SOMWIM – Research finding by focus group discussion held by Somwim have shown that women tasks in the media revolve around relatively ‘easier’ programs such as entertainment programs and greetings which do not require much effort to produce.
This limits women representation in media and their role. Women are thus left with few options of hanging on to this small window of hope or completely drop out of their career in media.
Unlike their men counterpart, women in Somalia don’t mostly get access to education. According to the UNESCO in 2015, only 30% of the children in Somalia have access to education and a fraction of these children are girls.
For the few that get the chance, their education is prematurely curtailed in primary or mid-school levels due to various reasons including poverty, early marriage and lack of support.
Women still feature less frequently than men in media discourses sometimes due to family disapproval or long held stereotypes. Many parents are not convinced journalism is a profession for women, and they believe that it sabotages women values, and culture.
Female journalists don’t also get support and trainings when they join media organizations. The management that should helped women cope up with their work have sometime failed. Many women don’t to continue to pursue their dream in journalism due to lack of support.
Research duration and scope
Somwim conducted this survey with the aim of trying to understand the gender pluralism in media. The research focused on the women representation their roles in media centers in Mogadishu, such us senior decision-making levels, production roles and challenges faced.
Somwim issued structured questionnaires to the media houses and the respondents have filled in with information conducted this research for period of two months.
Research Respondents
Our team have visited 23 media outlets, and we have targeted at least one of the senior personnel and a woman.
In this survey, the questionnaires were filled by 23 directors and 19 female journalists. We initially proposed to interview equal number of men and women however due to stark low representation of women it was hard to stick to the initial plan. One of the media outlets chose not to participate in the survey and data collection process.
We chose to incorporate the senior management level as our respondents as they have access to information such as the numbers of employees, their roles, job requirements and information about the challenges raised by gender imbalance in the media houses.
We have also targeted women in the same media outlets as they are the primary subjects of this survey, we had intended to understand the challenges they faced to get opportunities to pursue their dreams.
Apart from two directors, the rest have underscored that men and women get equal opportunities in recruitment for all posts including general management and department heads. However, in our research we have established that men and women do not get equal opportunities and their occupation of senior positions within media organizations is still minimal.
In Mogadishu, where the survey was conducted, there were 676 journalists out of which 521 or a whopping 78% were men whereas 155 or merely 22% were women. This is a sample study clearly shows that there is no gender plurality in media across Somalia, and this calls for a review and change of policies in the media environment.
Recruitment requirements
One of the astounding findings in this survey is all the interviewed men said that the requirements include skills and capacity which raised more questions of why skilled women have been sidelined in the recruitment process.
Positions
In the survey we have also tried to determine how disproportionate the men and women were in specific positions. Around 135 men (79%) held senior level management including editors, department heads, program heads and technical experts. While 29 women (21%) held similar positions. Among these women 2 were directors, 3 were deputy directors, 3 were news directors while 19 were heads of marketing departments.
Gender Imbalance
Women views
The response of most of the women in this survey can be summarized into the following three categories:
• The believe by managers that women cannot be as effective as men
• Inability to work same hours as men
• And reduced knowledge capacities
In the survey we have seen women are worried about the efforts they invest in the workplaces and the lack of growth within their media careers.
Managers views
We have sampled the views of two directors who say that there is no gender misrepresentation in their newsroom despite no woman being part of their team! This shows there is no efforts to have gender inclusive media houses.
This also derails the efforts to get more women representation in media centers and create more conducive environment for women journalists. Besides one director who decided not to respond to the survey questions, two directors responded while two other directors said they don’t know the answers to the questions.
The response can be summarized as follows:
• There is no inequality, but one gender is meet the requirement thresholds
• Relatively low education by the women which has led to incompetence
• Lack of awareness among employers and the society
• Women are not prepared to undertake male dominated job openings
• The inequality is caused by lack of hard-work and determination by women
• Low number of women in media
• Unfair treatment by senior managers
• Lack of confidence in women which cause inequality
• ‘Preferability’ causing inequality
• Stereotypes and long cultural norms
• Weakness shown by women which causes inequality!
- We have asked the directors if there are some certain jobs/roles that women cannot undertake.
- Three directors have said they don’t have confidence in women reporting on violence, explosions or disasters.
- One director said that they would prefer men due to preference by the management. Although he didn’t mention specific areas.
- Three directors who shared similar views said that women are not always available or are inconsistent.
- Another media center director believes it is just a norm which no real backing
- While one of the directors said that he does not have confidence in women working at night.
- We asked the women if they believed that female journalists would grow their professional career if they got support.
- Nine female respondents said they would grow if they got support while the rest didn’t respond.
Recommendations
In the end of the survey we have collected opinions on how more women can be involved in the media.
They have iterated that women need improved education and opportunities.
- Among the 19 interviewed women, 14 suggested there is need for campaigns to address the inequality, and improve women education through trainings
- One of the respondents said that women need to be encourage and their salaries raised.
- Another respondent said that there should be organizations that stands up for women empowerment.
- One believed that women should support each other.
- Another suggested that exclusive media house for women should be set up
- Whereas one suggested that women should strive to do more than presenting entertainment programs.
Conclusion
The survey findings show that women are significantly under represented, and their roles are scarcely consequential. Women have not featured much in the media, while many women are discouraged by the lack of support and preference of men in the industry.
Somwim has learnt that there is lack of awareness among the media moguls around the gender imbalance issue, some have even refused to acknowledge the low representation of women, while others see no importance of women in the newsrooms. All these challenges take a heavy toll on the effort to tackle the lack of representation.
Somwim recommends that the directors of media houses, associations, and other organizations working around the media to collaborate in minimizing the challenges causing women to drop out of their media careers.
About Somwim
Somali Women in Media (Somwim) is a non-profit organization whose work is to enhance the visibility of women in media and society, and promote their leadership and better decision-making. It also focuses on building the capacity of female journalists to understand women’s issues, and to cover their stories while changing the stereotypes towards women.
We stand to promote women participation in media and leadership, through awareness and influencing policies change for media houses to create equal rights and opportunities.