Workshop
Details
Blantyre: A color newspaper supplement featuring reports on gender and the economy were distributed with 20 000 copies of The Nation earlier this month. The articles were crafted by 16 news journalists who completed a training workshop with regional gender advocacy NGO, Gender Links that was held with assistance from KAS. Journalists at the Blantyre workshop wrote articles that spoke about women in the national budget, gender violence, women business people and the struggle of women to obtain access to credit and education.
Gender balanced representation is frequently missing in daily economic coverage in the African press. Eleven years after the world adopted the Beijing Platform for Action at the fourth UN conference on Women, few gains have been made to increase access of women to the media and to promote a balanced portrayal of women in the media.
In 2005, KAS assisted Gender Links to develop Business Unusual - a training programme which included the first workbook and interactive CD Rom to mainstream gender in economic reporting. The Business Unusual programme focuses on the role and contribution of women in the economy through discussion, writing exercises and case studies that encourage financial journalists to avoid gender blind reporting.
The Malawi Business Unusual workshop was opened by Economic Plannning and Development Minister, David Faiti who acknowledged the role of the media in helping to fight sexism and gender based violence. The workshop was conducted with the assistance of Blantyre based, Malawi Institute of Journalism.
A second Business Unusual workshop supported by KAS will be held in Lusaka, Zambia later this month.
Topics
Partner
