Namibian is predominantly female, most of the media houses (notably the NBC in general, Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Republikein and the Windhoek Observer) are dominated by white men. Their staff complement is so small (less than 25), however, that they fall below the radar of affirmative action reports. There is a sense that there have been areas of progress around gender mainstreaming in the media, but there are no official, in-house policies in this regard. All the country’s newspaper editors are men, except for Gwen Lister of The Namibian. The Namibian appears to be particularly gender balanced: the complement of journalists working on the daily comprises four female and four male reporters. SCORES: Individual scores: 2, 2, 4, 4, 3, 4, 4, 3, 3 Average score: 3.2 (2005 = 3) 4.5 Gender mainstreaming is reflected in the editorial content. ANALYSIS: During the last two years there have been no new national or regional studies specifically on gender and the media. In 2005, there was a follow-up to the MISA/Genderlinks Gender and Media Baseline Study of 2003, but this was broader in scope and looked not only at the media’s coverage of gender but of HIV and AIDS as well. There is little reflection on gender mainstreaming in the editorial policies of newspapers, as well as in editorials and opinion pieces. And “only three editorials in The Namibian and New Era in the last year addressed issues of gender-based violence in Namibia”. The international ’16 Days of Activism’ campaign is held from November 25 each year, and during that period gender becomes a major focus in the Namibian media, but this coverage is not sustained throughout the year. While the mainstream media does tend to respect gender and women, Informanté seems to present women in a fairly sexist and degrading way with, for example, its ‘Chick pic of the week’. The impression is that the voices of women in rural areas, trapped in poverty and marginalised, are not heard in the media. Instead the media is to be blamed for focussing on the opinions of men and ‘executive’ and ‘high-flying’ women, as well as those who are ‘politically correct’ and close to the ruling party. As a result, many laudable women’s initiatives in rural areas and those by Sister Namibia, for example, are not covered in the media. SCORES: Individual scores: 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 3, 3 Average score: 2.6 (2005 = 1.9) So This Is Democracy? 2007 -216- Media Institute of Southern Africa