Alliance for Women in Media Africa's message marking IWD
The Alliance for Women in Media Africa (AWMA) has echoed the global call to embrace equity as a pathway to a fair and inclusive society, where all members, women and men, young and old, abled and challenged receive equal opportunities to reach their fullest potential.
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In a statement issued Wednesday to mark this year's International Women's Day, AWMA urged industry leaders to embrace equity to bridge existing Inequalities within the media.
Attached below is a copy of the statement
Statement by Alliance for Women in Media Africa (AWMA) to mark International Women’s Day (IWD), March 08, 2023.
Honour thy Women in Media: AWMA charges Industry Leaders to Embrace Equity to bridge existing Inequalities within the Media.
On the occasion of the 2023 International Women’s Day, we echo the Global call to Embrace Equity as a pathway to a fair and inclusive society, where all members: women and men, young and old, abled and challenged receive equal opportunities to reach their fullest potential.
One hundred and fifty-one (151) years is how long we are to expect to achieve work place equality with major inequality gaps existing in the areas of economic participation and opportunity; educational attainment; health and survival; and political empowerment.
Today whilst we honour the phenomenal contributions women have made to Ghana’s development, it remains a sad reality that insidious systemic barriers continue to hamper the progress and actualization of many women, including women in Ghana’s media industry. Take
particularly the growing digital sector and connected world for example, women’s historical absence in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), limited incomes and skills gap have resulted in limited access to and use of digital technology and its opportunities.
The United Nation’s theme for this year’s IWD commemoration, DigitAll: Innovation and Technology for Gender Equality resonates the current reality. It is important to expand women’s capacity to adopt new technology to plug into the connected world and expand their opportunities. Internet-powered mobile phones, remotely-placed radio stations, community information centers and growing network coverage have significantly impacted women’s access to information in positive ways. More of such extensions are needed to ensure full coverage. Importantly, we need expansions in women’s capacity to take advantage of digital technologies to improve their socio-economic circumstances whilst integrating women into the global digital ecosystem.
Women in Media stand to benefit from this growing digital economy if only we are able to remove the bottlenecks that continue to mitigate against their growth and progress. AWMA is concerned that media women suffer various forms of inequality in their workplaces as our research validates. Many women are plagued by the internal challenges of unequal promotion practices, unfair remuneration, sexual harassment, inflexible work schedules, sexism, stereotyping etc. that ultimately present them with a glass ceiling. Perhaps, even more worrying is the fact that there are no clear institutional channels of redress, leaving women in media to suffer in silence or walk away from their dream careers.
This IWD we call on media managers and industry leaders take far reaching and deliberate affirmative action steps aimed at promoting equity within organizations and to empower employees realize their career aspirations as well as make meaningful contributions to their employers and Ghana’s development. We call on media owners and managers to:
- institute a Gender and Leadership audit of their organizations to determine and assess the existing gaps and take steps to encourage and support female leadership
- To institute clear promotion protocols that make open the conditions for women to access equal promotion opportunities.
- review remuneration practices to ensure equal pay for equal work.
- adopt AWMA’s Sexual Harassment Guide for Media in Ghana, and Gender Sensitive Code for Media Organizations to reduce incidents of harassment, sexism and discrimination.
- review HR practices and work scheduling to enable women in media successfully combine with domestic responsibilities without undue costs.
AWMA also calls on media development organizations to join us in exploring ways to deepen women in media’s digital skills to enable them expand their opportunities in the connected world.
Research shows that digital literacy levels amongst males and females are disproportionate against females making them constant victims of digital attacks, cyber bullying, harassment and fraud. Digital literacy is crucial to get women trained on how to use the internet, ICTs and particularly social media in more effective ways while also staying safe online.
AWMA Founder, Shamima Muslim said: “If women are good for the screens, then they are good for the board rooms too; if their images, voices and stories continue to light up our screens, draw eyeballs and rake in revenues for our organization, then surely, they can light up the management decisions tables too if supported to build the necessary capacity and equipped with the necessary tools to become phenomenal. So let us honour our women in Media, they are our charge to keep”.
AWMA extends a hearty congratulation to all women in media for your gallant contributions despite all the challenges you face. We wish you more wins and look forward to a media that embraces equality.
