By leveraging their influential platforms, the media can advocate for a law that addresses gender imbalances across various sectors, including the media industry itself.
This statement was originally published on mfwa.org on 11 November 2024.
Participants in a conference on media and women’s empowerment in Ghana have called on the media to champion the implementation of Ghana’s Affirmative Action law, which was recently passed in July 2024, cautioning against complacency, as the passage of the law is only a first step towards gender equality in the country.
The media was particularly admonished to take up a lead role in the implementation of the law. To effectively do this, participants jointly agreed that it is important for the media to first and foremost, demonstrate leadership through exemplary reforms that dismantle gendered stereotypes against female journalists that have long existed within the media space.
These views were expressed during a panel discussion on the theme: From Policy to Action: Advancing Gender Equality in the Ghanaian Media through the Affirmative Action Law.
The panel discussion was a key highlight of a conference organized in Accra on October 30, 2024, by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) as part of activities under the ‘Equal Voices’ project. The conference was under the broad theme: Media and women empowerment in Ghana.
The ‘Equal Voices’ project is jointly implemented by the MFWA and the French media development agency, Canal France International (CFI), and it is aimed at combatting inequalities and stereotypes based on gender while promoting women at all levels of responsibility in Ivorian and Ghanaian societies through gender-aware and gender-sensitive media practices.
The conference in Accra brought together stakeholders such as gender activists, state actors, civil society representatives, development partners and journalists, to deliberate on the media’s role in promoting gender equality in the media ecosystem and society at large.
Media must lead charge for application of Affirmative action law
In a speech read on her behalf by Madam Vera Karikari Bediako, Deputy Director at the Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, the Minister, Darkoa Newman, made the first rallying call for the media to lead activism for the implementation of the new gender law.
“The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, is hopeful that the passage of the Affirmative Action laws will address the gender imbalance across all sectors, including the media space. As a matter of fact, we see the Affirmative action law as the highest recognition and inclusion of women in decision making, and implementation [of the law] needs all hands-on deck for maximum results. I wish to use this platform to call on the media fraternity to lead in the sensitization process now that the Bill has been passed into law; the implementation process can only be effective when we all support this noble cause,” she said.
The Minister added, “As a Ministry spearheading the gender equality agenda in Ghana, we strongly believe in the transformative role the media can play in achieving gender equality by creating gender sensitive and gender transformative content and breaking gender stereotypes and also by challenging traditional, social and cultural norms and attitudes regarding gender perceptions both in content creation and delivery.”
Media must first self-purge
To do this effectively, she said, the media has to first purge itself of existing stereotypes and inequalities against women within the media itself as women are mostly underrepresented in media leadership roles and often face discrimination in the types of roles they play or the stories they are asked to cover.
