Document presented by the Women's Program of the Agencia Latinoamericana de Información -ALAI- (Latin American Information Agency) to the 4th World Conference on Women (Beijing '95)

In the contemporary world, communications and information exert an increasingly decisive influence on the social, political and cultural orientation of society. Each minute, thousands of new images, data and ideas reach every corner of the globe. In this context, the access to symbolic goods has become a necessary requirement for consolidating democratic practice. Increasingly, the media are a part of people's daily lives and directly influence their capacity to interact in social, cultural and political spheres.

Moreover, without communication and information, the participation of citizens in decisions of common concern is not possible. New communications technologies make it possible to increase interaction between persons, social groups, countries and regions at a planetary level. These technologies, democratically employed, constitute powerful instruments that could secure the advances made by civilization, such as gender equality. Nonetheless, at a global level, transnational communications corporations, controlled by international business monopolies, exert autocratic power in cyberspace, while there is a total absence of regulatory, ethical or legal measures that establish the rights of women and citizens' groups to use this space.

Similarly, at national and local levels, the increasing concentration of power and the monopolistic ownership of the communications media by transnational corporations or local elites, limits the exercise of the citizens' right to free expression and their access to diversified and pluralistic information; this particularly affects women whose actions, interests and movements fail to be recognized and potentialized through communications processes.

With their present structure, the media promote depredatory lifestyles, reflect ethnocentric images and fail to represent the diversity of roles women occupy in society and their contributions to their societies. Also, they tend to generate patterns of behavior that reinforce marginalization, exclusion and inequalities. Moreover, with the advancement of visual communications, the mainstream media have multiplied stereotyped and pornographic images of women, while they rarely disseminate innovatory models that represent the real economic, social and political role women accomplish in society.

Similarly, despite the fact that over the last decade, women have burst onto the scene of specialized careers in communications and the media, the patterns of sexual division of labor that are predominant in our societies have been maintained. The presence of women in management, ownership and decision-making levels in the media is minimal. The media continue to operate under the control of men and their contents and methods of dissemination express male and ethnocentric culture and perceptions.

Nonetheless, in the alternative and popular fields, in civil society, and specifically among women, there have been important developments in communications work with a gender perspective which has become a model for the possible formulation of public policy that would consider communications as a fundamental human right and a prerequisite for participative democratic practices.

One of the expressions of these endeavors is the growth of networks for information exchange, which constitute channels for socializing information. Citizens' access to computer communications networks has enormously increased the potential of these networks to transmit large volumes of information regardless of distance. As such, these networks have a great potential for democratizing information. Nonetheless, so far, women have been under-represented in terms of citizens' access to these technologies.

In the years that have passed since the World Conference on Women in Nairobi, 1985, communications media, networks and organizations working with a gender focus have intervened and taken action at different levels: locally, nationally, regionally and internationally. However, despite all this activity, the consolidation of androcentric power, centralized by transnational communications corporations, has prevented a substantial transformation of global tendencies towards a more democratic perspective.

The democratic participation of women in communicational processes would constitute a significant force to instigate change, empower women and promote equality. Equitable access for women to the mass media, alternative networks, new communications technologies and within the global distribution of cyberspace, is an indispensable element for guaranteeing gender equality.

WITH RELATION TO THE ABOVE, WE SUGGEST TO THE UNITED NATIONS:

1. In order to promote more democratic communications with a gender focus:

1.1 That the UN promotes the democratization of communications among its member States and affiliated organizations, affirming the role of gender-focused communications as an indispensable element for consolidating democratic practices.

1.2 That the UN exhorts the mass media to facilitate the access of women and their organizations to such media.

1.3 That the UN develops, through its own mechanisms, affiliated organizations and member States, a broad information campaign, with emphasis on both quality and quantity, designed to facilitate the integration of gender-focused information in the planning and execution of public policy and in social, economic and political programs, in all spheres of society.

1.4 That the UN urges its member States to promote communicational and information campaigns on gender equality, designed to directly influence the formulation of national policy with a gender perspective and that will enable equal participation of women in all spheres of local and national power.

1.5 That the UN recognizes that gender-focused communication, as both theme and practice, is a strategic element for the advancement of women and of their movements.

1.6 That the UN promotes communicational practices based on social equality between the genders and that it ensures the freedom of information and expression on diverse lifestyles, sexual orientations, cultural and ethnic expressions, rights,etc.

1.7 That the UN and its affiliated organizations give recognition to international gender-focused communications bodies and events, such as the "Permanent Forum on Gender Communications" (Quito, 1994), the "Women Empowering Communications" Conference (Bangkok, 1994), the "Latin American Meeting of Alternative and Popular Media" (Quito, 1993), among others; these should be recognized as reference points for the development of programs destined to promote public communications policy with a gender perspective.

1.8 That the UN assigns budgets for the development of programs that strengthen networks of women communicators in the South and promotes North/South dialogue between women communicators who wish to develop joint actions to promote gender equality throughout the world.

2. In order to promote the access of women to new communications technologies that potentiate their communicational capacity:

2.1 That the UN, through its affiliated organizations, develops programs that facilitate the access of women to the use of new communications technologies, as a mechanism that will favor the growth of their organizations and as an instrument for disseminating the proposals of women towards society. Women and women's organizations require equal access to telecommunications, to cybernetic technology and to training in computing, among other communications technologies.

2.2 That the UN urges its member States to adopt policy directed at ensuring the access of civil society to new communications technologies, and in particular to telematic networks, by eliminating bureaucratic, legal and financial obstacles and by offering facilities that reduce the cost of access.

2.3 That the UN, its affiliated organizations and member States design programs to promote the development of democratic communications which, taking advantage of the multidirectional and decentralized communications flow offered by new communications technologies, promotes the development of networks that interlink women and their movements nationally and internationally.

2.4 That the UN urges its affiliated organizations and member States to assign budgets to promote the access of women to new communications technologies, as tools that favor more horizontal and democratic communications; and that they support the participation of women in the distribution of cyberspace.

3. In order to ensure that media content projects a positive and non-discriminatory image of women:

3.1 That the UN supports initiatives designed to develop critical faculties among society for the reception of messages disseminated in the media, as well as awareness of negative and stereotyped images that feed inequalities between the genders and promote violence.

3.2 That the UN urges the Nation States to define a Code of ethics for the media, as well as vigilance mechanisms with respect to images that are discriminatory or that violate women's rights in information, publicity, marketing and entertainment.

3.3 That the UN urges its member States to regulate the use of violence in the mass media and of publicity that offends human sensitivity and promotes violence against women.

4. In order to promote labor equality between the genders and greater presence of women in decision-making positions in the media:

4.1 That the UN draws up international guidelines on the equality of men and women in the media, with relation to both employment policy and programming.

4.2 That the UN promotes international campaigns to encourage the Nation States and the private sector to develop programs of positive discrimination in order to achieve equitable participation of women in the media at all levels. ALAI, September 1994