Centres of Excellence - Media

Nathalie Didier, the voice of change, describes herself as a powerful woman who is trying to empower the citizens of Mauritius through the work that she does as a radio […]

Following a series of reported cases of violence amongst minors, Rita Venkataswmy, Ombudsperson for Children, explained that the root of the problem is the lack of responsibility and understanding of […]

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Yanick Bazile: “enn fou” (a madman) who is breaking barriers Yanick is a young man who describes himself as “enn fou”, that is, madman or a crazy person in English […]

Thaha-Khube Radio

In terms of mainstreaming gender at the work place Radio Maria has now five female employees, we take this as a big achievement because the time we started we had only 2 women on the pay role. The newsroom is now 50-50 represented. We admit that this is going at a slow pace as you aware that a lot of people working at the radio provide their services on a voluntary basis as a result many people quit when job opportunities arise somewhere. Another aspect demonstrating this change is to do with our website. The team responsible for its oversight comprised of men only. It was not all that active. It has now been revived and it is now 50-50 represented and is now being headed by a female.
It should also be noted here that Radio Maria is not here to just theorise gender but to practice it to perfection. We have made sure to bring gender out of the books to ourselves and the society. Thus, we have made our radio station a gender resource and space. In terms of resource, we have been making sure that we come up with programmes to civic educate the masses on gender. As aspace, we have also been inviting the listener to alsso make their contributions.
As already highlighted that we have made strides in making sure that women are equaly employed, in some cases for instance, we put some deliberate actions so as to make sure that women also rise within the ranks of our station. A good example to substantiate the above assertion can be traced when we released an internal vacancy looking for two fulltime announcers where we barred males from applying. This was in 2012, two females were taken on board, thus, otilia Mphweya and Mersy Njazi. For your own information, Mersy Njazi has risen from the position of announcer to a studio klerkofour substudio in Zomba. She is thus responsible for the oversight of the volunteers serving at the zomba substudio, raising awareness about the radio and other activities assigned in the day to day operations of the studio.

In most Zimbabwean Media Houses Women have been relegated to the simple tasks of ‘copy and paste ’ journalism such as fashion, personal health and fashion while male journalists have been seen to be more capable of tackling the challenging roles of hard-core journalism such as reporting on politics and crime. In 2001 Radio Dialogue emerged in Bulawayo as the future of alternative media in a society which since independence had been used to a one sided state controlled media landscape. Moreover, that one sided state controlled media had little space for women to take commanding and leading roles both as media practitioners and sources.

One of the main objectives of Radio Dialogue was and still is to open spaces for marginalized members of society to express themselves and participate in community debate through radio. Since its inception, marginalized members of Bulawayo and surrounding communities have found Radio Dialogue as a means through which they can express their concerns, mainly Gender Based Violence, Service Delivery and Health.

Having started off as a largely male dominated institution Radio Dialogue has up to date seen an upsurge in the active participation of women both at community and secretariat level. As journalists cover community news and produce documentaries more women than men are willing to participate and raise issues of concern in their townships such as transparent governance, health and service delivery, gender violence and issues of education and unemployment. This is evident in the daily radio programs produced by radio producer Thandazani Nkomo who speaks to women from around Bulawayo who articulate issues varying from politics to single parenthood.

Radio Dialogue has surely filled the gap left by mainstream media which focuses on the elite and political leaders while shunning the views of the ordinary woman and man on the street.

Presently Radio Dialogue has a female Director who as flanked by three women playing influential managerial roles in the institution. These are the Programs Manager, Finance Manager and the Community Safety Local Expert and Human Resources. A few years ago these positions were held by male figures.

When MIJ was established over ten years ago, it did not believe in Gender Balance in all its processes, strategies and programmes. MIJ did not appreciate the importance of providing women with an opportunity to have their voices heard on the radio just like it does with their male counterpart. It also did not see the need to give women equal employment opportunities or even to hold influential positions.
Additionally, the Radio did have specific Radio programmes that would address Gender issues such that in our presentation, and production, the use of gender-insensitive words for instance was the order of the day. In short, the word Gender did not exist in our vocabulary. Perhaps that is because, most of the broadcasting staff had not gone through some formal trainings in gender Reporting.
But after the coming in of Gender Links, some four to five years ago, things started changing for the better. This is because they started providing trainings to the Broadcasting Staff on how they would treat gender issues in their programming. This development led to the drafting of our Gender Policy that has been guiding the Radio Station in achieving Gender issues.
Since then, things have never been the same again because MIJ now has specific programmes to address gender issues in the country include Gender ku Malawi (Gender in Malawi) and Amayi Mwakonzanji?(Women ’s Corner). As that is not enough, women have been employed, empowered or promoted to work in key leadership positions. No wonder, three out of four key positions at MIJ FM are now being held by women. These are positions of Executive Director (Dalitso Nkunika, Station Manager (Roselyn Makhambera) as well as that of Course Manager (Evelyn Pasanje).
On Editorial Issues, most challenging tasks, like production of programmes that were earlier deemed challenging are no longer issues. All this because of vigorous In-house campaigns that were aimed at ensuring that women are empowered to do what men can do.

Just a year after the launch of Capital FM in Blantyre, Malawi ’s economic metropolis, the Gender Links team who was conducting research on the representation of women in the media paid a visit to Station Manager Al Osman. At this stage, men dominated Capital Radio ’s newsroom and the gender equity ratio was at a dismal low. After realising the reality of a highly unequal media house, Capital FM committed itself to a drastic turn around, becoming one of the signatories to the COE program that requires a 50% representation of women in management positions as well as holistic gender mainstreaming within all departments.

Capital FM ’s improvements in gender mainstreaming are recognised at an internal level and equally at an external level, being a primary producer and disseminator of knowledge, information and entertainment that informs the Malawian populace. From advertising to news, programing to PSA ’s, Capital FM has given precedence to the voices of women and dedicated a commendable proportion of airtime to issues that affect the lives of women and gender.

La dimension Genre doit Áƒ ªtre considÁƒ ©rÁƒ ©e dans tous les domaines, surtout au niveau des mÁƒ ©dias. Etant donnÁƒ © que les mÁƒ ©dias ont un pouvoir inestimable dans le faÁƒ §onnement de lâ € ™opinion publique, la TVM sâ € ™est fixÁƒ © comme objectif dâ € ™illustrer les femmes comme des actrices de la vie politique, Áƒ ©conomique et sociale. Promouvoir le Genre Áƒ   travers les mÁƒ ©dias revient Áƒ ©galement Áƒ   prÁƒ ´ner la dÁƒ ©mocratie en donnant voix Áƒ ©gale aux femmes et aux hommes.