A Kenyan community radio, in a 2021 image from UN Women.Association of Kenya Community Media Operators (AKCMO)
Mganga hajigangi
is a Swahili proverb meaning that a healer does not heal himself.
There is no saying that better defines those who practice journalism.
Their own stories are rarely told, even though they spend their adult lives collecting and disseminating information through engaging narratives.
This silence has helped entrench a culture of tolerance of sexual harassment that has led many young professionals to abandon or give in to sexual advances.
Twenty years ago, a rookie reporter for the African media conglomerate Nation Media Group entered an elevator with a senior colleague who hugged her until the doors opened on her floor.
She was too scared to tell what had happened, and she never spoke of the incident.
"These cases have increased as more women have entered the profession," says Kenyan Pamela Makotsi, CEO of Nation Media Group.
Half of women journalists in Africa have experienced sexual harassment at work, according to a report by Women in News, a program of the World Association of Newspapers and Publishers (WAN-IFRA).
Female information professionals in the media face twice the risk of receiving unwanted sexual advances in work settings than their male colleagues, according to this same study, carried out in 2020. In Kenya, 65% of female journalists have suffered physical harassment or verbal, according to another survey of 83 professionals by Women in News in collaboration with the University of London, in 2018.
"The figures can seem unreal until you hear the stories of the victims," says Pamela Makotsi, director of Nation Media Group.
"The question is how and why have we got here, how have spaces become unsafe," she adds.
The culture of sexual harassment in the media in Kenya, according to Makotsi, forces women to leave journalism when they are starting their career and switch to other sectors, such as public relations or corporate communication.
A 2013 investigation by Kioko Ireri, an assistant professor of communication at USIU in Kenya, revealed that 66% of the country's journalists were men.
Senior officials who are aggressors
“The owners and directors of community media outlets are the main aggressors.
We have to resolutely educate on what sexual harassment means.
And the media should create guidelines that offer women a safe platform to reach decision-making positions, ”insists Makotsi.
Around the world, female journalists suffer more attacks than their male counterparts, recalls Misako Ito, UNESCO regional adviser for Communication and Information in Africa.
According to a report by this organization, 73% of women have been victims of online harassment, and 20% of them have also been physically assaulted.
“In general, attacks on female journalists have nothing to do with the content of their work.
They are sexual in nature, or are criticized for the way they dress or behave.
They may also have to do with their ethnicity and culture, but not with their work,” explains Ito.
Participants in the recent training forum of the Association of Women in Media in Kenya.AMWIK
To try to stop the bleeding of journalism professionals towards other sectors for sexist reasons, the Association of Women in the Media in Kenya (AMWIK) organized, in collaboration with UNESCO, a forum in the past month of May.
The conference addressed how to improve the possibilities of professionals in the workplace.
Without giving her name, one of the attendees asked how they could report the sexual harassment to which they were subjected by the owner of a media outlet, which had already caused the resignation of one of her colleagues.
“Everything must be documented and all messages saved.
We need evidence to file a complaint,” warned Judie Kaberia, executive director of AMWIK, at the forum.
The goal, she pointed out, is that women do not leave the media before reaching a managerial position due to sexual harassment, but also that they do not suffer mentally in hostile work environments.
"Conventional media often receive training on job security, but community media (small, usually with few employees) and freelance journalists are excluded," acknowledged the director of the professional association.
Community media employees are especially vulnerable to harassment, said Tom Mboya, coordinator of the Kenya Community Media Network (KCOMNET), because the offices are in the community itself and there is no CCTV. , visitor log book or sufficient computer security measures.
Other forms of discrimination
Victor Bwire, director of strategy and training at the Kenya Media Council, added: "We have to take into account other forms of harassment of women journalists, such as lower salaries, the inability to be promoted, or that for their articles they are assigned
soft
topics , such as reports”.
In community media and in the case of independent professionals, the situation is worse because they are often forced to work as volunteers.
“I think the time has come to make it mandatory for all community media to have a policy, whether they follow it or not.
It is a starting point.
If they don't, there is no frame of reference.
It is easier to apply measures that already exist, ”says Ito, regional adviser to UNESCO.
In this regard, section 6 (2) of the Kenya Employment Act requires all companies with more than 20 employees to have measures against sexual harassment.
For its part, AMWIK has published a policy against this scourge and has created a specific committee.
Most conventional media have them, but community media do not.
They have also hired men to spread their message in the newsrooms.
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