Survey finds 41% of women journalists have been victims of some form of harassment.
This statement was originally published on gc4hr.org on 2 November 2023.
For more than a year, B.A., an Iraqi journalist aged 30, has been trying to heal from wounds she sustained when an unusual harasser crushed her soul with a few text messages that put an end to her career and left her languishing at home, while her husband grapples on his own with ever deteriorating economic conditions.
Every day at 8 a.m., she would sit at her desk in a local newspaper, tie back her hair, turn on her computers, scroll the news, and put together the news map of the day and suggestions to field reporters.
As a “desk editor,” she was in direct contact with the newspaper staff, totaling 15 persons of whom 13 are men. Hence, she had to endure, on a daily basis, loathsome macho comments to which she managed to set some boundaries.
She made it clear to everyone that they must keep their patriarchal beliefs out of work and that she is a mother of two children and the wife of a good man. By doing so, B.A. thought she could restrain their unfettered masculinity in the office.
A large proportion of society is aware of widespread harassment in the streets, resulting from an exacerbated hypermasculinity. However, statements by several Iraqi women journalists confirm that this phenomenon did not spare women in press and media outlets, forcing a considerable number of them to quit journalism for good.
Forty-one percent of women journalists have been victims of harassment
According to a survey conducted by a research team commissioned by the Press Freedom Advocacy Association in Iraq, 41% of working women journalists have been subjected to different kinds of harassment, and 15% of them were forced to leave their jobs and move to other organizations, whereas 5% quit their profession for good.
The same survey reveals that desk editors are the most vulnerable to harassment, followed by broadcast show hosts. It ascribes this lower proportion of victims among women hosts to “the status of a radio/TV presenter within the media company and her connections with authority officials, that instill fear in the person carrying out the harassment.”
Moreover, the survey results highlight linkages between media specializations and vulnerability to harassment. In other terms, an editor is 20.3% more vulnerable to harassment than other women journalists while show hosts are 11.4% more vulnerable, followed by women professionals in print media (7.3%).
A director who is a ‘master’ of harassment
B.A. works today for a local newspaper in a central Iraqi province. Shedding more tears, she relates her story in words that convey mixed feelings of anger, anguish, and sorrow as she remembers the blackmail message from her boss that ended her journalistic career. “He, insolently and without any hesitation whatsoever, asked me to be his mistress so that I could have ‘Aladdin’s lamp,’” recalls B.A.
For minutes, it made her blood run cold. The “shock” almost caused physical distress to the journalist, who felt dizzy and weary.
“The message was a request to have a secret relationship with me, carrying a combination of threats and carrots and including inappropriate words. There was some hint of obscenity in it, coupled with a romantic song segment,” she adds.
Stunned, it took her some time to respond politely to the message and reject the offer.
[ … ]
“The boss is a master of harassment. He draws strength from high-ranking officials belonging to parties in power with armed factions. When speaking over the phone with a militia leader or an official, he would deliberately be loud so that everyone around would hear his conversation and it would be known to the staff that he is on good terms with the militias as well as the authorities, in order to intimidate them,” said B.A..
Withdrawal… the fate of all lawsuits against harassers
All those who harass women professionals in local media outlets seem to have similar modus operandi, starting with typical late-night conversations over mobile apps.
N.A., a woman journalist who resigned four years ago from the same newspaper, described the director as “a harasser who takes journalism as a profession for the sole purpose of blackmailing women journalists.” She said that she suffered distressing harassment by the newspaper’s director multiple times, which made her resort to legal means to “discipline” the harasser and hire a lawyer to file a lawsuit against him.
“As soon as he learned about my efforts to gather evidence in support of my case and then bring an action before an Iraqi court, he started hurling threats,” she added. He even threatened to publish her dismissal letter under the title “Dismissed for Bad Reputation and Misbehavior at the Newspaper,” and to send it to her husband – another criminal act punishable under Iraqi law by three months to two years in prison for an offense against honor.
N.A. could do nothing more than quit her job. “I hope that one day he will be held accountable for the sake of the honest journalism that I believe in and to which he is a mere intruder,” she said.
This investigation tried to sound out fellow journalists who worked for the same newspaper as N.A. They corroborated her statements: “The harassing director has aggressed other women journalists, without leaving any criminal evidence of his acts, except for those conversations that probably cannot be used as evidence – and he is aware of that.”
Criminalizing the victim
A.J., another woman journalist, describes the extortion and blackmail of women by media outlet heads as a “phenomenon” that has driven many successful women professionals in the media sector to quit their profession definitively and seek government positions or administrative and technical jobs in the private sector, away from journalism.
A.J. reveals that she was subjected to extortion and blackmail by the newsroom director at an Iraqi satellite channel. When she refused to engage in an affair with him, he showed her the door, accusing her of omission and negligence in a report he submitted to the head of the company. As a result, she was sacked from her job without being paid her outstanding wages.
The Iraqi Media Network on the Front Line Against Harassment
Dr. Israa Al-Attar, Director of the Women’s Empowerment Department in the Iraqi Media Network, outlines multiple mechanisms put in place by the Department to fight harassment and blackmail against women journalists inside as well as outside media outlets. These mechanisms consist primarily of raising the legal, social, and psychological awareness of women members of the Network through training workshops; and ultimately seek to enable them to overcome the societal stigma that afflicts harassment victims and leverage legal means to defend their rights.
“Every department in the Network includes a legal division that provides support services to all harassment victims,” explains Dr. Al-Attar, describing the number of complaints these divisions have recently received from working women in the Network as unusually high.
On the other hand, Attorney Leila Moujahed indicates that “most harassment cases go unpunished as victims refrain from bringing a judicial action against their attackers,” asserting that “the law always provides the necessary protection to those who use it properly without fear.”
Inefficient laws
Attorney Safaa Al-Lamy calls for a new law to protect working women in all sectors in order to “rein in the system that protects harassers.”
“The law imposes sanctions on harassers in several articles, but this is not enough,” says Al-Lamy, referring to the case of Kurdistan, where the enforcement of draconian laws against harassers has largely contributed to curbing harassment.
Under Articles 402 and 369 of the Iraqi Penal Code No. 111 of 1969, any harasser shall be sentenced to no more than three months imprisonment and a fine of at least 50,000 dinars and not exceeding 200,000 dinars.
For the full investigation please refer to GCHR’s site
This investigation was carried out by the Gulf Centre for Human Rights as part of the project to investigate impunity for crimes committed against journalists in the Middle East and North Africa region. Article translated to English by Lamis Alwan on behalf of GCHR.
