UN Women wants Nigeria media to champion women’s rights, gender equality

By Olabisi Deji-Folutile

As Nigeria moves towards opening the space for political campaigns ahead of the 2023 general election, the United Nations (UN) Women Country Representative to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Beatrice Eyong, says the media should champion women’s rights and gender equality issues through their editorial articles, features, and news coverage.

She also urged the media to focus more on reporting women in politics and embrace gender-sensitive words.

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At a parley with senior media executives in Lagos, the UN chief urged the media to help in projecting the true meaning of gender equality and remove misconceptions about the term.

According to her, some people think gender equality means women becoming men and men becoming women or wives becoming recalcitrant to their husbands, or women toppling men in their positions.

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She explained that gender simply refers to the roles and responsibilities attributed to women and men by society including the expectations as regards the probable characteristics, attitudes, and behaviours of women and men (being femininity and masculinity).

According to her, gender seeks to remove all the constraints that those stereotypical roles, responsibilities, and socially given attributions present to development.

“People usually ask the question of whether gender inequalities have any costs. The answer is a significant and emphatic YES. Gender inequalities do have costs.

“This was revealed by a study by the World Bank in 40 countries in 2001. The study concluded that gender equality is a core development issue. It is a development objective in its own right because gender inequality has costs.

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“Foremost of the costs of gender inequalities are the poor quality of life and the loss of human lives. Evidence from many countries showed that societies with large and persistent gender inequalities pay the price of more poverty, malnutrition, illness, and other deprivations.

“Foremost of the costs of gender inequalities are the poor quality of life and the loss of human lives. Evidence from many countries showed that societies with large and persistent gender inequalities pay the price of more poverty, malnutrition, illness, and other deprivations,’’ she explained.

These costs, according to her, are some of the reasons why the media should promote women’s leadership and political participation.  To her, women will contribute to policy decisions and laws that affect them and work towards abolishing harmful traditional practices against them.

She noted that women often suffer because of inadequate gender-responsive action in critical areas adding that with more women in government, economic policies will promote equal opportunity, reduce wage disparity and economic inequality and ensure increased budget allocation for primary health care while enforcing stricter penalties for gender-based violence.

She identified the challenges women face in politics and media including gender reports taken to the bottom positions in newsrooms as they are considered less important by editors/producers.

“The commercialisation of news and media reporting. Women do not have the money to compete with men, the low representation of women in media organisations,

religious beliefs which tend to hinder media colleagues from projecting issues around women and gender in Nigeria and negative presentation of female politicians by the media, etc.’’

The UN Women rep, therefore, enjoined the media to champion women’s rights and ensure the production of high-quality stories with a focus on gender equality and women’s rights, as well as the inclusion of women as sources in stories produced, aiming for gender parity.

She also urged the media to adopt a gender-sensitive Code of Conduct on Reporting, and train their staff members to ensure they comply with the guidelines for gender-sensitive reporting.