Mrs Mavis Kitcher (5th right), Director News, GCGL, Mr Kingsley K. Inkoom (4th right), acting Editor, Daily Graphic and other staff members of GCGL with members of the Nigeria Association of Women Journalists after the meeting. Pictures: EDNA ADU-SERWAA
Mrs Mavis Kitcher (5th right), Director News, GCGL, Mr Kingsley K. Inkoom (4th right), acting Editor, Daily Graphic and other staff members of GCGL with members of the Nigeria Association of Women Journalists after the meeting. Pictures: EDNA ADU-SERWAA

Change narrative of women in media - Female journalists urged

The National President of the Nigeria Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ), Mrs Ifeyinwa Omowole, has advised female journalists to take charge and change the narrative of women in the media across West Africa.

Giving the advice during a visit to the offices of the Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL) yesterday, Mrs Omowole spoke on the hardships women had faced historically and how female journalists needed to highlight more on these challenges and support women to exert positive change on society.

Mrs Omowole said female journalists were best equipped to tell the story of women, stressing, “As women and journalists we must tell the stories of these women by writing about them.”

She said women had always been breadwinners to their families, working from dusk to dawn but they did not have certain financial cushions to enable them to accomplish their roles.

Mrs Omowole led a delegation from NAWOJ to visit the offices of the GCGL to familiarise themselves with the operations of the company.

Experience

Recounting her experiences while journeying from Nigeria to Ghana by road, she said she noted the plight of women who were engaged in small-scale businesses to support their families, pointing out that that was not peculiar to women in Africa.

She stated that in Asia, however, women were able to take soft loans from banking institutions to support their businesses, stressing that “it is sad to note that African women did not fully have this flexibility for their businesses.”

According to Mrs Omowole, there was the need to encourage banking institutions to give special packages for women in small-scale businesses.

Encouragement

The Director of News, Graphic Communications Group Limited, Mrs Mavis Kitcher, encouraged women not to give up, adding that women had risen to the highest echelons of professions which were dominated by men on merit and as such they had the power to make the change they wanted to see.

She said technology had come to help women in small-scale businesses, stressing that “with the popularity of mobile money services, it has become easier for women to access financial help which they could not do before.”

She kicked against the stereotypical assertion that “women are their own enemies”, explaining that women were changing their fortunes worldwide and that was proof that they were not holding each other back.

Mrs Kitcher said it was the collective duty of families to make sure their children did not grow up with negative gender perceptions, adding that raising their sons to see women as their equals was key to reform and change the tide against gender inequality.

Role models

The acting Editor of the Daily Graphic, Mr Kingsley Inkoom, said it was important to see women rising to the top and serving as role models for young girls.

He said at Daily Graphic, for instance, the Director of News and the editors of The Mirror, Graphic Showbiz and Junior Graphic were all women.

“Women have to be given the opportunity to push the narratives against gender stereotypes and also need men as allies to be successful in this endeavour,” he added.

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