socially, economically and politically - without creating deeper social and gender divides?

This is a particularly critical question in India, where the rates of digital adoption are high – but where the gender gap in digital is among the largest in the world. According to the GSMA, 75% of men but only 55% of women owned a mobile phone in 2020; when it comes to smartphones, the gap is even greater, with only 25% of women owning smartphones compared to 41% of men.

In 2019, �鶹Լ�� Media Action began working on the Digital Women’s Economic Empowerment Project: A Research and Learning Agenda. Our focus has been on women’s collectives, which have shown significant promise as a platform for empowerment. Our objective has been to identify if and how digital technology could enhance pathways to women’s empowerment in collectives, without making existing inequalities and gender-based conflict worse.

The promise of collectives

Systematic reviews of evidence from countries around the world, including from self help groups in India, have shown promising outcomes for women’s economic and political empowerment, mobility, and control over family planning. In India, the scale of the opportunity is substantial: Some 47 million member-households have been mobilised into four million self-help groups since 2011, and the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development’s Self-Help Group Bank Linkage Programme now covers 138 million families through 11 million groups.

Evidence reviews have also identified three important pathways to empowerment in self-help groups: the accumulation of social capital, human capital, and financial capital.

A key driver is the expansion of women’s social networks , as they join small groups of 10-12 women and begin benefiting from ‘bonding social capital’ – the social support and trust that cohesive, homogenous groups can provide. Once women start interacting with the wider collective, they begin building “bridging social capital’ – that is, interacting with women from different backgrounds who act as role models and provide access to new ideas and opportunities.

Women in a self-help group show their mobile phones. Even though India is the world's largest market for social media platforms, users are overwhelmingly male. Photo credit: Sara Chamberlain, �鶹Լ�� Media Action.

Limits on progress

However, there are constraints on the transformative potential of women’s collectives in India:

Geographically isolated groups have few opportunities to engage beyond their immediate circle with the wider collective;
Women have limited channels to request and receive targeted information, resources, and services from the wider collective;
Grassroots members have limited opportunities to make their voices heard in the wider collective;
The lack of access to high quality, standardised, flexible learning opportunities;
Members tend to be older and less educated, and younger women are under-represented;
There are limited opportunities for consultative decision-making, and leadership may not be transparent.

Digital technology could be a game changer

Chat applications and social media platforms, as social networking tools, could help women’s collectives overcome many of the constraints they face – for example, by:

Reducing geographical isolation, enabling women to interact more regularly with their wider collectives.
Improving internal information dissemination and consultative decision making by collective leadership.
Improving the bottom-up flow of information from grassroots members to collective leadership to transnational partners, amplifying marginalised voices.
Diversifying group membership by attracting younger women.
Helping collectives trying to scale to overcome challenges of transparency and leadership ossification by offering new growth pathways to young and emergent leaders.

Collectives could also use digital technologies to accelerate the accumulation of human capital by providing flexible, personalised digital learning to members, and the accumulation of financial capital by providing greater access to government entitlements and markets for their products and services.

Self-help groups in India pose a major opportunity for digital technologies that can empower women. Photo credit: Sara Chamberlain, �鶹Լ�� Media Action

Low tech digital solutions have delivered results

There are already examples of low-tech digital solutions achieving some of these goals for disadvantaged women in India, including for women in collectives. For example:

Mobile Vaani, an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) social media platform for rural communities in India, enables women in self help groups to call a number to record an audio message about their community, or to listen to messages left by others. Over 100,000 unique users have been calling Mobile Vaani every month in the states of Bihar and Jharkhand, discussing a wide range of issues and sharing information, including health information during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Haqdarshak equips women in self help groups who already own smartphones with an application to support claims for government entitlements, helping 600,000 people claim entitlements in 22 Indian states.
�鶹Լ�� Media Action has used IVR to deliver impactful, cost-effective audio learning to rural, low-income women at scale in India for almost a decade – for example, delivering free health information to over 10 million families, and successfully training 200,000 frontline health workers in 13 Indian states in collaboration with the Indian government, as outlined in The BMJ.
During the pandemic, �鶹Լ�� Media Action began collaborating with capacity building organisations - for instance, PRADAN to provide IVR-based learning in agricultural best practices to marginalised women farmers in self help groups in the state of Bihar, and with Chaitanya WISE to support digital adoption and digital literacy in self help groups in Madhya Pradesh.

The gender digital divide

However, the transformative potential of digital to support women’s empowerment in India is constrained by the gender digital divide, including on social media. In 2018, LIRNEasia estimated that only 9% of women aged 15–65 were using social media in India, compared with 22% of men. In addition, although India is now globally the largest market for platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, these are still heavily skewed towards male users. For example, according to estimates from publicly available advertising data, only 8% of Twitter users and 24% of Facebook users in India were women, as of January 2021. Even though more women began using the mobile internet during the pandemic, with usage increasing from 21% in 2019 to 30% in 2021, social media use did not reflect this: Facebook usage among women increased by just 1% during the pandemic, and Twitter usage among women fell by 6%.

Social media users in India tend to be younger, better educated, wealthier and urban

Wealth and education are the strongest determinants of access to and use of mobile phones in India, but age and geography also matter. In 2018, a study by LIRNEasia found that only 5% of social media users in India had only a primary school education or had never been to school, and only 11% lived in rural areas. The same study found that only 10% of 36–45-year-olds had used social media in 2018. Although social media use among adolescents in India has increased since then, the gender gap is the most extreme in this age group. For example, a survey by the Population Council in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in 2018–2019 found that 33% of 15–19-year-old girls who had completed fifth grade or higher had used social media, compared with 70% of boys in the same age group.

Women and men also behave differently on social media in India. Men tend to be more active participants in digital groups than women, with the most active users being men with other forms of social privilege. Most women (92%) use social media to stay in touch with existing friends and family, rather than to make new friends (38%), which could limit their access to new ideas, opportunities and ways of doing things – the accumulation of bridging social capital.

Women's access to mobile phones is often controlled by men, so face to face communication is also essential. Photo credit: Sara Chamberlain, �鶹Լ�� Media Action

The role of gender norms

Gender norms - offline and online – are another constraint. Women’s use of mobile phones and the internet are often supervised and monitored by men, which limits the agency and freedom that digital technology could provide women. Technology-facilitated gender-based violence is rife in India, and nearly always against women. Research suggests that over 58% of women internet users have faced online sexual harassment of some form, most commonly on social media. While India has legislation on cyberbullying, cyber-stalking and online sexual harassment, victims of online gender-based violence do not usually seek legal recourse. Social media platforms have been grappling with the issue of online violence since their inception. However, despite best efforts, online violence and harassment remain pervasive issues.

Implications for designing social media interventions for women

The gender digital divide on social media platforms in India, and the offline and online norms that create the divide, necessitate a gender-intentional, research driven approach to designing social media interventions for women’s empowerment.

We need to begin with a gender analysis of who has access to digital technology and why, and who is excluded and why.
We also need to understand women’s level of digital skill among the population we aim to serve, as well as their usage habits and the factors shaping their use, including the implications of shared and supervised mobile phone use for privacy and data protection.
We need to design differentiated digital strategies, using appropriate digital channels and tools, to meet a diversity of needs.
We need to use women-centred design methodologies to co-create solutions with women who represent different segments of the target population, to improve accessibility, usability and relevance.
We must remember that face-to-face communication remains key to women in the target population who don’t own, or have meaningful access to, mobile phones – or the skills or permission to use one.
We require processes to respond to online harassment and violence that may be triggered by your intervention.
And we need to be patient. Test and re-test because there is the potential to do as much harm as good.

The third paper in our learning series offers more insights: ‘Why aren’t women part of the conversation? A study of the gender gap in social media use in India, its causes and the implications for women’s empowerment’

Learn more about our Digital Women's Economic Empowerment learning and research agenda here. The project is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and includes partners at Chaitanya WISE, PRADAN, the University of Southern California at Los Angeles, and the University of Denver, Colorado.

Theory to practice: our work in gender transformative programming

2018-03-07T17:05:32+00:00

As the world marks International Women's Day, we reflect how long it really takes to change perceptions on women's rights and gender equality and recognise that even incremental change is important. What works, what doesn't, who needs to be involved and why making local media content in local contexts is key to challenge - and change - thinking about gender roles.

As part of �鶹Լ�� Media Action's commitment to gender transformative programming we aim to challenge thinking on gender roles in many areas including women's participation in decision making, their engagement in economic activities, their determination of their sexual and reproductive health rights and behaviours and norms which condone violence against women and girls.

We know from our research on our girls' education project in South Sudan and other projects around the world that changing gendered expectations and perceptions of the roles of girls and boys and women and men takes time and that our drama programmes need to show different characters - both men and women, parents, school teachers and other influential members of the community challenging stereotypes in different ways that are sufficiently credible for audiences to engage with. So this may mean showing characters making small changes initially and then more significant changes over time. Similarly, our factual programmes bring a range of voices together to discuss issues and we seek to ensure that female role models and male gender champions who are able to challenge gender inequality and discrimination and inspire others to do the same, participate in programmes.

Part of this process is to have a good understanding of the local contexts where we are working. This means listening to the views of women and men, girls and boys to understand their concerns and priorities, it means discussing issues with our partners, donors and with our staff in different teams and looking at both our organisational research and doing a wider literature review in the countries and regions where we work. Doing a thorough gender analysis in this way helps us to identify the discriminatory gender norms that we want to address in our programming and that we can learn more about through our formative research. We have learned from experience that if we do not do this, then we risk designing projects and programmes that: do not reach women and girls; do not address the issues of concern to them; do not enable their voices to be heard and may reinforce gender stereotypes and perpetuate gender inequality that affects both women and men.

Understanding the local context is also a key step in developing a gender sensitive theory of change for our project. A theory of change process is a crucial part of ensuring our project design is of high quality. It helps us understand how change happens in the contexts where we work and our role in contributing to change, it helps us identify what we want to change for who, making sure that we consider change for women and men, it helps us clarify who we should work with, who has power and influence (both positive and negative) over the changes we are working towards, which factors we need to consider when we plan our activities to achieve change and the ways in which we need to strengthen our capacities and support our partners' capacities. The theory of change also informs our research, which aims to tell us how change is happening and why and whether our assumptions hold true.

So it was encouraging that our research for the girls' education project in South Sudan showed that women in the our audiences were taking on new responsibilities within the household - including making joint decisions about finances and the education of their children - and while we cannot prove a direct line between this outcome and listening to our programmes yet, it certainly suggests we are making inroads.

Learn more about using media to understand and challenge gender stereotypes with our online toolkit here: http://genderandmedia.bbcmediaaction.org

How can media and communication address violence against women and girls?

2017-11-30T15:15:22+00:00

We are often asked what a gender transformative project looks like.

A gender transformative approach explicitly tackles social norms around gender discrimination, power and violence, as well as broader ideas about male superiority and what it is to be a “real man” or “real woman” in the eyes of society. It means addressing systemic change by looking beyond individuals and focusing on unequal power relations between women and men, girls and boys.

It means asking women and girls themselves what is important and to identify issues, opportunities and barriers. And because social norms around gender equality, power and violence are adhered to by men and women and boys and girls, it is critical to include both sexes in gender transformative projects.

So why is it useful? Take violence against women and girls. Evidence suggests that interventions that address discriminatory gender norms, and challenge dominant notions of masculinity linked to controlling and aggressive behaviour, are more effective at reducing violence against women and girls, than interventions that don’t address underlying power structures.

Can media be gender transformative? Yes – with the right planning and programme content. In our review of Leh Wi Know (Let us know), a �鶹Լ�� Media Action project in Sierra Leone, we found it raised awareness in the whole community about violence against women and girls, including what drives violence and its consequences. It reached 15% of adults (40% of whom were women) through national and local radio programmes delivered in Krio and local languages. There was an increase in people reporting violence, as well as improvements within the judicial system, including the reinstating of Saturday courts where gender-based violence cases are heard, and critically, greater support by men and women for a reduction in violence. Leh Wi Know provides useful pointers for those looking to make gender transformative programming:

Include stories and voices from across the country. Leh Wi Know broadcast vox pops, interviews and packages commissioned from local correspondents. The use of vox pops was a successful strategy for enabling women’s voices to be heard.

Build relationships with those in power. The production team built relationships with traditional rulers, many of whom appeared as panellists on the radio programmes. Their support helped to create a more enabling environment in which women could exercise their rights and seek justice. Staff felt the project was able to challenge existing norms and attitudes by asking men tough questions about issues such as domestic violence, rape and FGM and by highlighting the legislation that protects women.

Invite female and male experts into studio discussions – these subject matter specialists could talk with authority about the issues.

Engage directly with communities. An international partner, Restless Development, and 16 local civil society partners gave out radio sets and facilitated listening groups and discussion about issues raised in the programme. Specially designed playing cards helped peer educators work with young women and men to identify different ways in which survivors of violence could seek help. Ordinary women were able to take part in these discussions, giving them an opportunity to talk about issues that would rarely be raised.

Create strong, female characters. Female characters in the radio drama found the courage to report violence, even in a highly patriarchal context where women are conditioned to be submissive. These actions were considered by project stakeholders to have the potential to inspire female listeners to report violence.

Share the voices of men who challenge negative norms and gender stereotypes. Men came to the studio on the national show to say that they had changed their behaviour as a result of what they learned from the radio programmes. These stories of change were shared on-air to encourage others to do the same.

Seeking advice from gender equality, legal and media experts working across different thematic areas was crucial. It helped ensure gender sensitive content was included in the radio drama and training for partner radio stations. Storylines also benefited from up-to-date legal information and practical information about the justice system and its handling of gender-based violence.

Violence against women in Sierra Leone remains endemic and it will take sustained action to shift related norms and attitudes. But this gender transformative project is a good reminder of the power of the media to help a large number of people engage with a range of views and challenge prevailing norms.

For guidance and resources on making your work transformative visit the �鶹Լ�� Media Action gender and media microsite

How we attracted women to our shows

2017-11-22T16:26:26+00:00

As a child and throughout my teenage years in northern Nigeria, I saw men in our neighbourhood shopping for the food needed by the family. To my young mind, this was fascinating, and I thought “how helpful and thoughtful of them”.

It was only later I came to understand that, for cultural reasons, women were not expected to be seen in public. But deep down, I still couldn’t understand it.

As an adult I have dealt with stereotypical expectations around women in politics. I’ve heard statements such as women are not “naturally” oriented towards governance or politics, or that “politics is a man’s thing”. Our system in Nigeria seems to give this credence by not making adequate efforts to encourage women to be active in politics.

I remember when Sarah Jibril, the first female presidential candidate, failed to make it past the party primaries in 2011 and got only one vote. I asked myself then, half seriously - is there something about the woman that makes her unsuited to such key a role in society?

Fast forward to the present: I understand that the behaviour of the men and women I saw while growing up helped to perpetuate ideas about the way men and women “should” behave. I also know the media plays a part in this by reinforcing these ideas. Worldwide, women are still the focus of only 10% of news stories and comprise just 20% of experts or spokespeople interviewed.

As a social researcher I have designed and implemented studies to understand what audiences in Nigeria want from shows like the drama Story Story and the radio discussion show Talk Your Own, and I evaluated their impact. We saw a pattern in our findings. Fewer women than men tended to listen to our programmes and were engaging less frequently in politics than men. To understand this better, we designed a study to speak to young girls and women across five states in five geo-political zones of Nigeria.

Involve your target audience

We used a market research technique called co-creation, whereby customers or product end-users (in our case, potential audience members) are involved actively in inventing the product.

Working in groups, we encouraged unguided discussions and used practical exercises such as community mapping and problem tree analysis to explore issues of concern, perceptions of governance and ideas about what a governance-focused programme should include. Something I particularly enjoyed was the collaboration between the women themselves, researchers, programme producers and project managers. It resulted in valuable feedback to help us improve our programmes and give women and girls a chance to have their voices heard.

We found that women aged over 36 in particular, think that few women get involved in decision- making, and feel they do not have a voice. “They look down at us people and they don’t involve people that they think are illiterate,” said one participant.

Younger women claimed to feel disconnected from politics as they have no opportunity to meet with the leaders (traditional and elected) and felt decision makers did not seek their opinions. Across the board, women lacked faith in the political system – citing poor leadership and a failure to fulfil promises made by politicians during election campaigns. They saw evidence of poor governance all around them – including a lack of basic amenities in their communities. A few participants mentioned that state-owned media tended to portray even an ill-functioning government in a positive light.

The co-creation research was part of a conscious effort to attract more female audience members, which included revising the content of our programmes to appeal to women and younger people. Talk Your Own, for example, launched a new youth segment – My Life, My Story – featuring teenage girls sharing their life experiences. At the end of the project, our research showed that the programmes steadily attracted a higher proportion of female and rural listeners: by 2016 women accounted for 43% of the audience compared with 35% in 2013.

I want my daughter(s) and girls all over to have a voice – and not just a voice, but a voice that counts in the governance and decision-making processes that affect their lives. Therefore, understanding and helping women (in any small way) to find a voice is not just another deliverable in my line of work, it is something that matters a lot more to me!

Using social ties to make pregnancy safer: insights from Bangladesh and Ethiopia

2017-04-27T09:12:04+00:00

Following the launch of our Global Health Stories site, Emebet Wuhib-Mutungi explains how influencing mothers-in-law and husbands can help improve the health of mothers and their babies.

Over 800 women die every day because of complications caused by pregnancy or giving birth. Almost all of these women live in the Global South. And most could be saved through simple precautions, like going for regular antenatal check-ups.

But as we discovered through our work in Bangladesh and Ethiopia (watch the video below for more background), expectant mothers often don’t go for check-ups early enough. Our research into people’s beliefs suggests this is because Bangladeshis view pregnancy as a ‘natural process that doesn’t need special attention’, while in Ethiopia, going for a check-up is seen as inviting ‘bad luck’. We've seen similar views in India and South Sudan.

This external content is available at its source: https://youtu.be/cTE2GXW9OFQ

In Bangladesh and Ethiopia, mothers-to-be and their families don’t follow a number of other medical recommendations either. For example, ‘preparing for childbirth’ in Ethiopia generally doesn’t involve deciding on where to give birth, how to travel there and getting that all-important hospital ‘grab bag’ ready. Instead, the primary focus is on organising a big social event for family and friends to give thanks for the new life. Not doing so is frowned upon.

So… why is this?

Mother-in-law knows best?

Both Bangladeshis and Ethiopians believe that everything baby-related is the responsibility of women, with mothers-in-law – particularly in Bangladesh – serving as the ultimate arbiters of pregnancy.

Mothers-in-law are in turn likely to give their daughters-in-law advice based on their own experiences and what has always been done in their communities: give birth at home.

Expectant mothers are unlikely to defy both society and their mother-in-law to follow medical recommendations. This is because humans are social beings. When we choose whether or not to do something, we’re heavily influenced by social norms – what the people we love, respect and are surrounded by would normally do or strongly expect us to do.

Influencing the influencers

To encourage more women to seek medical help in pregnancy, it became clear that it was important to influence mother-in-laws.

Husbands – usually the household decision-makers – tend to not get involved in plans for childbirth. We saw this as an opportunity to engage men, who could then encourage their pregnant partners to adopt safer habits.

To reach and convince these family members to do things differently, we created TV and radio shows featuring husbands and mothers-in-law supporting the kind of practices we wanted to catch on. But modelling new behaviours isn’t enough to get them adopted. So to help audiences make informed choices, the shows also provided a space for discussion and explained why, for example, antenatal appointments were worth attending.

Inspiring change through fictional characters and real-life experiences

Of course, leveraging influencers, like mothers-in-law or men, to improve women and children’s health isn’t a new approach. What is less well-known is what works when trying to do so.

Speaking to audience members and project staff five years on, it was clear that husbands and mothers-in-law who tuned in to our shows saw themselves and their lives reflected in their fictional or ‘real life’ counterparts. This, they said, was critical.

As one husband told me, this was the first time he heard other men like him talk about accompanying their wives to the health clinic for her check-ups or saving money for a birth. While such anecdotes give us an idea of what inspired people to do things differently, they don’t give us – and the global health sector – the much-needed hard evidence of ‘what works’.

What we can say with confidence is that, after watching or listening to our programmes, husbands and mothers-in-law in both Bangladesh and Ethiopia are more likely to know the recommended guidance and to believe that it’s commonly followed in their community.

With improved knowledge and new perceptions of local social norms, influencers can offer better advice and support, helping secure a safer future for mothers and their babies. It’s just difficult to say exactly what it was about the programmes that set off this chain of events.

Future food for thought

Through influencing influencers, we’ve also begun to tackle gender stereotypes. For instance, we’ve shown that it’s OK for men and women to talk openly and freely together. In Ethiopia, our male and female radio presenters often share their own baby stories with each other in a light and friendly way.

We’ve also helped show that caring about babies is just as manly as keeping a job down and putting food on the table. Our TV drama in Bangladesh achieved this by weaving together storylines about male characters struggling with debt and ‘bad guys’, together with those about couples having a baby.

We’ve succeeded in getting men to watch and listen to our shows and get more involved in what’s considered a ‘woman’s issue'. We’ve done so without overtly challenging the status quo in which ‘men are the decision-makers.

Our next challenge is figuring out how we can help transform traditional gender roles, which could arguably have even longer-lasting impacts that also go beyond health.

If you want to find out more about how �鶹Լ�� Media Action used media and communication at scale to improve maternal, newborn and child health, go to our digital platform, Global Health Stories.

Emebet Wuhib-Mutungi is a Health Adviser with �鶹Լ�� Media Action. She tweets as @ewuhib.

Blog: Health communication changes lives by reaching millions

Pointing the needle to a future in which gender is not destiny

2017-02-21T09:41:15+00:00

Kathryn Tomlinson reports back from the 2017 NEEDLE Conference, �鶹Լ�� Media Action India’s conclave on media, communication and development. This year’s focus was on gender and the media.

A needle is a nondescript yet indispensable object. It stitches, it weaves, it injects, it points, it guides.

Over 300 people in Delhi this February were prodded with a giant NEEDLE, �鶹Լ�� Media Action India’s third communication conclave, a forum in which experts from across the media, communications, advertising, development and government sectors are challenged to explore how media and communications can bring about change. This year, NEEDLE 2017 explored how the Indian media can improve the representation and engagement of women in all aspects of the world around them. We were challenged to “move the needle to a world in which gender is not destiny”.

Pin pricks of progress?

Consuming media in India, be that YouTube videos, television shows or the news, it’s hard to not be stunned at the dichotomy between what we say is possible for women today – that they can ascend to positions of leadership, launch their own successful businesses, sit at the board table equally with men – and how women are actually depicted in the media.

Much of NEEDLE 2017 was thus about pin pointing our position on a road to progress. India is far from the beginning of this journey; huge strides have been made in recent decades in the ways that women are represented in media and engage in public life in India. Film-maker Shoojit Sircar noted that when he started out, only the Costume Assistant was a woman. Now, most of his heads of department are female. Ashvini Yardi, who was seven months pregnant and in hospital when she took the call asking her to take over running ZEE TV, similarly observed that only a few years ago, women were not even allowed to do the make-up.

The way women – and gender issues, more broadly – are featured in content has also moved forward in recent years. Breakthrough India’s Sonali Khan showed an ad depicting the true story of the first man to beat the thali [a metal platter] in his village to celebrate the birth of his daughter (which until then had only been done to celebrate male births). �鶹Լ�� Media Action's own TV series AdhaFull (which follows three young people challenging gender stereotypes as they solve crimes) can disrupt traditional gender stereotypes, creating a new normal around what it means to be a girl or a woman in India. Soap operas are much less regressive in their representation of women than they are sometimes mocked to be: there is always a woman who stands up, without aggression, to defend herself. It feels like a realistic portrait of Indian female strength, not a Western one.

But there is still a way to go. In conservative communities, film-maker, author and activist Archana Kapoor told of the multiple hurdles radio stations face to get women’s voices on air and the resulting harassment those female callers face from men: “You’ve been heard all over Mewat, nobody’s going to marry you now!” Her examples echoed the reminder given by Zainab, a young woman from 60km outside Delhi who opened the event and told us that while her household has a TV, when the (male) neighbours come round to watch it, women are not allowed to be present. Girls are not even allowed mobile phones in her community lest they get “led down bad paths.” So only 60km away from this vibrant urban capital, media has a far greater distance to travel to point the needle towards access to information, let alone gender equality.

Listening to all of this, I felt a mass of contradictions: we had speaker after influential female speaker featured at this conference – two thirds of our panellists were female. And this incredibly efficient event was organised by a largely female management team from �鶹Լ�� Media Action’s India office. But there's still a long, long way to go to build an India in which a girl is consistently valued.

How the needle stitches

The power of NEEDLE derives partly from the impressive speakers it is able to bring together as well as what they say on stage. But it's also about convening the best and brightest minds working in media and communication, development and industry together in one room to focus on the representation and engagement of women in everything that happens in India.

In this vein, I was also moved by the number of male speakers who reflected on how they have come to recognise gender inequality in their personal lives. Shoojit Sircar shared his wife’s musing that we can send a mission to Mars, but somehow still find ourselves debating gender inequality. Another was shocked to realise that his mother's activities had always been focused on her husband and children, rather than her even having her own ambitions. Again and again what these speakers demonstrated was that gender equality begins at home. And media and communications reach deep into the home.

Most of all, I was impressed by the straight talking I witnessed at NEEDLE. Esoteric terminology such as 'gender mainstreaming', 'the gender lens' and 'gender-sensitive indicators' were largely absent. That’s indicative of NEEDLE’s underlying approach: to make this conversation deliberately accessible to as wide a spectrum of people as possible in India. And that’s where I saw the future – for the policy makers, practitioners and researchers seeking to improve India – and the world – for women and girls alike. We must speak in straightforward terms about our vision and in so doing bring others with us to ensure that gender is not destiny.

Kathryn Tomlinson is �鶹Լ�� Media Action’s Regional Director for Asia.