Gender Equality Advocacy Through Media Monitoring: A Chat with Dr Sarah Macharia

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The 22nd episode of Her Media Diary podcast features Dr Sarah Macharia, a gender equality champion and the global coordinator of the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP). In the podcast session, she unpacks the slow pace of change despite extensive gender advocacy and training efforts and the need to embrace incremental progress. Read below her insightful conversation with AWiM’s co-founder, Dr Akinbobola.

Let’s start with your upbringing. Did you grow up in Nairobi or somewhere in Kenya? 

I partly grew up in Nairobi. I spent my very early years in the rural area of Nyeri, which is close to Mount Kenya until I was three. Then, when I was three, my dad came back. He was travelling abroad, so when he came back, he moved us to Nairobi, and I spent the rest of my life there. 

What was it like growing up in Nairobi? Tell us more. 

I’m the second born in a family of many children, but I’m the firstborn girl. I went to kindergarten in Nyeri when I was three. The school was, really what you’d find in a rural village with us writing on the floor on the way to school, we’d pick up sticks, which would be our pencils to write on the earthy ground. At that time, we had no books, no pens, but what nature provided. 

I remember being in the same class with my elder brother because my mother did not want to keep both of us at home. My brother was very competitive because we started school together. We have an age difference of about a year and a half, so I could compare how my brother was treated to how I was treated. I was hardwired to be a feminist and to be a gender equality champion from the get-go, maybe from the time I was in my mother’s womb. I have a particular sensitivity to discrimination on the basis of just because one was born female. I see the same thing in my mother. I see her interactions and her critique of the world. I remember my mother standing up for the women in her life, especially me. My mother got rid of the barriers that culture would have placed on me as a girl. She was the buffer between the culture and my world. 

For instance, since my brother and I were in the same class and Kenyan exams were very competitive—you must perform well to get admitted into a secondary school of your choice—we studied a lot. My dad saw us both studying at the end of primary school exams. My mother is in the kitchen cooking. And my dad said, “Wambui, my middle name, help your mother in the kitchen.” I tried to protest. I said, but, Dad, we have exams. He (my brother) has an exam, why are you telling me, not him? He wouldn’t hear any of that. So I went to the kitchen to help my mother, but my mother told me to go back and study. 

There were many incidents like that, and my mum always stood up for me. And then I went to secondary school. It happened because we were so competitive. I was a bookworm. I worked hard. I went to one of the most prestigious high schools—secondary schools in Kenya—not because I had money but because I performed well in my exams. 

I’m curious about your relationship with your brother and your competitiveness. Was it healthy competition? How would you describe that? 

Sometimes, it wasn’t healthy. I remember when we used to watch movies together as a family; my brother told me that women could never star in a movie. When he said that, I couldn’t believe it. So I watched every movie and American soap opera that came out during that period, and there was no woman’s name in those roles so that was me wanting to prove that women could have the same careers as men and that there shouldn’t be any obstacles. 

While growing up, for instance, when you wanted to take a bus, all the drivers were men. When you see people in authoritative roles, they are men. When you go to the doctor, they are men. So, in some senses, it was healthy for me because it made me strive to achieve my goals. My brother and I were enemies for a long time, but now we are good friends. 

Do you remember your earliest light bulb moments when you realised there was some gender inequality in society? 

There was no particular point. I naturally gravitated towards gender equality and feminist work right from growing up to where I am now. For example, when my younger siblings were in diapers, my mother would tell my dad, why don’t you change the diaper? And because she was so strong in that way, there was no arguing with her. 

I’m curious to know more about your mom because it seems that she was consciously trying to fight against gender discrimination. So, what’s her story? 

My mother was one of five girls with two brothers. She was raised by parents, especially her father, who believed in equality. Her father grew up during the independence movement in Kenya, so he was more aware of the importance of education.

I learned later, when my mother was about to go into her secondary school because she had so many siblings who came after her and were also in school, she had to repeat classes. Her parents told her they had no money to pay her fees to secondary school. She repeated the year. They still could not find fees for her. She repeated. And she was always a top student. So, that led her to have that strengthened resolve to do better for the next generation because she just didn’t have access to the education she desired and craved. 

When she had many of us children in succession, she ended up being a stay-at-home mother. But, in our culture, there’s nothing like a stay-at-home mother. Every mother at home is working, toiling away absolutely.  

When her last child flew from the nest, there was some kind of, I would say, depression because she felt; what was her use now? Because I saw how much that affected her, I asked her what she wanted to do. At that time, I was in university, and she said she wanted to start a business. She started a small-scale business, which most women, whether educated or not, do. They start up something, whether they’re selling vegetables by the side of the road or they’re selling secondhand clothes. So my mother was doing that. That also influenced what I studied for my master’s degree. My master’s thesis was trying to understand what a feminist approach would be to the governance of urban informal trade. That’s where she found herself because she could earn something for herself. My father was always present, but he is a traditional African man in many respects. Some things were okay culturally to him, but my mother saw things differently, and she’s influenced a lot of who I am and who I’ve become. 

You can see that journey of how your mom’s history has impacted your kind of history and, therefore, where you are today. When you reflect on the entirety of it, what has been the core thing it has ingrained in you? 

The resolve to keep on. If you believe in something and it is something that you’re passionate about, then you have to forge ahead. That influenced my entire career trajectory, even in how I proceeded. For example, I studied French in education after my bachelor’s degree in Kenya. I studied to be an instructor of French as a second language and secretary of studies. 

Because of my French, I worked at my first job in a Rwandese company based in Nairobi. My very kind boss told me that, you know, you cannot say that you speak French if you’ve not lived in a French country. So, I decided that I needed to go to France. I had no money apart from what I was earning, which was not very much. However, I learned about a programme where girls go to another country to learn their language. In exchange for that, they live within a family and look after the children. So I applied for it. 

My mother’s resolution not to see every obstacle as a challenge influenced me. I managed to go to Paris for two years for the programme, where I continued studying French. I also studied to become a French-English interpreter because I was still searching for my career path. But, you know, those feminist principles were always a part of me. After returning to Kenya, I gravitated again to working in an African feminist movement at the time because of my upbringing.

What was your experience in France like? 

It was my first time travelling out of the country. I remember my father saying, “You’re going to look after white people’s children.” I said, no, I am going to study, and looking after French children will help me pay my fees and upkeep. 

So, my experience in France was cocooned. I was in a French family. They were nice to me. My social circle was my Kenyan girlfriends, who were also doing the same work as me. Then, there was the other international student group I was in. It was called the British Institute in Paris. So, these students from the University of London came to Paris for their final year in France. That was my community. 

You’re most known for the global media monitoring project, which has been conducted every five years since 1995 and reviews gender in news media. How do you connect your PhD in political science with gender and news media? 

One thing I learned was that gender is politics. So, before I even did my PhD, I worked at the African Center for Women, which was one of the divisions in the Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa. I lived in Ethiopia for two years. When I was there, I saw how my colleagues all had masters or Ph. Ds. I wanted the same because I was curious about knowledge and wanted to get into political science. 

I found this very left-wing university in Canada, which is York University. I went into the political science programme, where I focused on women in politics. As I was preparing to write my dissertation, I think, around my fifth year of the PhD programme, I saw this opportunity at the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) to manage their gender programme. At that time, it was the media and gender justice programme. So I thought, anything that has to do with feminism or gender equality, I mean, doesn’t matter what it is I am in, as long as I am fighting the cause I am in. I was grateful to have been accorded that opportunity. 

I got into WACC, and just by serendipity, the global media monitoring project is WACC’s flagship initiative. That’s how I ended up coordinating the GMMP. I’ve done three GMMPs so far. The GMMP is a global study on gender in the world news media. It takes the pulse on the patterns of change and the direction of change in how gender equality dimensions are integrated with news reporting, journalism, and ethics from a gender perspective. It takes talk and tries to make comparisons across time and regions. It’s been running since 1995, and 2025 will be the 7th edition. So, it has been an amazing experience. 

As somebody coordinating this global and well-respected project, what is that experience like for you? 

It’s been amazing being part of this global network and at the nexus of academia, civil society, and the media industry. First, seeing how the issues are common across cultures, the world, and regions. It’s not something that is confined to a single geography or a single culture, but the issues of discrimination against women in the news media, the issues of gender stereotyping of women’s lack of voice, especially on issues that concern the most, such as, say, reproductive health. Reproductive health concerns everybody, but it concerns women, women more because it has a direct impact on them. It’s been a learning experience to learn how to navigate different cultures and build and sustain a network. 

When you reflect on all your work on gender, what is the one aspect that keeps you up at night? 

First of all, seeing that things do not change that easily. I was always troubled that despite all the work that especially civil society has been doing in this area, trying to lobby and advocate, so much training has gone into this, so much money has been poured into training, yet the change is so slow. Then, when we were doing the most recent GMP in 2020, I was troubled by this lack of substantive or significant change. I came across a piece of writing that said, you know, if you’re looking for a revolution, you’ll be forever disappointed. You have to be satisfied with incremental change, which is progressive.

We have seen incremental change, bit by bit, but we have to be thankful for what has happened. Then, in the past several years, we’ve seen this backlash against gender equality worldwide. We’ve seen it in the numbers published in the global data on different thematic areas and gender equality, which is also troubling. 

At the last Commissioner Status of Women, an annual conference where governments report on their progress in implementing their commitments from the Beijing platform for action to gender equality, CSW in March of this year, there was palpable dissatisfaction because of the concern that we are having to rebuild from the beginning, which can be disheartening. 

Then we have all these other movements, which are counter-feminist movements, that are detracting from our central goal, which is trying to advance and progress for half of the world’s population, which is women. So we have all these noises on the side, making gender equality difficult. As UN Women have said, it’s an ever-more-distant goal. So these are things that concern me and others that concern me. 

Unfortunately, some women also participate in these pockets of backlash against women, unheard-of sexism, and sex torture. Tech facilitated GBV, and we see it in all spaces. I’m back in Kenya after having lived in Canada for almost two decades and seeing that this is part of everyday life where I live. I see how the children, even little girls in my neighbourhood, objectify themselves and put themselves out there to be objects of desire. So, I mean, it concerns me that the world has taken huge leaps backwards. 

How do we use Artificial Intelligence as a stopgap to make significant changes? 

I’ve been thinking about this in a study that I did recently. A scan to see where the women in tech are developing these AI products, and I am quite astounded that the situation is worse than I thought. I remember last year, CSW was all about technology and developing feminist technologies. In every session I went to, it’s almost impossible to see a woman of colour’s face in those who are developing these technologies.

So, while there might be well-meaning white feminists and technologists, there’s something to be said for lived experience. If you haven’t lived it or walked in those shoes, then you cannot know. So, how do we ensure that the next generation of AI is moving towards what speaks for us as African women and women of colour? What speaks to our realities? That, the algorithms or the information fed to train these machines or these technologies is part of our experience? It has to be us who do it. 

So the way forward is to do what’s possible. To pave the way for young women technologists to inhabit the space of building the Internet architecture. To pave the way for these women, young women technologists who know these things, to be part of those who are shaping governance. 

I came across this talk where the speaker talked about how philanthropy is biased towards women. It’s the same critique that’s been there about the lack of funding for the work that women do and the work of women. When it comes to technology, technologists thrive on venture capitalists. However, for the venture capitalists to fund the work to support the work of African women technologists, the data shows that there is a huge bias. There might be some lack of capacity to state the business case. So when it comes to speaking to a venture capitalist, it’s a different kind of voice that’s needed, the voice that, you know, men are trained in. 

Those who are trained to be assertive maybe women and men from the West. Those who are trained to speak, whether they know what they’re speaking about or not. But for an African woman to state her case, it’s much more difficult. For women of colour, it’s usually a case of being brought up in a culture that is so profoundly patriarchal and so deeply against women speaking up. So these are the things that work against us. However, for the tech sector to change, it is necessary to get women into those spaces. 

What advice would you give to young, upcoming gender advocates? How can we move that needle a bit further, even if it’s not all the way?

Passion is the first key ingredient because, without passion, you easily give up. Imagine if those fighting for women’s right to vote had given up. I think it took maybe a century or so, plus. Yeah. So it’s important not to give up. Also, if you want to see change, you have to measure it. So, take part in some kind of monitoring initiative. You have to collect the data. Without the data, you cannot make a convincing case. 

So, for young people who are coming up, it is important to build critical media literacy. It’s more than being able to understand what the media is telling you; it’s the ability to see whose voices and perspectives are missing. What is the skew? What is the slant? So, building that critical media literacy is essential. The GMMP, which is a gem of the global women’s movement for gender equality in and through the media, the M GMP has produced the tools that make it easy to understand what these indicators are and how you measure, understand, and document them. Only by doing that can one see where there is a need for change and who to bring in.

When one takes part in a movement on gender equality in the media, then it becomes clear that many others around the world are doing this. So it’s no longer a lonely effort but an effort of a global community. So be part of the movement, be passionate and trust your intuition. Continue to hold those who should be held into account. When you see these injustices happening, bring it to the attention of those who have been elected to uphold issues of democracy, gender equality, and justice. 

If there were areas of best practices that you see are quite significant and we need to latch on to and build on, what would you say that was? 

Be part of the GMMP and join a monitoring team in your country. If none exists in your country, create one. African Women in Media network has brought together all those who work with or in the media. So, be part of a network. So, it becomes not an isolated task but part of a network and a movement. If you want things to change, there has to be a movement that does this, not just one person. 

So what next for you, Dr Sarah Macharia? 

We have the GMMP that’s coming up in 2025. So, in one way or the other, I will be part of it. Again, I have seen the need to nurture a tech ecosystem that is responsive to the needs of African women. I would like to be part of initiatives that bring African young women front and centre to building the tech infrastructure that will work for us. We say AI is the future, but without African women in AI, there would not be a future that works for us.