Put issues affecting women on front burner – Second Lady tells media

Mrs Samira Bawumia, Second Lady, has reiterated the call on the media to make issues affecting women top billing in the media space.

She said women empowerment should not be about tokenism to balance the gender equation, or about hearing women’s voices, but a deliberate effort to make women part of the space.

“The media is vital to shaping the woman narrative. Women empowerment in the media should start with not only giving women a voice but also ensuring that they are protected from unnecessary attacks and unfair scrutiny that make participation in the media space unattractive.”

Mrs Bawumia said this at the opening of a two-day West Africa Media Excellence Conference and Awards (WAMECA), 2022, organised by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), on the theme: “Media and women empowerment in Africa”, on Thursday, in Accra.

She said women empowerment had come a long way and should continue to move from the notion that it was a cause only to be championed by women, saying ‘”an empowered woman is a critical component of an empowered society, and there is no institution better placed to champion this than the media.”

She said the media, in educating and informing, must prioritise the unheard, marginalised, and under-represented, out of which women formed the majority even though they represented more than half of the population.

“There appears to be little progress in Africa and according to the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) report in 2020, it is estimated that it will take 67 years to close the average gender equality gap in traditional news media,” she said.

She said it meant that for the African continent, where there was relative stagnation, deliberate, sustainable action must be taken to achieve parity in the shortest possible time.

The Second Lady noted that sometimes content producers in the media faced difficulties when trying to have women’s voices or women’s representation on shows and programming for various reasons.

She said irrespective of that, the solution was not to ignore them but to keep trying, provide encouragement and foster a safe space for them to freely express themselves.

She said there were several factors, including socio-cultural issues that inhibited women’s participation in the media and said, “we should collectively seek solutions to them.”

Mrs Bawumia encouraged women to take up positions of influence in their communities and countries, including serving in public offices to help shape policy and influence decisions that affected them.

“We are stronger when we achieve critical mass in media, politics, industry, and every worthy sphere of human endeavour,” she said.

Madam Zoe Titus, Chairperson, Global Forum for Media Development and Director Namibia Media Trust, said the theme reflected on ways in which women were portrayed in the media, and the role and empowerment of women journalists themselves.

She said according to global research conducted by the GMMP in 2020, on average, women were only 25 percent of those seen, heard, and read about in news, saying new and emerging challenges related to how information was produced, disseminated, and consumed, which continued to prevent the achievement of gender equality and women’s empowerment globally.

She noted that a recent report by the World Association of Newspapers highlights culture, patriarchy and socialisation as key barriers in the way of women’s rise to leadership and management positions in newsrooms.

“Even though we have come far as a continent in women and media empowerment, we still have a long way to go in terms of the way in, which the media reports on women, the progress of women in Journalism and the extent to, which they have been able not only crack, but really break through the glass ceiling.”

Mr Suleimana Brimah, Executive Director, MFWA, said the conference since its inception remained the region’s biggest platform for honouring and inspiring journalism excellence across West Africa.

He said the conference and subsequent ones, would highlight the barriers against women empowerment; discuss ways in, which the media in Africa could help break those barriers; and how the media could amplify women’s voices, women’s ideas, women’s innovation, and women’s power for inclusive development.

“We cannot build a better Africa by continuing to discriminate against women and leaving women behind. The building of better societies begins with the empowerment of women, and we are doing it because it is the right thing to do and the right time to do it is now,” he stated