Source: Sunday Trust
The media plays a crucial role in the political or electoral process. It's the ears and eyes of the public and help mould perceptions.
People rely on it for information on making decisions on a range of issues such as choosing their political leaders, informing them about their activities, mandate of political campaigns and giving them effective coverage while in office.
This also makes it a veritable channel for promoting women's participation in politics in the face of the factors hampering their participation in the country. However, the level of coverage given to women politicians in the media in the country is still poor and replete with stereotypes and other challenges. The limited visibility contributes to the poor showing for women at the polls, and fans the reluctance of political parties to have them as candidates thereby feeding into a vicious circle of low political representation for women.
"A monitoring study conducted by my office revealed widespread manipulations of gender perceptions especially through the traditional media such as TV, radio and newspapers where women are presented as just home makers, or objects of sexual desire," said the National Woman Leader of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Dr Kema Chikwe.
She added that women in executive positions are rarely promoted positively in the media while men on the other hand are portrayed as successful politicians, businessmen, and confident decision makers, among others.
The party's women leader, who was speaking at a strategic consultative workshop with women in media and communication organized by her office in collaboration with the International Republican Institute (IRI) on Tuesday in Abuja, said such negative stereotypes contribute to the idea that women and men still have different roles to play in politics and this necessitates convening the workshop to discuss how media can be useful in propagating women's participation in politics.
She said the media is a very effective channel for achieving increased women political participation and affirmative action in the 2015 General elections and needs to be positive and effective. In addition to working hands in glove with the women in the drive for increased women's representation in political positions.
She said without the active participation of women and an equal incorporation and projection of women's perspectives through media and communication, the goals of equality, development, peace and democracy cannot be achieved, adding "women's equal media projection is a necessary condition for women's interests to be taken into account in politics".
Chairman of the party, Alhaji Adamu Muazu while assuring the women of his party's commitment towards improving their participation in politics enjoined the women politicians and women journalists to come out with resolutions that will help move their interests forward.
During the workshop the PDP women politicians and women in the media enumerated their challenges and brainstormed on how to work effectively towards increasing women's participation in politics. The round table session was moderated by Ene Ede of Equity Advocates.
The women politicians complained of being asked for money to appear on talks shows in the electronic media, monetary demands by journalists, gender stereotypes, inadequate knowledge on media skills and relations, among others.
While representative of media houses which cut across the print, electronic and new media genres outlined reluctance by some women politicians to make themselves available and accessible for coverage, arrogant attitude towards journalists, the determining factor of the sensitivity of top management of each media house or owner to gender issues, poor knowledge on issues in the country by some women in the country to mention a few.
On the way forward both groups suggested: Women should make themselves available and accessible for media coverage. The media houses should be more gender sensitive, women politicians should pay courtesy call to the management of media houses, women politicians should make a budget for media coverage especially for commercialized programmes or stations.
Others include; women politicians should improve their attitude towards journalists, there should be networking between journalists and the politicians, the women politicians should have contacts of journalists in different media houses and involve them in their meetings and activities and journalist should keep track of women achievements, in their regular reportage.