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Feminist Media Studies

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Introduction
Jane Arthurs & Usha Zacharias
Published online: 03 Sep 2007.

To cite this article: Jane Arthurs & Usha Zacharias (2007) Introduction, Feminist Media Studies, 7:3, 333-348, DOI:
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COMMENTARY AND CRITICISM

INTRODUCTION

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Women and radio

Jane Arthurs and Usha Zacharias

Radio remains relatively neglected and under-researched in feminist media studies. Yet for the
majority of people in the world radio remains the primary medium to which they have easy
access, and the low cost of production has enabled mainstream broadcasting to be
supplemented by non-commercial uses where the emphasis has been on education and
community development. We therefore invited contributors to draw attention to the ways in
which radio has, or could be, used to enhance womens lives, whether through womenoriented entertainment, or through political and other forms of development. We also asked
for commentaries on the influence that women producers or presenters have had on the
historical and global development of radio and for studies of individual programmes which
have had a significant impact, whether through stylistic innovations which brought new
female audiences to radio or because they have introduced feminist ideas and analysis to their
listeners. The response has brought contributions from across this range, including two from
women who have worked in mainstream and community radio and who use this as the starting
point for their commentaries. All three accounts provide an insight into institutional as well as
socio-political developments that have enabled or inhibited new forms of address to female
listeners, including in one case the crucial role played by education and training. They also
reveal how this is affected by the very specific media ecologies of different nation states, from
the long tradition of public service radio broadcasting in the UK, to the newly formed network
of community radio in Mozambique. Access to the BBCs written archives has also allowed two
of our contributors to reflect on the historical development of radio addressed to women and
how it has negotiated their changing roles in the workforce and in the home.
The section starts with this historical perspective on the development of women as
an audience for radio in the UK. The first commentary from Christina Baade, discusses Music
While You Work (BBC 1940 1967), a half hour programme that was introduced in order to
contribute to the war effort by offering background music for factory production workers.
The music was thought to provide a remedy to the disciplinary problems posed by newly
conscripted women unused to working in factories by a management that regarded them
as disorderly, not only because they were novice, and therefore slow, but also because
the monotonous nature of the work made them prone to gossiping, dawdling, and
Feminist Media Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3, 2007
ISSN 1468-0777 print/ISSN 1471-5902 online/07/030333-348
q 2007 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14680770701477990

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absenteeism. The programme was also a favourite amongst women at home for whom it
helped to leaven the boredom of housework, an audience group who were only
acknowledged by the BBC producers once the war was over and womens role in the home
reasserted. Radio for housewives was also the impetus for a post-war innovation at the BBC,
the long running magazine programme Womans Hour (BBC 1946). Drawing on two
published anthologies of items from the programme, Sally Feldman, a former producer,
looks back over the history of its engagement with housework, as a telling barometer of
how it has dodged as well as documented feminist debate over the past 60 years. Its
original purpose, to help recreate domestic life after the war, has inevitably shifted as the
womans movement brought other issues into the foreground of debate about womens
lives. What has also changed is the programmes tone which in the past was tied to BBC
ideals of impartiality but is now more openly partisan in its support of feminist politics,
whilst trying to retain its broad appeal.
The final commentary addresses womens participation as producers in
community radio in Africa and how this can contribute to feminist consciousness raising.
Birgitte Jallov offers an inspiring account of the success of a development initiative which
she helped to facilitate, to strengthen the role of women in the community in Mozambique
through the organisation of a network of community radio stations. The 3-day Chimoio
Festival that instigated this development allowed for in-depth discussion amongst the
women that gave the impetus for this project and the setting up of regional networks
based on agreed principles of womens rights. As a consequence the proportion of women
working in the local stations as producers has increased dramatically as it has at the national
level in the Forum for Community Radio, which now has a Gender Monitoring Group and a
draft gender policy for fighting the obstacles to womens participation and for
mainstreaming gender as an issue in all areas of community radio.
REFERENCES
MUSIC WHILE YOU WORK

(radio programme) (1940 1967) British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC),

UK.
WOMANS HOUR

(radio programme) (1946 ) British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), UK.

BETWEEN FACTORY AND HOME

Music while you work and women listeners
at the wartime BBC
Christina Baade, McMaster University

First broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) during World War II, Music
While You Work (MWYW) featured a half hour of continuous, mostly live music directed to

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335

factory workers. By 1945, the programme was heard by over eight million workers, along
with numerous home listeners, earning it listener figures of over 20 percent of the available
audience. Industrialists regarded the programme as especially beneficial for
their challenging new work force: conscripted young women engaged in diluted
(i.e., simplified) labour, whose apathetic and unruly bodies could slow production and even,
according to Mass-Observation (1943, p. 8), threaten the health of all democracy. MWYW
helped to discipline factory workers by offering repertory that, paradoxically, usually
accompanied the leisure activities of dancing and background listening. Although the
programme was popular with housewives, MWYWs producers pointedly ignored home
listeners, focusing their extensive research apparatus upon factory workers. Nevertheless,
by the wars end, the programme was branded as entertaining, light background music for
domestic spaces, an association that persisted until it ended in 1967. This essay argues that
concerns with women conscripts informed the BBCs wartime innovations in background
music on MWYW, which women working at home then appropriated for their own
purposes.
During the inter-war years, the BBC regarded attentive listening as critical to its
mission of educating and uplifting the public. The 1930 BBC Yearbook suggested, Listen as
carefully at home as you do in a theatre or concert hall... Try turning out the lights so that
your eye is not caught by familiar objects in the room (BBC cited in Scannell & Cardiff 1991,
p. 371). The instructions assumed familiarity with concert etiquette, a quiet room, and a
listener who was at leisure in the home (iconically, the tired businessman). Few listeners
followed such prescriptions, however, using the wireless as no more than... a convenience,
a commodity, a cheerful noise in the background (Scannell & Cardiff 1991, p. 373). The BBC
promoted attentive listening at a time when an increasing number of establishments
provided live background music to their patrons, an amenity that radio extended to the
home (Nott 2002, p. 116). Its acknowledgement of background listening in wartime
programming represented a distinct policy shift.
MWYW first aired on June 23, 1940, 3 weeks after Dunkirk, in support of the nations
effort to rebuild its armaments in anticipation of German invasion. The BBC aimed to
please workers and relieve the tedium of work in... factories (Assistant Controller
[Programmes] 1940). Production drives provided the impetus for MWYW, but its
groundwork was laid in 1930s industrial psychology which regarded music as especially
helpful in mitigating the dehumanising effects of scientific management. Wartime
industrialists turned to music as demands for sustained high output supplanted frenetic
production drives, inexperienced conscripts replaced skilled workers, and complex jobs
were diluted into monotonous tasks. Women workers, conscripted from December 1941,
were of special concern. Numerous disciplinary problems were gendered as feminine by
managers, including dawdling, absenteeism, conversation, and lengthy restroom breaks.
Mass-Observation (1943, p. 6) investigated why the new workforce was so
problematic when it sent the Cambridge-educated Celia Fremlin to observe a war factory,
posing as an ordinary conscript.1 At first, she reported, assembly line work was definitely
pleasant, rather like knitting in a fairly plain pattern, but as the day progressed,
a bewildering sense of helplessness comes over one; nothing one does can ever make a
time as long as that pass (Mass-Observation 1943, pp. 27, 30). Repetitive labour sapped
morale, understood not as optimism but rather as a tolerance of wartime conditions, a
sense of commitment to the war effort, and a belief in ultimate victory (Nicholas 1996, p. 3).
The BBC and factory managers viewed MWYW as palliative for disorderly behaviour by

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female workers, crediting it with improving morale, reducing over-long breaks, and
discouraging talking on the assembly line.
An unstated benefit of MWYW was that it brought an imagined community directly to
workers isolated by geography and long hours. This was reinforced in its signature tune and
opening announcement, Calling All Workers (Reynolds 1941, no page number). According
to the Radio Times, Eric Coates composed it when his wife suggested, Why dont you write
a workers march? After all, we are all workers, from Cabinet Ministers to roadsweepers
(Fletcher 1940, p. 5). The march, with its military and disciplinary associations, included all
listenersnot only soldiersin the war effort. Framing each programme, its repetition and
familiarity further reinforced MWYWs imagined community, united in a single cause.
Although MWYWs producers scrutinised the programmes reception in factories,
they disregarded domestic listeners: To be quite blunt, the BBC doesnt worry whether you
people at home enjoy Music While You Work or not (Music While You Work 1941, p. 3).
You people at home implicated housewives, for unlike commercial radio, the BBC had
long neglected to address women as a specific audience for entertainment (Hilmes 1998,
p. 32). MWYWs home audience was significant, however; in 1940, it was over six times
larger than the factory audience.2 BBC Listener Research (1940a, no page number) noted,
The programme is highly popular for home listening, particularly among housewives who
like to hear it while they work. Responding to a critic of background listening, one woman
argued, If Mr. Buckham had had a reasonable experience of the kitchen sink, he would
appreciate how vital our background music can be, occupying our minds and raising us
above ash in the saucers and unscrapable potatoes (Your Taste in Light Music 1944, p. 4).
Clearly, a double standard, rooted in a public and private split, existed when the BBC
scolded women who listened while they worked at home for abusing music while it
regarded music for female conscripts as a national concern.
Creating music for workers consolidated a populist British musical aesthetic. In 1945,
the producer Reynolds (1945, no page number) concluded, It may truly be said that Music
While You Work has become a National Institution... Even the title has become a symbol of
a form of light entertainment that is equally suitable for the factory or the home. Those
listening at home were often portrayed as female domestics or housewives. In Waughs
Sword of Honour (1965, p. 629), a housekeeper crowned her mornings labour with a cup of
tea and a performance on the wireless of Music while you Work, while an advertisement
for speakers juxtaposed images of male factory workers with a middle-aged woman beside
a tea set (Whiteley Radio Electrical Company Limited 1941). MWYW also provided leisure
entertainment for the home: its listening figures were highest for the night and week-end
sessions, when comparatively few listeners are at work (Reynolds 1945, no page number).
The circuits between labour and leisure, home and factory extended leisure
associations into the factory. MWYWs repertory helped to improve industrial discipline, but
its strict-tempo dance music also referenced the palais-de-danse, its theatre organs were
associated with cinema going, and its light music, played by tea shop ensembles,
recalled dining out. Such activities were located within escapistand feminisedmass
culture: their auditory evocation relaxed industrys regimented atmosphere. In Priestleys
(1943, pp. 25 26) Daylight on Saturday, a foreman, observing three young people bobbing
to MWYW, decided that the factory had become something between a dance hall, a chapel
bazaar, a glorified cafe and the Y.M.C.A.... and... they were turning out planes as if they were
mousetraps. MWYW rendered audible the changes wrought during the war: the
penetration of women into factories and the works mechanised character.

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Despite the recognition of MWYWs home audience, industrialists were the most
influential advocates for the programmes post-war broadcast. The BBCs decision to
continue the programme coincided in July 1945 with a landslide victory for the Labour
Party, which had convincingly articulated its plan for a better post-war society. The new
notions of communal citizenship involved significant pressure for women to return to
domesticity, but many thinkers advocated for greater valuation of domestic labour and
argued that women would not abandon civic engagement (Rose 2003, pp. 144149).
MWYW smoothed the way between the two spheres of womens labour, as well as
between war- and peacetime. Designed as a disciplinary tool, it also improved life for
workers in homes and factories and acknowledged subversively that much work was
drudgery, particularly for women. More importantly, it provided a way to enact positive
citizenship and experience social cohesion, which had so concerned Mass-Observation in
its discussion of female conscripts. In the post-war world of personal audio devices, from
transistors to iPods, it is easy to forget the communal nature of earlier listening practices.
MWYW promoted group listening, which involved negotiations of shared spaces and
different tastes. Despite its producers wartime resistance to considering the housewife
audience, MWYW extended into the post-war home the wartime aims of humanising labour
and building community.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My thanks to the BBC Written Archives Centre in Caversham, especially the head
archivist Jacquie Kavanagh, for permission to reprint BBC copyright material in this
article.

NOTES
1. Fremlin was not identified by name in War Factory, but is named by Kirkham (1995, p. 16).
2. In November 1940, Listener Research reported that the average morning audience was
4,700,000 at home and 750,000 in factories, while in the afternoons an average of 3,200,000
listened at home while 150,000 listened in factories (BBC Listener Research 1940b).

REFERENCES
(1940) Letter to Mr. Andrew Stewart (Ministry of
Information), June 18, BBC WAC R27/257/1.
BBC LISTENER RESEARCH (1940a) Weekly report no. 6, week ending 24 August 1940, BBC WAC
R9/1/1.
BBC LISTENER RESEARCH (1940b) Weekly report no. 15, week ending 30 November 1940, BBC WAC
R9/1/1.
FLETCHER, GUY (1940) This weeks miscellany, Radio Times, 30 August, p. 5.
HILMES, MICHELE (1998) Who We Are, Who We Are Not: Broadcasting and National Identity in the US
and Great Britain, 19201940, Department of Communication Arts, University of
Wisconsin, unpublished paper.
ASSISTANT CONTROLLER (PROGRAMMES)

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KIRKHAM, PAT (1995) Beauty and duty: keeping up the (home) front, in War Culture: Social Change

and Changing Experience in World War Two Britain, eds P. Kirkham & D. Thoms, Lawrence &
Wishart, London, pp. 13 28.
MASS-OBSERVATION (1943) in War Factory: A Report, ed. T. Harrison, Victor Gollancz Ltd, London.
MUSIC WHILE YOU WORK (radio programme) (1940 1967) BBC, UK.
MUSIC WHILE YOU WORK: IMPORTANT BBC ENQUIRY THIS WEEK (1941) Radio Times, 4 July, p. 3.
NICHOLAS, SIAN (1996) The Echo of War: Home Front Propaganda and the Wartime BBC, 1939 45,
Manchester University Press, Manchester.
NOTT, JAMES (2002) Music for the People: Popular Music and Dance in Interwar Britain, Oxford
University Press, Oxford.
PRIESTLEY, JOHNBOYNTON (1943) Daylight on Saturday, Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York.
REYNOLDS, WYNFORD (1941) Music While You Work: special instructions for programme
announcers, BBC WAC R27/257/2.
REYNOLDS, WYNFORD (1945) Music While You Work: survey of the 5th year of the series, BBC WAC
R27/257/4.
ROSE, SONYA (2003) Which Peoples War? National Identity and Citizenship in Britain 1939 1945,
Oxford University Press, Oxford.
SCANNELL, PADDY & CARDIFF, DAVID (1991) A Social History of British Broadcasting: Volume 1, Serving
the Nation, 1922 1939, Basil Blackwell Ltd., Oxford.
WAUGH, EVELYN (1965) Sword of Honour, Chapman and Hall, London.
WHITELEY ELECTRICAL RADIO COMPANY, LIMITED (1941) Advertisement for Stentorian extension
speakers, Electrical Trading and Radio Marketing, July, p. 39.
YOUR TASTE IN LIGHT MUSIC (letters) (1944) Radio Times, 1 September, p. 4.

DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES
60 years of BBC radios Womans Hour
Sally Feldman, Westminster University, London

On a recent edition of Womans Hour the publishing maverick Kelvin Mackenzie, complained
that his partner made him do too much housework and it was time women went back to the
kitchen where they belonged. After all, he reasoned, theyre physically better suited to it
because, being smaller, theyre better able to see the dirt. Such a Neanderthal view was
appropriate coming from the loutishly outspoken ex-editor of The Sun newspaper, the UKs
best-selling tabloid which every day features pictures of topless women and which thrives on
a diet of gossip and sex scandals. But rather than being castigated he was gently teased by
the political pundit Amanda Platell. Her partner was prone to the same kind of delusion, she
explained. Its well known that most men think theyre doing far more housework than they
really are, by dint of feeling so noble when they do any at all. She bemoaned mans inability
to see muck, which she put down to their lacking the hoover gene.

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The discussion was prompted by research by the Royal Economic Society which showed
that there is still a massive gap between the amount of time men and women devote to
housework. Jenni Murray introduced it with the famous line from Frenchs The Womens
Room (1978) which the programme had recently serialised: I hate discussions about
feminism that end up with who does the dishes. But thenthere are always the dishes.
Both the choice of serial, and the wry treatment of the time-honoured housework debate,
are curiously contemporary takes on one of the big issues of the womens movement. And
both suggest that the ways in which Womans Hour has portrayed housework, from
fanatical obsession to affectionate joshing, is a telling barometer of how it has dodged as
well as documented feminist debate over the past 60 years.
When Womans Hour was launched in October 1946 its mission was far from radical.
Its purpose, according to its creator Norman Collins, was to help women to recreate domestic
life after the ravages of war. Housework was the programmes passion. It was filled with
earnest advice on how to knit your own stair carpet, how to bleach your blackout curtains,
and how to deslime your flannel. But even then, it quickly began to reach beyond that
modest brief, with items on womens work, the campaign for better wages for homeworkers
and the introduction of a weekend repeat of the programme for working women. So right
from the start the programme offered far more than domestic advice. It was inspirational:
interviewing achieving women, following the progress of women in public life and
conducting stimulating discussions and interviews. A compilation of excerpts from the last
60 years, Womans Hour (2006), published to celebrate the anniversary, includes early
interviews with political figures such as Nancy Astor, Vera Brittain, Indira Ghandi, and Barbara
Castle, as well as celebrities like the sculptor Elizabeth Frink, singer Shirley Bassey, and the
actor Judi Dench. A 1951 talk from a Conservative MP, Thelma Cazalet-Keir, called for equal
pay for women (Womans Hour 2006, p. 81) and a piece by economist Honor Croome asked:
Is There a Future for Feminism? (in which she concludes that she very much hopes so)
(Womans Hour 2006, p. 45). It also pioneered discussion about sexual issues, and the
programme very quickly established a reputation for speaking frankly about matters like the
menopause and homosexuality that had not until then been aired in public.
At the same time, though, it remained faithful to its original purpose with regular
items on cookery, cleaning, home design, and childcare. And it has never stopped doing
that. What has changed so radically over the past 60 years is the tone and the assumptions
with which such items are treated. It does seem incredible now that a programme devoted
to the interests of women should have remained so unpartisan at the advent of the
womens liberation movement during the late 1960s and 1970s. Key figures would be
interviewed with dispassionate interest. Even major changes like the introduction of equal
pay and equal opportunities legislation in the mid-1970s was covered without any
assumption that this was the programmes agenda. Indeed, the programme regularly
featured men.
This is partly because of the British Broadcasting Corporations (BBC) commitment to
balance and fairness. Producers in those first decades would not wish to be branded as
espousing any cause, especially women who would have felt a responsibility to be as
professional and as objective as men. They believed, with some justification, that this
refusal to bow to fashion or ideology helped to preserve the programme as a haven for all
women regardless of their position in the gender wars.
Tentatively, though, issues of sexual politics began to creep into the mix. A perennial
theme, right from the start, was the dilemma facing women who wanted to combine

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motherhood and marriage with work. It was a conflict summed up by the composer
Elizabeth Lutyens, interviewed on the programme in the late 1940s: You cannot marry and
have a career, they said. These theysthese ogres . . . What ghastly tyrannythis choice
(Murray, 1996, p. 70).
In a previous collection, The Womans Hour, a celebration of 50 years of the
programme, Murray (1996, p. 71) points out that throughout the 1940s, 50s and 60s it
would not have occurred to many women to expect their partners to help with the
housework or with childcare whether or not they themselves were working outside the
home. In the sixtieth anniversary compilation volume, theres a talk from the 1940s called
Giving the Wife a Hand (Womans Hour 2006, p. 18), in which a husband expresses baffled
admiration for the huge range of skills a housewife must master, only to admit that his own
contribution amounts to buying the vegetables, and occasionally cleaning the silver and
brass. Theres also an extract from regular columnist Ba Mason who, in 1959, trumpeted
Hooray for Being a Housewife, claiming that housework may be boring sometimes but its
actually quite a good job because I can get away with a hell of a lot and theres no one
wholl come and sack me (Womans Hour 2006, p. 120).
By the 1960s a groundswell of resentment among women was being fuelled by some
early rebellious texts like de Beauvoirs The Second Sex, published in the 50s, and Friedans
Feminine Mystique in the mid-1960s. Neither of these appears to have had as much impact
on Womans Hour as a less celebrated work published in the late 1960s, The Captive Wife by
Gavron (1966; Murray, 1996, p. 80) which studied two groups of housewives, one working
class and the other middle class. According to Jenni Murray, the book evoked painful
pictures of loneliness, boredom, and isolation and inspired a huge mailbag from listeners
like this one:
After listening to the problems of lonely housebound women yesterday, I suddenly
realised this expressed exactly how I feel . . . I decided to try and tell my husband how I felt.
I have tried before, but your talk gave me confidence. (1996, p. 82)

Over the decades, this has been one of the most constant characteristics of the role of the
programme. Women have written to thank it for saving their lives, for making them feel less
alone, and for motivating them to do something about their situation. One listener wrote to
say that it was while she was ironing that she heard a woman describing how she went back
to studying after shed had children and managed to get an O-level. And this listener,
galvanised by the story, went and got not just one but a string of qualifications and became
a teacher. Housework may have represented routine drudgery, but it was also an ideal
backdrop for listening to Womans Hour and getting ideas.
By the 1970s the womens movement was questioning and overturning a swathe of
traditional assumptions. Womans Hour covered the early 1970s campaign Wages for
Housework. And in the sixtieth anniversary book is an interview with Shirley Conran, author
of Superwoman and inventor of homely pieces of advice like: Lifes too short to stuff a
mushroom. Theres something quintessentially 1970s about her attitude, representing the
cusp between the two options open to women. She needed some money, she told Sue
McGregor. I thought I could do two things. I could do housework and I could write. So I sat
down and wrote Superwoman (Conran quoted in Womans Hour 2006, p. 245).
Womans Hour continued to interview prominent women and document matters that
affected the lives of their listeners with a continuing polite distance until the late 1980s
when a triumvirate of younger women took the reins. Clare Selerie and I became editors

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341

and Jenni Murray took over from Sue McGregor as presenter. Overnight, the average age of
the team went down by 10 years. We represented a new breed, as I explained in my
contribution to Mitchells collection of essays, Women and Radio:

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Clare Selerie and I never really planned to make the programme a mouthpiece for
feminism or any other ideology, though we were much less afraid than our predecessors
to acknowledge this constituency in our audience. What we were after, though, was a
better defined editorial policy to distinguish the programme from its numerous
competitors. To emphasise the achievements and the views of women we encouraged
producers to request women speakers on even the most general topics. The serial was to
be a showcase for women writers. Men would be featured only when they had something
particular to say to or about women. (Sally Feldman 2000, p. 65)

While womens issues were closely defined, we were also keen to de-gender matters that
had traditionally been regarded as female. So getting the baby to feed, how to iron a shirt,
tapestry, knitting, and of course cooking, cleaning, and doing the dishes became topics for
men as much as for women. Housework entered a new phase. No matter what the reality,
Womans Hour offered an assumption of domestic equal opportunities.
Meanwhile, by this time sexual politics had become a part of the political and
cultural landscape so coverage of every gendered topic from pornography to prostitution, rape
to sexual stereotyping, became routine, with regular contributions from feminist journalists
and academics. The sixtieth anniversary book, from the 1970s onwards, is packed with names
that made feminist and political history: the Spare Rib collective, Gloria Steinem, Fay Weldon,
Germaine Greer, Winnie Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, Benazir Bhutto, and Oprah Winfrey.
Now, at 60, Womans Hour espouses the same range of values and embraces the same
wide body of listeners as ever. But, as always, it has grown and changed with its audience.
Once the feminist bestseller The Womens Room was a revelation; now it is serialised as a
classic. Once the sexist views found in the tabloid newspapers would have been greeted
with horror. Today theyre more of a joke. Its not that the programme would call itself postfeminist. But along with all those women struggling and triumphing, making their choices
and making their way in the world, I think its relaxed a bit. These days, its more confident,
less angry, but just as much a female lifeline as it has always been.
REFERENCES
DE BEAUVOIR, SIMONE

(1997) The Second Sex, Vintage Classics, London.

FELDMAN, SALLY (2000) Twin peaks: the staying power of BBC Radio 4s Womans Hour, in Women

& Radio: Airing Differences, ed. Caroline Mitchell, Routledge, London, pp. 64 72.
(1978) The Womens Room, Sphere, London.

FRENCH, MARILYN

(1992) The Feminine Mystique, Penguin, London.

GAVRON, HANNAH (1966) The Captive Wife, Pelican, London.
FRIEDAN, BETTY

MURRAY, JENNI (ed.) (1996) The Womans Hour: 50 Years of Women in Britain, John Murray, London.
WOMANS HOUR

(radio programme) (1946 ) British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), UK.

WOMANS HOUR: FROM JOYCE GRENFELL TO SHARON OSBOURNE CELEBRATING SIXTY YEARS OF WOMENS LIVES.

(2006) Foreword by Jenni Murray, John Murray, London.

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WOMEN AND COMMUNITY RADIO

IN MOZAMBIQUE

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Birgitte Jallov, Independent Consultant

I had no idea that I had the same rights as a man!!!

Visibly moved, the older woman came to me during the break, taking my arm and shaking it
while repeating her question: Is it true? Is it really true? Her dark, powerful eyes full of fear,
of doubt, but still with a shine of hope behind it all, looking deep into mine. Sincerely, I
responded to her question and to the firm grip of the strong and well-used hand on my
arm. It was the strong hand of a woman, who carries her 100 litres of water from the source
to the home every day, who packs unbelievable bundles of firewood on her head and
transports it long distances, and who works in the machamba hours on end, straight legs,
her back bent, swinging the hoe in the hot sun, all to provide for the family and the next
generations. Yes, I could say, Yes, it is true. You do have the same rights as a man,
according to the laws of this country. And yes, your husband does not have a right to beat
up either you nor your children. It is true.

Community Radio Coordination for Sustainability, Voice, and Change

This incident took place in Chimoio, the central province of Mozambique in
July 2003, during the national festival launching the Womens Community Radio Network,
and organising it in three regional groups, each covering about one third of the long,
thin country stretching for 3,000 kilometres along the warm waters of the Indian Ocean to
the east, and with no less than five neighbouring countries meeting Mozambiques borders
to the west.
Coming out of almost 30 years of war with the signing of the peace accord in 1992,
Mozambique moved from socialism, into a multiparty democratic framework. With a new,
open and democratic media law approved to facilitate democratic transition and
development, the media landscape changed fundamentally in the post-war era. Among the
new developments was community-oriented radio. With the first two on air in 1994 just
2 years after the change, community radio in Mozambique has since mushroomed: 10 years
later forty-two, and today13 years laterno less than fifty-seven1 community radios and
community multimedia centres cover almost half of Mozambiques eighteen million
inhabitants.
In 2001, at a national community radio seminar, a Coordination group was
established between the different community radio frameworks in Mozambique to look
into the needs and the mechanisms for establishing a national network, within which all of
the autonomous stations could find support for longer term sustainability. Background
research was carried out in a variety of areas to identify organisational set-up, strengths and
weaknesses, as well as the composition of community members involved at the different

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levels: in the management committee and other elected functions, as paid staff members,
as volunteer workers, and among other issues also the percentage of womens voices on air.

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Creation of a Womens Community Radio Movement

The information received showed that two out of the thirty-two radios on air had no
women involved at all; one radio had only two women, and most of the rest of the radios
had around 15 25 per cent women, with two very beautiful exceptions having around 40
per cent women involved at all levels of the life of the stations. The average of 29 per cent of
those women involved in the community radios changed value when looking at the
percentage in the unpaid, volunteer work: here women represented 39 per cent, and
women only made up 6 per cent of those involved at management levels. Womens voices
(when information was obtained on this) only accounted for 19 per cent of the voices on air
and women were only referred to for 15 per cent of the information broadcast.
The documentation obtained through this initial survey effectively demonstrated the
need to establish a network of women working in community radio. Six months after this
result was known, in July 2003, seventy-eight women gathered in the provincial capital of
Chimoio in the centre of the country and discussed intensely for 3 days how to change the
status quo at the stationsnot just for the sake of a better representation at the stations,
but in order to work more effectively to obtain better lives for women in the communities in
general (Figure 1). When discussions became too broad and general, the participants
reminded each other that they were here to work to find ways for community radio to
become the powerful tool for a participatory community development it could, ideally, be.
As a result of the festival it was agreed to continue the work to strengthen the role of
women in the community in Mozambique and to organise around the community radios to
ensure that also women would get a voice in this way. To make this realistically possible,

Figure 1
Womens Community Radio Festival at Chimio July 20032 (photograph by Birgitte Jallov)

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three regional networks were formed to develop joint, regional plans, support each other
and share developments, and to meet from time to timeand the Chimoio declaration
was adopted as a summary of the in-depth work during the 3 days.

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We, the women of the Community Radios in Mozambique . . . meeting in a National Festival
in the city of Chimoio, on 19 20 July 2003, have decided to set up The network of women
in Community Radios in Mozambique . . . in order to pursue the following objectives:
* To encourage activities seeking to ensure that women enjoy the same rights, duties and
opportunities as men, as stipulated under the Constitution of the Republic of
Mozambique, and recommended in the Beijing Declaration, and in the principles of the
New Partnership for Africas Development (NEPAD);
* To encourage activities that seek to guarantee the socio-economic development of the
community, empowering the areas of womens education, and of producing and
publicising information on womens rights, duties and achievements;
* To encourage activities seeking to eliminate traditional and cultural practices that
hinder womens development in all spheres;
* To encourage activities that seek to increase womens self-confidence, so that they may
take on the role of the main generators of positive changes in the community;
* To encourage activities seeking to create legal mechanisms (policies, regulations and
institutional rules) for improving womens working environment on Community Radios;
* To encourage activities aimed at ensuring womens access to leadership positions in
Community Radio, by raising their level of training, including self-training, and
recognising their professional competence and abilities;
* To encourage activities that seek to lay solid foundations for raising the spirit of
solidarity between women themselves, and between women and men, on the basis of
mutual respect and equal opportunities, and with the objective of facilitating the
participation and integration of all the small communities within the large community
in the development process;
* To encourage activities seeking to guarantee the production of programmes with
content relevant to women and from a womens perspective;
* To encourage activities seeking to ensure womens participation in producing
programmes in all areas of community interest, to ensure the inclusion of womens
experiences and viewpoints;
* To encourage activities seeking to allow an exchange between Community Radios of
content and of programmes produced by women;
* To encourage activities seeking to guarantee access to national or international
information on the performance of women, in order to encourage and inspire women in
the communities;
* To encourage activities that seek to allow an exchange of information between
members of the Network of Women on the Community Radios, through the publication
of a bulletin;

In conclusion:
* We, the Women of the Community Radios in Mozambique, express our willingness and
total commitment to implement responsibly the objectives of the network contained in
the present Chimoio declaration,

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* And we urge all actors in the social development of the country in general, and of the
communities in particular, to join us in pursuing our noble objectives. (Declaration of
Chimoio, Chimoio, July 20, 2003)

Among the obstacles identified for womens involvement in the radios was the
immense work burden faced by many women especially in rural areas: starting before
daylight and working far into the night; women have sole responsibility for children and the
oldand for most of all the rest; the fact that many husbands did not really want their
wives to be active in public life, to become visible, and especially not to be working with
other men; and many men within the stations, especially those in managerial positions,
would expect sexual favours from women working in the stations on special occasions, for
instance if they were selected to take part in a training course away from home or for other
training or development activities.
These obstacles proved to be more or less alike all over Mozambique, and the women
in the womens network set out to find waystogetherto do something about these.
The regional networks were again the answer to the coordination need: on a regular basis it
is just too expensive and difficult to coordinate at national level. So, the women of the
stations continue working, sharing information, and producing quarterly womens bulletins
when possible.
The following is a personal follow-up storyfrom Metangula (Figure 2):
One year after the womens festival in Chimoio, in 2004, I visited the remote town of
Metangula at the far north of Mozambique at the shores of Lake Niassaone of the poorest
areas of the country. When approaching by car, we saw a group of women at the entry into
the town, dancing in a beautiful, traditional formation, all dressed alike. And when we sat
down in the community meeting of stocktakingand my personal good-bye after working
in Mozambique for 6 years, I was told that the womens network of the station would deliver
an address. I understood that the womens network had taken on a life of its own here,
among the baobabs and sandy beaches of the immense lake: it had become an institution
to be reckoned with. After delivering a powerful testimony of determination and change,
I was handed two couples of doves to take back with me to Denmark: to create the bond
between our peoples, for peace and for development . . . and for you to never forget us.
With the doves I got the handwritten address they had just read for me. (I still have it and will
never forget the doves as they left their visiting card on the school book paper on which
the address was written.) It among others said:
We, the women of Radio Lago want to thank wholeheartedly for your support to our
community radio. Together with you, we in the womens network have realised how
important it is that we show that women are not nothing. We have realised that if we want
to combat illiteracy, we have to do it. If we want to say stop to domestic violence, we are
the ones to say stop. And if we want to know our rights and benefit from them, then we
have to find out about them and to take them. In this way we in the womens network in our
radio fight for better lives for our communityand for women in Metangula specifically.
They continued to tell that now 31 women were part of the womens network of the
radio, which actually meant more than half of the people working in the radio as
community programmers, staff and in the elected positions were women. Before the
festival there had been 4.

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Figure 2
An advertisement for Radio Lago, 106.7 Mhz as you enter Metangula3 (photograph by
Birgitte Jallov)

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Strengthening the Reach of the Womens Movement through Policies

and Coordination
Today, 4 years later, the national Womens Community Radio Network is still very
activeand thriving. It is made up by almost 400 active women integrated in fifty-seven
community radios. In 2004, the Coordination Group of Community Radios, which had
been created in 2001, was consolidated into a firm national Forum of Community Radios
(FORCOM) which assists the womens network in fundraising for its activities and with the
coordination so cumbersome in a country like Mozambiquesupporting the regional
networks, organising training, and meetings, and FORCOM assists in providing the final
touches of the production and distribution of the network newsletter.
FORCOM has a very firm gender policy, including the special statutory additional
election of two members from the womens network to the National Council of FORCOM,
which is as such made up by fifteen members from community radios and two from the
womens network (which are also from the radios, but here representing the womens
network in which they are active). A gender balance in the council is intended, and during
the first councilstill in placethe women outnumber the men by one. FORCOM
furthermore has a Gender Monitoring Group on the board of FORCOM and a draft gender
policy has been developed as a tool for fighting the obstacles to womens participation, and
to effectively mainstream gender in all areas of the life of the community radios. A pilot
phase of the Gender Policy for Community Radios will be initiated around the middle of
2007, testing the adequacy in at least two community radios.
Many women in Mozambique still do not enjoy the same rights as their men in the
everyday life of a culture, where the subordination of women is closely integrated in almost all
aspects of life. But many more women now know about their rights and worktogetherto
find ways of changing the status quo among others by putting new content into the
traditionally degrading aspects of cultural practices, thus ensuring that the rich Mozambican
culture can also be enjoyed by dynamic, visible, active, and participating women.
As the most powerful peoples movement in Mozambique at the momentand as
such at the core of civil societycommunity radio not only provides a tool for being
informed and having a voice, but it is also potentially the most powerful motor in changing
the role, position, and choices of women in Mozambiquefor a better tomorrow.

NOTES
1. Of these radios, twenty-two are owned and run by the state, eight by the Catholic Church,
one by a municipality and twenty-six are owned by communities and run by community
associations.
2. These seventy-eight women came from the thirty-nine radios on air in July 2003 to identify
dreams and challenges, to agree on ways forward, and to celebrate the increasing spread of
community radio in Mozambique: a space for development interaction, for dialogue and
debate, and for changenot least for women. Very symbolically the Red Cross Centre in
Chimoio where the festival took place was developed towards the end of the long period of
civil war and internal conflict, to rehabilitate the many children who had been used in the
conflict, among others, as soldiers. Having passed this traumatic part of Mozambiques

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history, it is symbolically very strong to see here the women using the same facility to fill the
new Mozambique with hope for a better tomorrow.
3. When you enter Metangula after driving 3 hours north from Lichinga, the provincial capital
of the northern province of Niassa, you meet one sign, the only commercial posted at the
road at all, reminding you to tune in to the Radio Lago, 106.7 Mhz, and telling you that, by
the way, you are now in Metangula (as if you did not know after struggling with potholes for
more than an hour... just because you want to go to... Metangula). Normally the sign is
alone. But my guide, Grace, listening to the programme on air at the time on her small
transistor, wanted to be in the picture, as did two young men passing.