Talk on ‘gender and media’ held in Dimapur

Patkai Christian College (Autonomous), Multimedia and Mass Communication department organised a talk on “gender and media” at its studio, on Monday.
In a press release, PCC stated that resource person for the programme, NITI Aayog project coordinator, Prarthana Pawal stated that media was an important tool for ethical storytelling.
Prarthana Pawale shared her experience working in the area of gender advocacy, women and child health and education for marginalised children.
Explaining the gender-media relation, she stated that when people produced stories by reporting intersectionality between power, gender, caste, religion, they were challenging the power hierarchy and common narrative so that existing power relations was not reproduced.
“We need to acknowledge the above issues by creating awareness through these stories so that we don’t reproduce biases, after all its not just turning on the camera”, Prarthana stated.
Quoting UNICEF, she expressed the reinforcement of gender bias in Indian advertisements by adding that the concept of “femadvertising” was evident in the present time.
On intersectionality of gender and media, she stressed on the need to be gender sensitive in media reportage and that media was an important pillar of the five institutions—family, religion, education, government that constructs the gender roles in the society.
In this regard, she stated that it was important to address and talk about gender stereotypes propagated through ads, movies and story coverage.
Later, an interactive session was followed by a talk show recording of Prarthana under the guidance of assistant professor Rojen Wahengbam.
She spoke on NITI Aayog and its functions in the context of Nagaland.
Earlier, welcome address and short speech was delivered by MMC HoD, Dr. Dakter Esse.
The programme was participated by students from the departments of MMC and education with faculties.