Gender Roles: Appendix
Focus group Discussion A
Displaced women
QUESTION ONE: What role do women play in conflict de-escalation?
- R1: When conflicts happen, no one tells women. We started hearing the rumors from our fellow women in our village. We had to dress the men in women clothes and make them up as well. They move together with the women and children so our enemies will not recognise the men.
- R2: When this conflict started if it were not for the women, men and children would have been killed. We used to keep our money which we used as transport fare for our families while running away from our villages.
- R3: At midnight we would come down from the mountain where we are all hiding with our husbands and children and pick food to feed them.
- R4: The men cannot come down from the mountain so even when we need to grind anything we will do so and take it to the men on the mountain.
Media Journalists
QUESTION TWO: How do the media reinforce gender roles?
- MP 1: Yes of course. For reinforcing gender roles by directing the women on what to do, how to think and also know where their children are at a particular time, speak to their children because in times of crisis, children of these women and their husbands are the ones who go out.
- MP 2: I think media jingles escalate conflicts when they don’t focus on the issues but want to be sensational and follow public trends. When media jingles try to be populist and try to appeal to what people want to hear would end up more or less reinforcing existing gender roles and keep stirring existing conflicts.
- MP 3: Yes media can reinforce gender roles when he kind of jingle promote peace and maybe depending on more and calling more people to brace up to the fight, like in the case of the Nigerian Biafra war, you could see the women trying to perform their function by supporting in cooking, singing and maybe join the red cross to dress the wounds of war victims.
- MP 4: This is about being cautious. The journalist in any media, print or electronic should adopt balance and eschew sensationalism. They must not delve into areas that will spark or sustain conflicts. At the time of conflict, what the media should do is to do things that will douse tension and ensure peace.
- MP 1: Media escalate conflicts in the sense that the jingles produced are one sided and the people concerned may say aah! they are supporting the other people and that will make them to become kind of violent.
- MP 2: Well we could do more of balanced reportage not siding one side against the other.
- MP 3: Media can escalate conflicts when they are not balanced, when they try to give or highlight one side of the conflict or saying what one side is doing for example, when they are killing more or one side is said to be killed more, we tend to get a lot more violent.
- MP 4: When the media produce jingles that contain emotional contents or hate speech. It is this kind of information that will make the different genders to take up roles that will support such conflicts