A few years ago, this reviewer was discussing women's representation in the media at a course on gender. The session focused on the invisibility of women's issues in mainstream media and the inadequate space in the media for meaningful news or analytical reports on the status of women. However, a few lecturers argued that women were in fact well represented in the print and television media – women achievers, they pointed out, especially in sports and business, are featured in the news, while women protagonists dominate the television entertainment sector, albeit in stereotypical soap operas. In addition, women columnists and news anchors have drilled neat holes in the glass ceiling. In a post-liberalised media world, this might be considered reason enough for the gathered lecturers to celebrate. But I was left with a sense of disquiet.
Despite the seeming visibility of women in the media, their representation in the news amount to little more than tabloid reportage, of which there are abundant examples. Recent ones include the disclosure of a police report filed by a student of Tata Institute of Social Sciences who alleged that she had been gang-raped; the unethical identification of rape victims in Chhattisgarh; the media's complicity in maligning the murdered schoolgirl Aarushi Talwar; or the media circus made of the personnel dilemma of Gudiya (now deceased), who was forced by a panchayat and religious leaders to return to her first husband, a soldier named Arif, even though she had remarried during his five-year incarceration in a jail in Pakistan following the Kargil conflict.
Missing Half the Story attempts to address such problematic reporting, and reiterates that it is not merely the representation itself but the process of representation that matters. The book uses three approaches, neatly divided into three sections, to tackle the issue: a critique of gender-insensitive journalism in present-day India; an introduction to the ideological underpinnings of gender in society; and a manual on journalistic writing from a 'gendered' perspective, which reasserts that the practice of 'journalism as if gender matters' is not only necessary but possible. Kalpana Sharma, the book's editor, makes a case for an 'objective' slant towards gender that will actually make news more balanced. In the introduction, she argues that the 'feminisation' of news – with a focus on women and the 'genderisation' of journalism – whereby journalism as a whole will incorporate a perspective on women – is more important than merely including the 'women's angle'.
Other contributors to the volume include Ammu Joseph, Sameera Khan and Himal contributing editors Laxmi Murthy and Rajashri Dasgupta. Joseph and Murthy introduce the reader to concepts such as the 'gendered lens', patriarchy and feminism, as well as to the multiple strands of thought within the women's movement and the constantly evolving strategies that the media needs to adopt when dealing with 'women's' issues. Referring to the controversies surrounding the South African runner Caster Semenya and, closer to home, the Indian sprinter Santhi Soundarajan, both of whom were stripped of medals for failing to pass a gender test, Murthy goes beyond the binaries of sex and points out that the notion of 'woman' includes both sex (physical attributes) and gender (social and cultural attributes). Categorising sex as gender, she argues, comes in the way of more informed reportage, and damns those who identify themselves as transgender, intersex, transvestite or queer. It is important, therefore, for the media to develop an understanding and empathy towards the choices people exercise in living out their multiple identities.