Radio Maria, a gender resource and a space

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.

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