Breaking Gender Patterns to Create New Norms
Regardless of who’s talking about it, or reading about it, it seems like the only thing on anyone’s mind in America is the elections. How did we get into a situation where a candidate who has never held political office, who doesn’t even pay his taxes, and is currently accused of child rape, close to becoming the President of the US? Is it because Hillary comes off as unreliable or people are skeptical of her explanations of her email conduct? Or is it because she’s a woman?
Widely-shared infographics have shown what the US election results would look like if only men voted. The nation would be almost entirely Republican. And if women voted? Almost entirely Democratic. Clearly there’s a problem when political views are split so clearly along gender lines. At least in the US women have a voice in the shape of Hillary Clinton. Elsewhere, however, men in positions of power continue to display their indifference or contempt for women and their voices, particularly in low and middle income countries. The recent campaign to #rememberkhwezi — South African president Jacob Zuma’s alleged rape victim — is an all too vivid example of the ways women’s voices are silenced.
Existing decision-making patterns around women — in politics, in development, in daily interactions — need to change. During her talk at this year’s Fak’ugesi Digital Festival, our General Manager, Debbie Rogers, reflected on her own experiences and the absurdity of being the only women in a boardroom of men discussing maternal health. To illustrate the problems that arise when women are unrepresented, Debbie recalled how in one meeting a male official asserted “women who are on their second child don’t need maternal information because they already know everything already.” As a mother of two, she pointed out how not only was this not true for her, but it was not true for any of the other women she knew either.
But this is just one example of the ways women are marginalised. In addition to having more representation of women in these boardrooms, if we want to shift gender norms and address imbalances, we also need to change the language around women and their bodies. Working with the UNFPA and Ford Foundation on our Tune Me project, we strive to reframe the way young people speak about gender and sexual health, often pushing the boundaries of what our partners are willing to say to try and develop a language that allows us to talk about sex, relationships and bodies in a way that respects and honours women instead of cowing to the sensitivities of men in positions of power.
The power of representation should also not be discounted. As I recently learned at the Criterion Institute’s Gender Lens Toolkit workshop, even crowd scenes in cartoons only have 18% women. As content leads on Girl Effect’s mobile projects, we always make sure to consistently show culturally appropriate and empowering visuals of women and girls. For our Girl Effect site on the Free Basics by Facebook platform and the Android app we’re building with Mentor Together in India we spent a lot of time testing and crafting illustration styles with girls to create images that we aspirational without being alienating or unrealistic, while rooting the images in the local context with culturally-specific details.
As the South African Department of Health’s maternal health platform MomConnect will reach its 1 million registered mothers mark this month, let’s celebrate a platform created for mothers with women deeply involving in its making. A clear example to me of the ways involving women and including their voices can lead to dramatic results. We hope to help bring these technologies to other countries in Africa. And when we do this, we will not only give key information to all moms — regardless of how many children they have had already — we will continue to integrate feedback loops to actively acknowledge their experience and voices, and we will consistently showcase women in the development of that technology.
But there’s hope in small steps: I believe this week’s elections may bring another female leader into the political forefront for creating impactful change for women. As I learned recently at the Gender Lens Toolkit workshop, it can take 10 years for a pattern to become a norm. Regardless of the outcome next week, let’s pledge to work to break down unequal gender patterns to begin to create a new norm.
— Ambika Smarthya-Howard, Comms Lead
