All four media participants agreed that the media had a role to play in enabling social change, including empowering women in politics:
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« Si je dois choisir, je préfère prendre un homme qui parle bien à une femme qui parle mal ou qui explique mal son truc et inversement. On choisit celui que s’exprime mieux et qui fera mieux passer l’idée. »
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« Parfois ce n’est pas notre choix mais ce sont les listes politiques qui nous disent qu’il faut faire parler les femmes. C’est une stratégie de communication des listes politiques. Souvent la place de la femme est aussi mise en avant pour gagner. Et même quand elles sont en deuxième, troisième ou quatrième position, c’est souvent les femmes qui parlent pour défendre la liste. »
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NC1ère: I think that the media has a big responsibility to uphold gender parity and to make women present in this world [of politics] because they exist … but to make them visible113.
RRB: … it has a role in the evolution of mentalities and the evolution of society114.
DJI: From the perspective of a country seeking emancipation, I think the media needs to play a role, that it has a role to play in the participation of women in politics. Because the media can enable women to have a greater presence, to be more confident in politics115.
However, in practice, this posed a challenge since in three of the four media organisations, there was no formal articulation around gender in organisational policy. As a result, there are no official requirements to address gender in reporting or in organisational structure within these organisations. The consequence is, journalists and editors take an ad-hoc approach to gender balance in political reporting.
Table 6.8 Media organisations’ approach to gender in political reporting
Issue Response Observations
Yes No 1. Gender equality is a consideration in political reporting NC1ère LNC RRB DJI
Although it is a consideration, NC1ère faces challenges to achieve gender equality e.g. lack of female
politicians in some sectors
2. Media organisation has a policy on gender
NC1ère LNC RRB DJI
Gender equality is incorporated into NC1ère policy on diversity.
3. Media organisation has roughly equal sex ratio in:
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« Je pense que les médias ont une grande responsabilité dans le respect de la parité homme- femme de travailler pour faire apparaître les femmes dans ce monde-là parce qu’elles existent … mais de les rendre visibles. »
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« … ils ont un rôle dans l’évolution des mentalités et dans l’évolution de la société. »
115 « Dans la perspective d’un pays à émanciper, je pense qu’il faut que les médias jouent un rôle,
qu’ils aient un rôle dans la participation des femmes en politique. Parce que les médias peuvent amener les femmes à être plus présentes, à avoir plus d’assurance dans la politique. »
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Issue Response Observations
Yes No
Newsroom team NC1ère LNC RRB DJI
Political journalists NC1ère RRB DJI
LNC The main political journalists at LNC are male
News editors NC1ère LNC RRB DJI
NC1ère has mainly female news editors
RRB has a female news editor LNC & DJI both have a male news editor
4. Sex is a consideration when choosing political interviewees
NC1ère DJI NC1ère LNC RRB DJI
NC1ère & DJI generally do not consider sex of interviewee but sometimes do.
5. Media organisation takes steps to represent women’s concerns when women are absent
NC1ère NC1ère (in theory) purposely seeks women’s voices if possible when they are not present
Sometimes LNC DJI
Not necessarily LNC RRB
LNC said it sometimes but not necessarily endeavours to find female voices
6. The media has a role to play in promoting women in politics
NC1ère LNC RRB DJI
Participants agreed the media had a role in enabling social change in general including women’s political representation
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6.5 Summary
In presenting the findings of my research, this chapter has shed some light on how female politicians in New Caledonia perceive their portrayal in the mainstream media and how this influences the manner in which they pursue their political ambitions and responsibilities. The main issue female politicians evoked was a lack of visibility in the media where the general image of the political sector is one of masculine dominance. In addition, female politicians as a group were seen to experience certain forms of gender stereotyping. Individually however, gender stereotyping was more likely to apply to high-ranking female politicians. Participants maintained that their own individual portrayals by the media were mostly fair and accurate. Those who dealt with the media relatively frequently all had constructive relationships with journalists. However, almost half of participants claimed to have no or very little association with the media. As well as media influence on female politicians in general, my research examined whether there were any significant issues specifically related to Indigenous politicians. On this point, my findings revealed that, overall, challenges faced by Indigenous politicians were the same as those faced by non- Indigenous politicians. Media-specific issues experienced by female politicians were more marked by political affiliation and politicians’ rank than by ethnicity.
Participants noted that there was some evidence of improvement in gender equality in political reporting but not to the extent of significantly diminishing the gender gap in political coverage. The law on political parity played a pivotal role, not just in increasing the proportion of women in political institutions, but in raising their media profile. Despite this, however, sixteen years since the law came into effect, male politicians continue to dominate both political leadership roles and political media coverage. The consensus amongst research participants was that the media plays or has the potential to play an important role in women’s political representation. However, currently its influence on female politicians does not appear to be very significant. The media was more likely to influence high-ranking female politicians from loyalist parties. Their pro-independence counterparts generally attributed less importance to the role of the media.
In the next chapter I will discuss the findings presented in this chapter in relation to the relevant concepts and theories discussed in my literature review chapters. This will enable me to answer my research questions and provide some recommendations.
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