Focus on gender training for TV scriptwriters

Despite 30 years of experience in writing television and radio drama scripts in Pakistan, it was only after attending a gender training workshop that Musarat Clanchvi felt she could break away from stereotypical story lines portraying women in a negative light. "I was never as bold in my writing," she told IRIN from Lahore in Punjab Province. "I would always hesitate in making female characters assertive and strong, because I thought it would not be aired," she added. Clanchvi's latest television drama delves into the challenges and discrimination faced by a woman contesting elections in Pakistan. With more than 200 television and radio scripts for plays and dramas under her belt, Clanchvi thought the workshops run under the Portrayal of Women in the Media project had given her writing a new lease of life. The project, the first of its kind to be run in Pakistan, is a joint partnership between state-run television, PTV, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Established in 1998, the project runs until the end of September this year. "This is about changing attitudes of both men and women in the media," the UNDP project manager, Uzma Haroon, told IRIN in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. Focusing on capacity building, 24 workshops have been conducted nationwide on gender issues for media professionals to date. Three hundred and four male and 200 female scriptwriters, producers and technical staff, from both the private sector and PTV, have participated. Meanwhile, a separate session for Pakistani journalists was also held in Europe. "The aim is to portray a positive and balanced view of women through programming," Haroon said. The training was carried out by a gender training expert from the UK, as well as Haseena Moin, an acclaimed Pakistani scriptwriter, and was overseen by Pakistan's first female general manager of a PTV regional station, Moneeza Hashmi. "It's certainly something that has changed production policies and is pushing PTV in the right direction," she told IRIN from Lahore. Hashmi said there was much enthusiam from the participants, who were committed to changing attitudes towards female roles when scriptwriting. "Our immediate thrust is within PTV, but we do keep controls over independent programmes, and some have been told to go back and rerecord scenes," she added. However, Hashmi said, there were concerns over monitoring programmes once the project ended in September. "Monitoring is where we feel that we may fall short of sustainability, and we need UNDP to help us," she said. "We have asked them to continue the project, and if they don't, we feel they will be backing out at a crucial time," she asserted, describing the project as the most impressive effort on gender training for the media so far undertaken. The project has also enabled two female staff to train as camera operators for the first time ever in the history of PTV. "Handling the camera has always been male-dominated, and we offered some women a five-week training course on this," Haroon said. More importantly, however, was the attitude of men and, according to Haroon, the male participants had been supportive. "Men and women work together very comfortably in our workshops, and they are happy to talk about gender issues," she maintained. The gender sessions revolved around a theory class and discussion, followed by a practical session during which scriptwriters and producers were asked to write positive story lines for women. One aspect of the gender training was where writers were given characters and told to write a storyline about a woman leaving her husband, and to portray her in an assertive manner. "We want to change the story lines of women who are beaten by their husbands and have nowhere to go," Haroon said, adding that positive results had been achieved during the second session of practical writing. "Once we established that the story lines were written in a stereotypical way, writers changed their style in the second session," she noted. Asked if producers and writers would continue to change attitudes when writing, she replied: "We are monitoring them, and we have seen that writers are changing their story lines already." She explained that a momentum had been set in motion that would hopefully snowball. "We have trained 500 people, and they will be introducing the new ideas to their colleagues." Already one of the outcomes of the project was that PTV issued a directive in 1999 banning portrayals in PTV productions of abusive physical behaviour and demeaning language towards women and children. Nevertheless there are still private productions shown which do not adhere to the directive. "Sometimes there are scenes which do slip through, but are shown for a reason," Hashmi maintained. Prior to this directive there were no gender-sensitised programmes, nor any devoted to human rights, and women's rights in particular. Special programmes are also being produced by the project participants. One such is the woman's hour being shown by PTV broadcast twice daily. "The team behind this programme is 80 percent male, and we have ensured that they have received some training on how to portray women positively," Hashmi said. Commenting on the women participating in the workshop, Haroon said many of them had been brought up in a conservative society, adhered to stereotypical rules and were not very assertive, because they were afraid to express themselves boldly in their writing. Harassment of female staff had been another component of the project. "There is an informal forum where representatives from all departments attend and address gender concerns, either at the level of the staff in the organisation or content of programming," Haroon explained, adding that many issues relevant to women had been addressed. The forum also discussed new ways of portraying women, such as inserting slogans or quotations from the Koran, before and after programmes portraying women in a positive light. Funds have also been made available for gender-sensitive productions. A Pakistani NGO, Tehreek-e-Niswan (women's movement), has been chosen by UNDP to produce films on social issues with an emphasis on women. "The workshop really opened up my eyes, and it made me realise things about my writing that I did not think about before," a project member for Tehreek-e-Niswan, Anwar Jaffrey, told IRIN from the southern port city of Karachi. Today, Jaffrey is working on a series of short documentaries highlighting the problem of domestic violence in Pakistan. "Women are portrayed as submissive, and this is the stereotype for an ideal wife in this country," he said. He pointed out that the training also encouraged male participants to discuss the way they treated men and women in everyday life. "Some men realised that women are discriminated against, every day in some cases. For example, most Pakistanis paid more attention to educating male family members rather than the females, he said.