Participants at a training workshop in Adamawa State have dissected the limited voice that women get in the media in Nigeria and made a case for improvement.

Facilitators and participants at the four-day event on the theme, ‘Strengthening the Capacity of Media Personnel for Positive Response porting to Support Gender Responsiveness and Inclusive Governance in Adamawa State’, noted that women are significantly underrepresented as sources in Nigerian media.

They said persistent gender imbalance in the sources used in Nigerian journalism contributes to marginalization of women’s voices and by extension, poor representation in governance.

Multiple sources indicate that highly limited number of women make it to the Nigerian media as sources, accounting consistently for between 14 percent to 20 percent, while men take the lion share of between 80 percent and 86 percent.

Four resource persons who are experts in gender responsive reporting and gender inclusive advocacy, namely Malam Hassan Karofi, Dr Hussaini Lawal, Hajiya Asma’u Joda and Hajiya Aisha Bello, took turns to present papers during the Adamawa Media Training in Gender-Responsive Political Narratives which was attended by reporters and editors from electronic and print media houses.

The facilitators urged journalists to consciously seek to give women a voice by seeking them out for news interviews and projecting them in their reports.

The Media Training was orgainized by the German Corporation for International Development (GIZ) and the Development Research Project Centre (dRPC) with funding from the European Union and Germany under the Supporting Sustainable Social Protection, Participation and Economic Resilience in North-east Nigeria Programme (SEPIN-SUSI).

The dRPC produced statistics which proved that the percentages of women in government in Nigeria is low, with men constituting more than 94 percent (728) of local council chairmanship, leaving women with less than five percent (48); while out of 990 seats in state houses of Assembly, women occupy only 49 which amounts to just 4.9 percent as well as just 4.4 percent of National Assembly seats; with a total of 21 female National Assembly lawmakers (four in Senate and 17 in House of Representatives) as against 448 male senators and House of Representatives members.

The facilitators at the media training which ended in Yola at the weekend impressed on the participants that women need opportunities to grow as men do and that journalists who mirror the society should amplify the voices of women to pave the path to growth.

On their part, the journalists and other media stakeholders at the training committed themselves to championing the amplification of women’s voices through gender-balanced reporting.

‘14% coverage unacceptable’ – Stakeholders demand improved media voice for women