Women Meeting the Challenge: A Handbook for Media Leadership
What Are the Obstacles?

There are a variety of obstacles that are preventing women from moving ahead in the news media -- some individual, some organisational and others firmly rooted in societal and cultural beliefs. The result is an ongoing struggle for women to gain acceptance as professionals, create opportunities to develop a sense of personal confidence and vision, and obtain access to the knowledge and training necessary for leadership development. Understanding the dynamics of these obstacles is the first step in overcoming them.

Cultural and Social Barriers

Perhaps the most predominant set of obstacles faced by women aspiring to move into the upper ranks of the news media are the cultural and social norms they face every day. These stereotypical notions about women's abilities and responsibilities effectively keep them from entering the professional world, and once there, set up enormous barriers to their success. Yet women continue to struggle to transcend biases against them. "If I had tried to live by the cultural standards, I don't think I'd be where I am now," says Susan Njanji Matetakufa of Zimbabwe.

Women are expected, first and foremost, to care for the home, children, other family members and their spouses. Unlike their male colleagues, women with demanding professional careers are expected to maintain their duties at home often with little or no help from other family members.

While pressures to conform to traditional roles may come from boyfriends or husbands, many African women say that, more often, difficulties emerge from their own families and their in-laws. In some cases, families look down at the careers chosen by their daughters or sisters. Women journalists struggle against negative stereotypes about women in the journalism profession. The image is that women in this field take on some of the more harsh male social behaviours.

"There are some women who come to work in the media and don't have the support from their family structures and that's because of their cultural background," said a woman journalist from Uganda. "You have to move away from those restrictions, not just saying, 'I don't like it,' but doing something about it, and being able to withstand the pressure."

Common Prejudices

Such assumptions about women's roles in society and in the home have clearly kept women from the arenas of power and leadership. It is assumed that women cannot or should not work long hours, take on difficult assignments or travel for business. As women attempt to move into management, they must fight to gain acceptance in a new role as a professional and to create an acceptable balance for themselves between their lives at home and at work.

According to Libby, Councillor of the Independent Broadcasting Authority of South Africa, "Women are often made to feel that you have to choose between child care and career. [We] often only rise to the top…by either giving up on our families or by exploiting other women - whether it's our mothers, our neighbours, our sisters, or women who work for us in order to get there."

Professional Obstacles

Tips for Working with Men

Physical appearance makes a difference. Wear business-like clothing. A crisp, no-nonsense image helps establish positive contact with men.

Be prepared and organised. Use strong, direct language and be firm if you are interrupted. Statistics show that women allow themselves to be interrupted 50 percent more often than men. Don't contribute to those statistics!

Use appropriate body language. Men usually use less body language than women.

Do not respond to flirting. Keep your conversation and attention directed to the business at hand. Keep your sense of humour. A sense of humour helps keep you "human," but don't "laugh off" disrespectful or harassing behaviour.

Speak up and voice your objections. If any language or conversation offends, say so.

Avoid discussing feelings. Personal revelations from business associates are inappropriate.

Don't feel you have to like someone to get the job done. Concentrate on the job at hand and productivity, not personalities.

Don't be afraid to ask questions or for advice. No one has all the answers, and honesty is the best approach.

Be prepared to disagree and to stand up for what you believe.

Women throughout Africa deal with the impact that societal and cultural norms have on their ability to do their job, as well as on the attitudes of their supervisors and colleagues. Among many employers there is a perception that women tend to take more time off than men to care for family members. But, in the study conducted by Jennifer Makunike-Sibanda a majority of respondents (77.6 percent) said that female members of the staff were prepared to work the necessary hours to get the job done.

Some women managers have commented that, in fact, women sometimes feel a great deal of pressure not to take time off. They fear that they will prove the negative assumptions about women, making matters worse for themselves and their females colleagues. Many women have told of job interviews where a potential employer asks a woman if she has children and how she will take care of them and do her job at the same time.

But dealing with assumptions regarding family responsibilities is just one set of obstacles women face in the newsroom. In media houses throughout Africa, women are discriminated against in terms of salary, access to jobs, access to information and harassment. Each of these affects women's opportunities for advancement in the media. When women are left out of formal or informal information networks they miss out on training opportunities, fellowships, promotions and important assignments.

Many women journalists feel that the type of assignments they receive inhibits their advancement potential. A woman from Ghana states, "Bosses tend to create the impression that women are incapable of certain assignments." They are too often assigned to cover soft news and are denied assignments related politics, technology or business. In this way, they don't get the exposure they need to move ahead. Mutwe Sperance from Senegal said, "the majority of the top posts in the media are held by men, and they rarely give women the opportunity to prove their capacity on politics or other major reporting matters."

In the words of Mildred Mulenga of Zambia, "The important stories are assigned to the men. Female journalists are largely restricted to unimportant, unchallenging assignments. It will be a long time before women in Zambia are assigned to cover things like riots, bomb explosions, and international summits.… Female journalists rarely get to be editors; the highest position they can aspire to is senior reporter."

Women who are promoted into management have related an additional set of challenges in the workplace, including hostility. Zubeida Jaffer was recently appointed group parliamentary editor for Independent Newspapers of South Africa. She described the day top management informed the all-male staff of her promotion. "I was sitting in this room, with only men, and they were told that I would be taking this position. No one came up to me and congratulated me. For me that was such a shock. It was the first time in my life I experienced anything as rude as that in terms of my colleagues. In a funny, subconscious way I'd expected it, but it was still a shock."

Jemimah Mwakisha, a reporter with The Nation in Kenya and chair of that country's Association of Media Women, suggested that perhaps there is an expectation that women managers should be better than men. Women managers sometimes feel it is necessary to constantly prove themselves and their abilities, even though they had legitimately earned their promotions. They have to overcome preconceptions about women bosses, while men with less experience have been more readily promoted and accepted.

At times women said they are placed in awkward situations by issues that deal with gender and that are not easy to openly address. For example, asking for women's toilets in media houses that have accommodations only for men. In such a situation, not only are women made uncomfortable, but they are made to feel unwelcome in the work environment.

Personal Obstacles

Women, themselves, can bring their own leadership obstacles with them into the workplace. Often women are taught to be soft-spoken, not question authority, stay at home and in some cases, not to look someone in the eye. Women are faced with not only overcoming the traditional beliefs held by men in the workplace, but also with modifying some of their own views and assumptions.

Just as women generally possess some traits that are important to leadership, there are other characteristics that women must struggle to overcome if they are to be effective leaders. Generally speaking, women tend to avoid taking risks, which can limit their innovative contributions to the company and, therefore, their visibility as well. Women can have a tendency to focus on details rather than taking a big-picture approach, which is key to leadership. And, while women have a strong orientation to human relationships and the success of the team, this can create a situation where a female manager is not seen as a strong authority. In that light, some women who have reached management positions said they have struggled to understand their leadership role.

Finally, there can be a great deal of rivalry among women in the newsroom. When few management level jobs are available to women, an atmosphere of competition arises rather than one of cooperation and support. Some women talk of feeling alienated by other women once they have been promoted. Others mention female supervisors who do little to help female colleagues gain the skills they need to move ahead. A woman from Tanzania said, "When I was moving up, men and women tried to keep me down. They felt threatened, so I had to work harder to prove myself - my strength was, in fact, my dedication to my work."