Role of media in adressing violence against women and girls

Comment on: How can media and communication address violence against women and girls?

Thank for your useful recommandations. I think they could be used effectively if adapted to the local context of most african countries confronted to this dramatic issue of violence against women and girls.

I found two recomandations particulary relevant : create strong, female characters and sharing the voice of men who challenge negative norms and gender stereotype. Indeed, it is crucial to value these models localy among the society to demonstrate that violence should not been tolerated. Most men and women found violence is normal, they don't consider it as a real social problem. It's unfortunately the reality, the worse is that when a woman consider it normal to be beaten, normal to accept violence.... To change this social norm, we need indeed to value the women and men, who bravely, have refused violence as an accepted behavior. Media play a major role in this dynamic of social valuation of these models having already adopted the desired behavior, these individuals, who refused violence as a social norm.

 It's necessary for media to give exemples of women and men, who are violent, but the actual trend should probably be reviewed since unfortunately most often media communicate more on negative stories of violence than on positive stories. According to me, that's the real challenge for media in adressing violence against women and girls. Most terms and concepts relating to change are positive ( promoting, stimulating, inspiring, motivating...), but if you make the exercice to compare the number the positive stories reported by media about strong female characters and men who refused violence with the number of negative stories, what would you found ? Most often, a difference, not a single difference, a real significative difference benefiting to negative stories....

 In order to promote systemic change in local communities, wouldn'it better that media and communication focus most often on positive exemples of behavior in order to suscite interest for change among people who resist to the desired change ? If media keep on communicating about bad examples of violent men and submissive women, how can we really motivate more and more women to report violence ?