Sexism & Student Media

Sexism in student newspapers is a growing problem. It is occurring in the context of an ideological drive to push the idea that women are no longer oppressed. This drive is aimed at covering up the attacks by state and federal governments on the rights that women have won. Women's right to community child-care, abortion, women's services and anti-discrimination programs are all in the firing line.

Woroni, the student newspaper of the Australian National University, is one example of the increasing trend of student media to publish sexist material. Last September, Woroni ran a cover with a photograph of a woman sitting on top of a car with the words "No Fat Chicks'' painted on it. The image showed the woman lifting her shirt to a group of cheering male onlookers. Images such as this reinforce many sexist stereotypes.

They also reaffirm the increasingly common ideas that women are no longer oppressed and feminism is irrelevant, or even a form of "political correctness''. At around the same time last year, the University of Canberra's student paper, Curio, ran an article titled "Chicks you wanna punch in the face''.

In printing an article like this, the editors of Curio were dismissing the reality of violence against women. As well, they were once again reinforcing the false idea that the oppression of women no longer exists. Similar instances have occurred on universities around the country with the printing of "men's editions'' of campus newspapers.

These men's issues are justified by the argument that if women can have women's editions then men can have theirs too. In a context of systematic discrimination against women, women's editions of student newspapers can be an important avenue for discussing and challenging gender inequality. They are a form of affirmative action to redress women's more restricted access to the mainstream media and to other vehicles for information sharing.

They also help counter the dominant sexist ideas on campuses and in society by providing a means to educate students women and men about how sexism operates to disadvantage women. Men as a group don't require such affirmative action. They are not disadvantaged because they are men. Men's editions of student newspapers are based on a premise that is sexist and reactionary. Rather than printing articles and images which are a denial of women's oppression, student newspapers should be open forums for discussion and debate about the institutionalised nature of sexism and how to challenge and change it so that women's issues are, in the future, no longer necessary.

by Amanda Lawrence - Canberra