Rádio Mulher is a radio station managed and hosted only by women in central Guinea-Bissau. For six years now, a group of young journalists has taken control of the microphones to sneak into the homes of Bafatá, the country's second city.
The station addresses topics ranging from health, education or human rights. In 2018, the journalists made a report that denounced the problem of “talibés children” (meninos talibés, in Portuguese), a common form of child abuse in the country. The radio's journalistic work has denounced, for example, the use of tababa, a type of hallucinogenic vaginal drug to which multiple uses are attributed, such as inhibiting sexual appetite, rebuilding the hymen or promote conception, and whose use is widespread throughout the region, says the station's director, Fatumata Binta Candé. “Many have not had the opportunity to know what female empowerment is and what it means to be a woman, which does not mean being a maid at home doing housework, as we all thought here,” she says.