There has been impressive progress towards gender parity in a lot of sectors other than the media industry according to statistics from the Rwanda Media Commission.

Only 28% of all media practitioners in Rwanda are female, something which poses a challenge in terms of gender promotion.

Peace Hilary Tumwesigire, the Managing Director of Family Magazine, said media is still the only profession where the number of women joining the sector increases slightly.

"If you look at the Beijing accords, the media was among the sectors that focused on increasing the number of female practitioners. But now, it has been left behind and it seems like no one cares, contrary to other sectors where government and civil society follow up to know if the legal tools are enforced to facilitate women and promote them,” she said.

For instance, there is no particular body which conducts evaluation to see if that mandate of having 30% of females in all decision making positions is applied in the media as well, and consequently there are very few women managers in this field, she added.

Tumwesigire argued that women are still lagging behind in the media industry because they are not motivated like other sectors.

"Most of the opportunities are given to men and most times women get lower salaries compared to their male counterparts. This is the reason why female fresh graduates from journalism schools prefer to go in public relations positions than the media,” she said.

Régine Akarikumutima, the executive secretary of Rwanda Women in Media Platform said that even though the number of women in the other sectors is still low, it is worse when it comes to the media sector.

She said part of the problem is that women still lack self-confidence and that this is why when they arrive in male-dominated jobs like journalism, they become more silent and unenthusiastic.

Impact on gender equality

Akarikumutima said that the lack of women in media affects chances of other women’s voices to be heard.

"Female journalists are likely to understand complaints and fears of women more than male reporters. Out in the field, women are not free to give out their comments and opinion to journalists especially if they are men. But if they are approached by female reporters, they somehow feel free,” she said.

Emmanuel Mugisha, the Executive Secretary of Rwanda Media Commission said they often conduct evaluation to analyse the media content which is shared in Rwandan media in order to see its originality and impact on the public.

Last year, the evaluation of media content on the presidential elections showed that over 70% of sources used were male.

"When a journalist is searching for interviews, does he remember that he needs quotes from men and women? We found that it is still a challenge because more stories give voice to men only, which somehow brings a negative impact to female empowerment,” he said.

Possible solutions

Tumwesigire said media owners hold the key to increasing the number of female journalists and make sure they stay in the sector.

"If they treat them equally in terms of giving them assignments, if they distribute the available opportunities equally among female and male journalists, if the promotion is fair and the gender policy is followed, you will see that women will be happy to practice journalism and their numbers will quickly increase,” she said.

Mugisha said they are looking at how media should have policies which promote gender equality, whether in its operation or its structure in general.

"It’s among the recommendations we give to gender machinery, that even if we are doing all that is possible to tell media practitioners to focus on gender equality in reporting, most of the focus should be on women to encourage them to have confidence in themselves and feel free to talk to the media,” he said.

Anselme Majoro, an official in the National Women Council said they will conduct advocacy to see how the number of female journalists can be increased.

"We will talk with institutions in charge of Media to see how to raise the number of female journalists but we also need to work together to raise self confidence in women in general. I think no one holds them back from studying journalism too,” he said.

Scovia Mutesi, a reporter with Authentic TV says there is no motivation for female journalists to stay in the profession and there are few opportunities to grow in the career.

editorial@newtimes.co.rw