PART 3: EFFECTS OF NEW MEDIA AND GENDER EQUITY

Another factor to consider on culture impregnation is the attempts to transform in-equitable gender relationship in the African culture in the context of globalization better neo-globalization in economic, political and social structures. The level at which New Media has stimulated a global consciousness has led to a significantly heightened awareness of the experiences of others. As result neo-liberal globalization is as much a culture as it is an economic process.

READ ALSO: Culture, Gender and Development in Africa

What is interesting about the gender equality is that the past originated outside of Africa. Today we are seeing greater simultaneity in that initiatives are also originating from within the continent which has empowered African women to participate in nation equally in nation building unlike the native African culture which did not have any value or regards to African women and always reserved them places in the kitchen and being the beast of society.

In a case in Algeria, according to Meredith Tax, “gender-based censorship has taken the form of an explicit war on women, as Islamist militants have targeted women, particularly educated, “modern” ones and women journalists, for rape and murder. While the militants make war on women out of policy, government death squads disguised as militants do so to discredit the Islamists, or simply because they can. Young girls are killed merely for going to school, and more than 200 women writers and journalists have been murdered since 1983.”

On a more advantageous sphere, Africa, women have mostly been involved in farming, in employment as civil servants, and in industry. They have also been involved in small-scale entrepreneurships. No doubt, these sectors have been severely affected by the introduction of trade liberalization. Women on this continent contribute the most critical factor in agricultural production and agriculture.

Yet liberalization has failed to ensure the availability of credit, agricultural inputs such as fertilisers and insecticides at affordable prices. The marketing of their produce has been thrown in the hands of businessmen whose sole objective is profit maximisation. The result - food security in Africa is highly threatened. Women constitute majority of the communal farmers in Africa. In rural areas the impact has been so serious that rural urban migration has increased to unfortunate proportions. This in turn has led to the increase of squatters in urban areas and crime which affects mostly women and children.

  CONT...... PART 4: New Media, Culture Imperialsm and the Lessons from Greater Asian Countries