Equal Share: e-tools for Journalists

Launch of gender e-tools for journalists

Two e-tools for improved gender data sets were launched at CSW53 this week. They are:
- A data index measuring levels of gender (in)equality (www.oecd.org/dev/gender/gid) and
- An accompanying “wiki” website, called wikigender.org, which enables users to engage in dialogue via their online contributions or corrections (http://www.wikigender.org/)

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), who are the creators of the new e-tools, say the data instruments will add value for those who want to identify and measure aspects of gender equality. OECD says existing measures of gender equality focus on inequality outcomes, such as level of education and health status or economic and political participation of women. However, OECD also captures inequalities based on social institutions, such as norms and traditions that impact on gender equality.

Such aspects of human behavior are of particular interest to journalists – who can access “human interest stories” from the site, says the OECD’s Johannes Jütting.

Wikigender, as the name suggests, allows discussion and exchange, contributions and edits. Users can easily build, edit and link web pages.

But as Wikipedia has found, this bottoms-up approach can have its pitfalls.

I scrolled through two areas which interest me: Keywords “Kenya” and “Ownership Rights” and stumbled upon “Trousers and Gender Equality”.

So here’s some feedback to wikigender and OECD site:

+ Entry:
“The government of President Arap Moi has forbidden female genital mutilation in public hospitals and the Health Minister is trying to eradicate this practise altogether. Still, there is no formal law which condemns this act.”

My Comment:
Well, as of December 2002, the 24 year rule of Kenya's President Daniel Arap Moi was ended by the election victory of Mwai Kibaki.

+ Entry:
“Kenya is characterised by the coexistence of several institutional frameworks. The "code de la famille" and the ownership rights are completely different between three groups: the Muslim population, the traditional society and the modern society. In some cases, a married couple can belong to these two societies. For example, the statutory marriage can follow a customary one so that the wife and her husband have conflicting obligations and rights. Moreover, modern institutions are not respected by some judges, which critically affect the condition of women”.

My Comment:
The above paragraph calls for one of those wiki edits, which would provide “human interest” for the “norms and traditions” OECD would want to reflect. My addition would be: “Property and inheritance rights for women are tenuous in some communities. A woman can be disinherited by her in-laws when her husband dies.”

Dr Sharon Camp of the Guttmacher Institute says she believes the producers of statistics and data have a responsibility to ensure that it is accurate and that it is responsibly used.
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Two more entries on http://www.oecd.org/dev/gender/gid%20and%20wikigender.org almost tickled my fingers into a wiki-add-on. “Kenya: Civil Liberties - There are no constraints to women’s freedom of movement and the freedom of dress” and “Trousers and Gender Equality”, which sketches the history of emancipation as a gradual move towards the acceptance of trousers”.

My Comment:
These entries reminded me of the threat in 2008 by Kenya’s ethnically conservative Mungiki sect to undress any woman caught wearing trousers – particularly women belonging to the Kikuyu community, whose traditional norms the Mungiki had wanted to preserve. It happened during the height of Kenya’s political violence. Some Kikuyu women defiantly wore trousers, while others cowered in dresses for their safety.

If the wiki format works for wikigender, such add-ons and edits will continue to grow the site. Dr Camp says despite the dangers of dodgy data, it’s a good starting point to put information out there. She says good public policy is based on good science and believes these tools can help the media set the policy agenda. Ultimately websites such as these with well-sourced data can help journalists expose gender inequities around the world, she says.

The OECD believes if anything, the grassroots approach of wikigender will make it more accurate and credible than other top-down driven sites.

Now there’s a whole lot of valuable new gender data for journalists – some presented through graphic motion charts, visualized in dynamic presentations or conveniently broken down by geographic region. With wikigender the content of the site depends on external users – opening up the opportunity for fresh perspectives and the potential for information abuse. The challenge to journalists is to know which is which.