Elvis Tah
21 April 2008
The Southwest Provincial Delegate of Communication, Wilfred Nkong Makoge, has said there should be no sex barriers in journalism practise.
Citing Cable News Network, CNN's Christiane Amanpur, Nkong said women media practitioners should be daring and develop an elephant skin in carrying out their job.The Delegate made this call, during a roundtable conference at the Conference Hall of the Fakoship Plaza, Friday April 18.
Organised under the theme Enhancing Opportunities for Female Media Practitioners, the conference was initiated by a Buea based Common Initiative Group, the Nkong Hill-Top, in partnership with the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC), Toronto, Canada.
It had as panellists, Rev. Achowah Umenei, of the Presbyterian Communication Department, gender specialist and former Provincial Delegate of Women's Affairs, Susan Nan Mbua, and Anne Munjong of CRTV Buea.
In her presentation on the challenges of the woman in the media, Anne Munjong said female media practitioners face sexual harassment and male domination."Training opportunities for women media practitioners are limited because the decision-makers in newsrooms are men.
It is very common for men to seek sexual favours before according training opportunities to women, let alone gaining promotion," said Munjong.She held that there is a misconception that women cannot survive the rigours of the profession.
"The woman media practitioner is disadvantaged by family demands and responsibilities such as childbearing."Munjong contended that the promotion of women media practitioners is retarded by male prejudice.
Lecturing on "The image of a woman as portrayed by the Media", Rev. Umenei said the coverage given to women on newspapers, magazines and the audiovisual media is minimal. He added that the entertainment media shows demeaning images of women, such as nude pictures, probably because of profit maximisation. Umenei asserts that women hardly appear in the news bulletins.
'Women are women not because they have sex to offer, but because they are human beings created by God in his own image,' the clergy stressed.The cleric suggested assertiveness, self esteem and a dressing code for women in the media, in order for them not to arouse men. "A woman is intelligent, talented and excels in all walks of life, providing they are given the chance by their male counterparts," Rev. Achowah said.
For her part, Susan Mbua, who lectured on "Communicating Gender; A Challenge for Cameroon's Media", lamented the absence of an institutional capacity to support gender equality. She said very little attention is given to women's work and achievements in the media.
"An analysis of media programmes in relation to women, revealed that media contents deal mostly with breast feeding, pregnancy, and family planning," Mbua said.On why the workshop on media and gender imbalance, Nkong Hill Top Coordinator, Vincent Anu, said it is part of their projects to raise awareness on gender imbalance. He said they have other related projects which they will carry out soon.
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