journalism

In the Land of Oz

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Following a story in today’s Guardian Australia by Samantha Prendergast I am looking for New Zealanders living in Australia doing it tough without the benefit of the Centrelink safety net. This is despite Australians in New Zealand having access to the full range of social support structures regardless of how long they have lived in New Zealand.

“When I came to Australia at the age of 12, I never expected to find myself age 23 with no access to social security. If I lost my job tomorrow, I’d be broke in four weeks time – and there’d be no Newstart or Youth Allowance to fall back on.

In 2001, two years before my family moved from Auckland to Adelaide, the then Howard government changed the visa rights for New Zealanders who moved to Australia. Previously, Kiwis were immediately eligible for Australian residency. But after 2001, every New Zealander who crossed the Tasman was placed on a non-protected special category visa (SCV), a temporary visa that is unique to New Zealanders and can be altered at any time. We can live here, work here, and access Medicare. But beyond that, services are limited. If people on SCVs want permanent residency and the benefits attached to it, there are few available options. Permanent residency is granted when people meet criteria that make them valuable to the Australian community – and that usually means having a long-term relationship with an Australian citizen, being highly skilled, or being a wealthy under-50 year-old with plans to invest in an Australian company. For many people, especially young New Zealanders who moved here as kids, the criteria are hard to meet and the consequences of staying on a SCV can be severe.”

New Zealanders can technically lose their residency rights in Australia overnight and it is very difficult to get other more permanent forms of residency.

You can read Samantha’s story here.

Anyone willing to share their story can get in touch through the contact form. If you wish to protect your identity please let me know within the contact form and we can go from there.

 

 

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SBS interview on orphanage voluntourism in Nepal

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Last week I was interviewed by the SBS Nepali show in Australia on my investigative journalism into the issues surrounding orphanage voluntourism in Nepal.

The interview covers the possible links to child trafficking and what volunteers need to consider before embarking on a paid for volunteer experience in the developing country.

You can listen to the interview here.

Gender & Language

/ Neesha / 7 Comments

How we speak and the language we use matters.
What are the subtle or transparent hegemonic themes you are enabling or engaging with when you chose to speak about a woman or man in a particular way?
What are the links to how you speak and how it is accepted or resisted?
 Are you engaging with how that links to emotional, physical, sexual, financial and legislative abuse of another because of gender?
Where is your  gender related behaviour motivated from? Love, fear, power or equality.Are you acknowledging the advantages you have because of where you are born, income, race, gender and belief system and what that enables in your life for no other reason than luck?Have you considered you live a privileged life because of those factors, that perhaps you do not see the huge inequities and power imbalances around you because you are protected from them?
Many aspects of language and everyday life have a latent gender bias. Stating this is not about blame but engaging with reality and deciding how we can act to address these inequalities from a place of acknowledgment and compassion.

These questions have been circulating around my brain: partly because I have been living in the developing world for nearly a year where gender disparities can be a little more blatant. But also because it feels that many do not engage with the intrinsic privilege that comes from the gender they are born into.  It is an assumed privilege, one that is not earned on merit, but by genetic chance.

This privilege is real and blatant, and also, in the developed world, subtle and underhand in articulation. As determined by gender, we engage in very real and different sets of expectations which affect access, power, agency and life quality.

This is illustrated through victim blaming, legislation, language that is gender assigned and has stronger negative connotations because of it, through how one can express one’s power or maturity, the standards you are expected to meet, your value in the market place (  Gender pay gaps are again increasing across the developed world – and up to 48 percent in Australia if you work in the health and community services sector) and influences expectations around appearance, career, how you behave, expressions of sexuality etc. Gender affects every aspect of existence.

And let’s be real here, the issue isn’t gender, its women.

Women  DO Not have real equality anywhere on this planet. Some places may be better than others but a true equality  does not exist when  by being born female you are engaged with from a hegemonic “women and other minorities” framework. Where our bodies are legislated against so we are unable by law to make decisions that affect every aspect our lives without it potentially being a criminal act. Where women who are successful are systematically targeted by the main stream media and their femaleness is targeted rather than their actions.

All of these things are connected to language, how power structures developed and predominantly male run speak, how men and women talk about each other, how dialogue around gender issues occurs and what the reaction points are.

Consider your language around gender – it is important – and is indicative of power and respect, love and fear. How you speak is how you think and that is indicative of everything when it comes to how your gender plays out in the world and how you live because of it.

Dancing with gender anger II – the audacity of women who dare to speak up to gender inequity

/ Neesha / 3 Comments

A few months ago I wrote a piece here about my growing frustration at rape terminology  being used as part of the American election campaign. The piece also touched on the general slippage occurring around gender issues. Or perhaps in a more nuanced explanation, how there seems to be a reluctance to engage with the gender issues that still remain in our society and culture.

This reluctance ranges from dismissal or that old classic in gender debates; a twisting of everything to make those speaking out about discrimination etc dance to prove the negative. And when you do, this is dismissed or an excuse is found not to engage with the evidence presented.  When these people are challenged to prove gender equality, equal representation, the twisting becomes more profound and in many occasions the debate then becomes personal.

A few days ago I posted Clementine Ford’s  International Women’s Day article Are Women’s Voices being Gagged to a New Zealand journalism Facebook forum Kiwi Journalist’s Association (KJA).

Essentially Ford argues the following;

 “If the media is a portal through which we see the world, how does the conspicuous  absence of women and their voices skew how people experience the world around them? Across the board, the facts show that women are significantly absent from that mirror the media reflects back onto society. Women operating in the public space are constantly reminded that their presence is a privilege, not a right – and that privilege can be taken away any time they break the rules.”

My reason for posting an Australian Fairfax created article in an NZ journalism forum was two-fold. One, the NZ media does not work in blessed isolation despite some of the protestations of those who objected to the article ( Fairfax owns a large percentage of the NZ media market), it’s posting and my defense of it. Secondly, the content of Ford’s piece is indicative of some of my experiences working in NZ media until I left the country in 2010 and I strongly believe illustrates the boy’s club type structure the media generally speaking operates from.

To clarify, my posting of the article wasn’t denying progress around gender issues but it was a statement that there are still considerable issues around gender  that the media industry in NZ has an obligation to address.

In some ways a majority of the reaction to my posting of the story is indicative of what I feel is the boy’s club mentality in action. That I should be grateful for what I have and to raise my head above the parapet and question the status quo isn’t the done thing. I am aware of the ramifications of speaking out and continuing to do so. There is an implicit risk to  speaking on gender issues; I will be labelled as difficult and I feel there are possible career implications.

In the discussion I was constantly asked to prove the inequality, which I along with a few other brave women journalists did. These studies were predominantly international and therefore were declared invalid by those protesting against Ford and our support of her argument. When NZ studies were produced these were also largely dismissed and then the statistics of the Massey University study were used as a justification for why there would not be parity and gender equally in NZ media for about 30 years ” because of the statistics.” When I asked, repeatedly for evidence of the gender equity and pay parity in NZ media none was offered and, in what I feel was a rather patronising tone, I was told I didn’t understand the argument.

I would like to post the thread in its entirety here but the KJA Facebook group is closed and by invitation only. Out of respect for my colleagues and the group  I will not post screeshots nor I will identify those who were particularly unhappy with my call for proof of equity in the NZ media industry. That said the administrators ironically proved Ford’s argument by closing the thread and “gagged” the female voices speaking out with evidence and experiential knowledge of how the NZ media can work for women.

I admit I hold KJA in far lesser regard due to the exchanges that took place in the forum and their lack of framework around gender issues that daily effect a large number of their membership. It also, from my perspective, speaks to the state of the industry that very few women spoke out about their concerns in an open forum and some male journalists felt free to behave in an unprofessional and sometimes bullying manner.

A number of women did contact me privately  and thanked me for speaking up and for confirming that they weren’t “going insane”. To those women, thank you for your support, it was an unpleasant run in which ultimately proved Ford right – I am appreciative of that. The article is not as one person stated “facts obscured by emotive, partisan twaddle.”

Here are some further links speaking to the  issues and general position of women in media. Please note all of these links were used  in the KJA discussion thread.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/for-women-newsroom-remains-a-battleground/story-e6frg996-1226563067616

http://www.knightfoundation.org/grants/20120284/

http://changetheratio.tumblr.com/

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU1112/S00093/women-journalists-flee-newspaper-careers.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/the-womens-blog-with-jane-martinson/2012/oct/15/shocking-dearth-of-women-in-journalism

http://journalistcomplaints.com/article/2012/07/meaa-needs-act-gender-bias-newsrooms

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/how-women-journos-stake-place/story-e6frg996-1225713076068

http://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/2780

Nepali journalists still targeted in Nepal

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“Both sides of the  (Nepali civil war) conflict committed abuses against press freedom during the civil war but promised to respect freedom of expression after the peace agreement. Yet many atrocities committed during the war remain un-investigated, and attacks on journalists continue with impunity.”

 The  Committee to Protect Journalists latest report, following the murder of Nepal FM journalist Shah in the central Bara District and subsequent trail, illustrates journalist safety is an ongoing concern in the Himalayan nation. With the  constitution negotiations coming to a head and other political uncertainties it is important journalists working in Nepal can work safely. The country is walking a tightrope and critical, in-depth journalism is essential to a good out come for the population not just Maoist insiders and other invested parties.