Representatives of MISA-Malawi and Gender and Media Malawi (GEMMA) are to introduce media awards on gender issues. This was one of the resolutions the participants made at a day-long meeting held at the College of Medicine in Blantyre on 13 November 2009.
The meeting’s objective was to conduct a postmortem of the Gender, Media and Elections Monitoring project that took place during the months of April 2009 and May 2009.
The participants noted at the meeting that monitoring of gender issues should be a continuous process, hence the resolution to introduce media awards on gender issues. One of the agreements is for GEMMA and MISA to work together and to motivate journalists to write more stories on gender issues. The awards will be given out every six months starting from January 2010. GEMMA and MISA have been tasked to mobilise resources to fund this activity.
In her opening speech, GEMMA chairperson Penelope Paliani said a 2003 Gender Media Baseline Survey showed that women constituted on average 17 percent of news sources and that even where women were represented in decision making positions, their voices were not heard in equal proportion.
MISA-Malawi chairperson Brian Ligomeka commended media houses that took strides in giving presidential and parliamentary aspirants, men and women, equal space and airtime in print and electronic media respectively, during the campaign period.
