In Baidoa 26thApril the first workshop was held by the team of Somali Women Journalist.
A word of prayer was opened and the chairperson welcomed the participants.
In Baidoa the biggest concern was that they was no sexual exploitation in their specific media houses so far that has been come across but the main problem that we discovered was there were few ladies in the field of journalist.
Ladies are approached and requested to join the field but there has been rejections from them due to the society. The society has been a problem to the ladies to join the filed. The society sees the culture does not allow ladies to take part in the media houses, reasons being their voices will be heard, the lady will not married if she joins the field.
One of the directors shared that due to lack of enough ladies or willing parents that will allow their daughters to join the field he had to employ a lady from outside the city to show it as an example that ladies can and they are respected.
All the directors shared that in the past few years they have been trying to approach different parents so that they would at least try get few to show to the rest.
Few women journalists shared that they do it as a secret carrier since they have been stopped by their parents due to the fear from the society.
It has been noted that most of the threats and problems the women journalist in that region face come from the society. One of the journalist shared that one day while she was heading to work in an auto rickshaw one of the intelligence military members blocked her and pointed a gun towards her,luckily the gun had no bullets and she escaped. While she reported nobody considered since he is in the government and her parents stopped her from work. She declared that she secretly works now as a journalist since has got the passion for it.
In groups discussions were made on the approaches that can be used to set the scores and reach out to the society to make it easy for some parents.
- Strong awareness to be created for the society
- To get an organization for like SWJ to address the parents and show that there are ladies that are in the field like they are and well respected and part of the community (an example to prove)
- Since the culture is dominated a lot there has to be campaigns to be done for strong and effective change
- The journalists declared they will give it all they can to make a change if they get supported.
Since women are the backbone of the society the crowd came into an agreement that the awareness campaigns should be done by a group of ladies.
It has been an opportunity for the media houses to come together so as to share their views.
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