Female journalists must aspire to the top of media organisations – NAWOJ National President

Ify Omowale is the National President of Nigeria Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ). She dwells on how the association has fared in the last 30 years and need for female journalists to aspire to the top in the practise. What has the journey been like as head of Nigeria Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ)? The […]

Ify Omowale is the National President of Nigeria Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ). She dwells on how the association has fared in the last 30 years and need for female journalists to aspire to the top in the practise.

What has the journey been like as head of Nigeria Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ)?

The Journey for female journalists in Nigeria has been from obscurity to visibility. We have a lot to celebrate. We need to celebrate women in journalism. It’s not been an easy journey at all. We still have a lot more to do but we are getting there gradually. The next step now is getting women in managerial positions in media organisations especially the newsrooms.

NAWOJ is celebrating 30 years, what difference has it made in these years?

In the past 30 years, NAWOJ has been a voice for the voiceless. We’ve been collaborating with other organisations like International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) and other women organisations where we advocate for different issues concerning women and children. We’ve been part of ensuring we have a violence against person’s bill. We were involved from the beginning till the bill was signed into law. We were also part of the national health bill because it’ll reduce a lot of financial burden on women. We’ve been into voters’ education in all parts of the country too. We support female journalists by making sure they are trained and retrained on the job

What programmes are on to mark NAWOJ’s 30th anniversary?

For our 30th anniversary, we are going to celebrate the fact that many people tried to proscribe NAWOJ but we are still here and we survived. Every female journalist and woman in the media now wants to identify with us. We’ve become a household name and that’s what we wanted.

What is NAWOJ’s relationship with other international organizations?

We have a very good relationship with a lot of international organisations like UNESCO and UNDP and sometimes we get trainings from them. In fact we have relationships with Nigerian organisations like INEC. Their gender unit has been collaborating with us in terms of training. Even the military recently joined hands with us on our project ‘Taking the girl child back to school in the North east.’ After the Chibok and Dapchi girls issue, there has been apathy to send the girl child to school. However, we are creating awareness that what happened was just a one-off and it shouldn’t stop them from sending the girl child to school.

Most media owners believe women can’t lead a media organisation depriving them to be at the top of the profession. What is the way forward on this matter?

The female journalist in Nigeria faces a lot of challenges especially when it comes to filling the leadership roles. Sometimes when women are in their reproductive ages, they find that journalism is not helping but these days with crèches being established, it can be better. We advocate that crèche houses should be available in media organisations. It’s helping a lot of women to stay on the job. We are encouraging women to stay on the job because when you stay, you’ll be able to advocate and help the younger ones.

What is NAWOJ doing to address the low representation of women representation in the newsroom?

What we try to do along with the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) is to engage media owners to ensure there’s gender parity. If you’re anywhere in the world now and your organization doesn’t have gender parity be it in media or any sector, no one wants to talk to you. The whole world is talking about equity now. The media sector has been adhering to gender parity more than any sector in Nigeria.

What new roles are female journalists playing in the media industry?

When I became a journalist 28 years ago, we had very few women in newsrooms across the country. But now, there are a lot of women especially in broadcasting, doing beautiful jobs. We even had some cover the Liberian war. This used to be the exclusive area for men. We have women who even cover sports and finance now. In those days, it used to be just women manning women’s and children pages.

The truth now is that women drive the media. Even in the social media aspect where you’ve bloggers, it’s the women who are making the waves and so women have come of age and I’m proud to be leading a group of media women at this time in our history.

What mentoring programmes does the association have for young female journalists?

We’ve two mentoring programmes. One is the ‘speak out and speak right.’ It’s a programme for young girls in secondary schools where they are encouraged to speak out. They are also encouraged because even if you are not going to be a media person, be a bold and confident speaker. If girls are not bold enough to speak out at a young age, they won’t be when they grow older too.  When we were growing up, they would always say girls are to be seen, not to be heard but now we are changing the dynamics. Girls should be heard and should be heard right.

We’ve another programme which is the undergraduate programme where we are encouraging young girls in mass communication not just to speak out but to write and be gender conscious in their writings. We are also talking to the National Universities Commission (NUC) to ensure that mass communication schools have gender reporting as a course in undergraduate classes.