ABSTRACT
The media constitute social realities, meaning and power, and, in many developing states, are sites of social and political struggle. Political and economic developments in African media over the last two decades have led to significant media transformation, with, I would argue, a concurrent dearth of feminist media scholarship (see also Audrey Gadzekpo 2009). Media monitoring initiatives, such as the Global Media Monitoring Project, which has now reported on the ways in which women have been portrayed in the news since 1995 to the present day, show that the media often continue to produce subtle manifestations of sexism and gender stereotypes. Additionally, it is important to point out that there are few women owners or managers of mainstream media organizations; women are still disadvantaged by the context of unequal global wealth distribution (Mickey Lee 2006). Increased gender activism and advocacy has led to more media coverage, but “patriarchal framing of stories, ill-considered language and non-contextualized reporting undermines such stories” (Gadzekpo 2009, p. 74). Ten years ago in the inaugural issue of Feminist Media Studies, Aida Opuku-Mensah (2001) observed that feminist research is rarely undertaken in Africa, and since then, I am afraid to say, very little has changed.
