Women Meeting the Challenge: A Handbook for Media Leadership

Women Meeting the Challenge: A Handbook for Media Leadership is filled with practical solutions to the barriers that hold women back from reaching their leadership potential. It draws upon the discussions at CSLI and other AWMC programs to create a guide for women aspiring to leadership in the news media.

The Handbook uses recent studies to demonstrate where African women stand as leaders in the media. And it relies on the leadership development work of Jerusha Arothe-Vaughan, director of Independent Communication Associates Ltd., who facilitated the CSLI training. In addition, the UNDP Africa's regional gender programme endorses and confirms these methods for empowering women to assume leadership positions.

While this book is for women, about women and by women, it also is a tool that should be shared with everyone in the newsroom. It is a means by which to change the leadership roles of women in their media houses. As such, it can be a powerful tool for awareness of leadership training and capacity building for women, as was recognized by the 1997 South Africa Gender Roundtable as the key factors in women's empowerment. Some of the solutions must come from the women themselves and some must come from the media companies. To accomplish that, women must take men with them every step of the way, sharing with them responsibility for how the media conducts itself toward women and women's issues.

The AWMC thanks Jerusha Arothe-Vaughan for her many contributions to the content of this publication. Ms. Arothe-Vaughan is Director of Independent Communication Associates Limited (InCA, Ltd.), a communications and management consulting firm based in Kenya.

This handbook was made possible through the generous support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Email: viola.morgan@UNDP.org/rba March, 1999