ender mainstreaming continues to be a challenge but this is not to say that no efforts are being made to ensure that some steps are being taken such as the guidelines that have been prepared to assist staff and other MISA functionaries to ensure that gender is mainstreamed. More gender awareness training has had to be conducted with staff before getting to institutional and individual members. G The January 2004 Monitoring and Evaluation workshop that was held for MISA staff, emphasized that gender integration in MISA was an important element in the implementation, evaluation, monitoring and reporting of MISA programmes and activities. As a key performance indicator, gender sensitive indicators have to be developed so as to assist in the monitoring of the various programmes and activities that MISA is conducting. Guidelines on gender analyses and gender sensitive indicators are being prepared to assist staff to know what to look out for and how the mainstreaming should take place. This will also involve more gender awareness training as gender training cannot be a one-off activity. People have to change their mindsets/mentality towards gender issues and begin planning, implementing and monitoring from a gender perspective which obliges one to ask a lot of questions, visit the beneficiaries of the projects and find out how that programme or project impacts on the beneficiaries. Such an exercise has already started as indicated in the SADC Journalists Under Fire Campaign where some victims of media violations were consulted and data has started to be gathered and gender disaggregated information provided in the Action Alerts. It is hoped that such small steps which have been taken will be improved on and that more improvements will follow after the monitoring and reporting workshop of February 2004 and the June 2004 MISA Annual Review meeting where we hope to have another session on analyzing our programmes from a gender perspective. 3.1 Gender and Media Baseline Study (GMBS) The GMBS, hailed as a landmark study, brought to the fore a number of issues that the media and organizations like MISA and others need to tackle if there is to be a free and fair media that is accessible to and by all. The results from the GMBS should be seen as the starting point as MISA works on formulating ways of mainstreaming gender into the MISA programmes and activities. MISA was founded on the principle of promoting freedom of expression, media pluralism and diversity. These ideals can not be realized if 51% of the population [women] is marginalized with little or no access to the media. The GMBS points out that the media freedom that MISA and others are fighting for is being enjoyed by a few people in the region and that in particular women who make up 51% of the population account for only 17% as news sources. This in effect means that there are a lot of voices missing as the report shows that it is not only women who are marginalized, but also men who have no political clout. Older me n and women too are marginalized; therefore a lot of people have no access to the media. MISA believes that the media freedom and freedom of expression issues that it is grappling with should be enjoyed by all the citizens of SADC. The challenge before MISA, therefore, is to set best practices that will show the link between gender, media, human rights and democracy in MISA’s work. MISA Annual Report (April 2003 – March 2004) 12