Media experts challenge managers on gender issues
Media experts have challenged media managers from eight African countries to change their business cultures to achieve gender equality and minimise cases of sexual harassment in their organisations.
The media experts were speaking during a Women in News (WIN) Media Leadership programme under World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) summit in Nairobi, Kenya, themed Reshaping Media Leadership.
In his remarks on Tuesday, WAN-IFRA president Michael Golden highlighted the importance of increasing gender balance in the news.
“At the heart of every editorial effort, all the editorial activity is an effort to increase engagement to have readers, viewers, listeners spending more time on the journalism that we create,” he said.
According to Golden, gender balance in news coverage can be achieved by having people in news organisations that reflect the audience needs.
“That effort is called diversity. The more points of view we have within the organisation, the more we will have in our products,” he said.
In her presentation, Carin Anderssen, a human resources practitioner from MittMedia in Sweden, said equality should be the culture in media organisations to allow employees equal rights and opportunities.
Administration and human resources manager for Nation Publications Limited, Mike Kandulu said media organisations should have policies that drive equality and ensure every new employee is aware of them.
The summit attracted women journalists in the 2017-2018 cohort of WIN from Malawi, Rwanda, Kenya, Zambia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. n
