Asia Media Summit Strong on Ideas, Weak on Female Representation.

The article focuses on the premiere conference of Asian media professionals for Network of Women in Media, India. The title of one of the 15 sessions at the first ever Asia Media Summit, held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in April 2004 was, "Women in Media: What is Right and What is Wrong?" Of the close to 90 persons who occupied the dais during the three-day event, only a dozen were women, and half of them were confined to the session on women in media. The session was chaired by Jai Chandiram, president of the International Association of Women in Radio and Television. Of the six presentations, the three relatively substantive ones focused on the situation of women journalists in Malaysia, images of women in Arab media, and the "Screening Gender" audio-visual toolkit for gender-sensitive news broadcasting collaboratively developed by five European broadcast organizations. The world-wide trend that sees a significant number of women dropping out of full-time employment in media organizations, was identified as a major concern during the United Nations Expert Group Meeting on Women and the Media convened in November 2002 in preparation for the 47th Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in March 2003.