MIJ FM

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.