other actors should promote an active and visible policy of mainstreaming a gender perspective in policies and programmes. Strategic objective J.1. Increase the participation and access of women to expression and decisionmaking in and through the media and new technologies of communication Actions to be taken 239. By Governments: (a) Support women’s education, training and employment to promote and ensure women’s equal access to all areas and levels of the media; (b) Support research into all aspects of women and the media so as to define areas needing attention and action and review existing media policies with a view to integrating a gender perspective; (c) Promote women’s full and equal participation in the media, including management, programming, education, training and research; (d) Aim at gender balance in the appointment of women and men to all advisory, management, regulatory or monitoring bodies, including those connected to the private and State or public media; (e) Encourage, to the extent consistent with freedom of expression, these bodies to increase the number of programmes for and by women to see to it that women’s needs and concerns are properly addressed; (f) Encourage and recognize women’s media networks, including electronic networks and other new technologies of communication, as a means for the dissemination of information and the exchange of views, including at the international level, and support women’s groups active in all media work and systems of communications to that end; (g) Encourage and provide the means or incentives for the creative use of programmes in the national media for the dissemination of information on various cultural forms of indigenous people and the development of social and educational issues in this regard within the framework of national law; (h) Guarantee the freedom of the media and its subsequent protection within the framework of national law and encourage, consistent with freedom of expression, the positive involvement of the media in development and social issues. 240. By national and international media systems: Develop, consistent with freedom of expression, regulatory mechanisms, including voluntary ones, that promote balanced and diverse portrayals of women by the media and international communication systems and that promote increased participation by women and men in production and decision-making. 241. By Governments, as appropriate, or national machinery for the advancement -100-