All female TV crew programme boosts gender mainstreaming strategy

Women have taken over the television studio at the University of Dar Es Salaam’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

An all female television crew there aims to boost the confidence of female students to work in mainstream media after their studies are done.

Speaking at the Fourth Gender and Media Award Summit at Johannesburg, South Africa, Bernadeta Killian, Dean of Institute – SJMC, said the programme began in May this year after it was discovered that only a few female students were volunteering to work outside of lectures at IJMC laboratory media outlets; Mlimani TV, The Hill Observer and Mlimani Radio.

While female students make up 67% of all IJMC students only 8% volunteered to work for Mlimani Observer (print) and 58% and 46% volunteered to work for Radio and Television Mlimani, respectively, before the programme.

Killian added that the programme aims to make female students “fall in love with journalism” and has achieved a number of successes – more female students now volunteer and work for SJMC media outlets than before.

The strategy has also fundamentally changed the negative perception that female students are lazy and incapable due to the hard work and high production values of the all woman crew.

But above all the female students crew has helped administrators to discover the gaps and weak points in stimulating women’s involvement in media studies” “I didn’t know before this programme that I could learn a lot of things about the way we train our women students about practical things, I discovered that lectures that were supposed to teach our women practical skills did not actually take students to the studio – they just taught theory. I came to learn about our shortfalls and lack of equipment. In short our all women crew TV programme has been a revelation for administrative and quality control purposes,” said Killian.

Mariagoreth Charles, an all female TV crew member, admitted that they still face challenges; only a few women can actually do the practical technical work like shooting video and editing and this negatively impacts their work. Charles adds that some male students still refuse to give any technical assistance during the production.

Studies, such as the 2010 Gender Links Gender in Media Education (GIME) research, show that there are great disparities in the number of female students trained through journalism institutes and the actual numbers of females who go on to work in the mainstream broadcast media.

Killian is determined that the programme has a positive long-term effect, assuring female students that they are capable of working into mainstream media.