West Nile media urged to embrace inclusion

23 July 2025, 10:31 am

Byamukama Alozious

The Uganda Media Women’s Association (UMWA) has convened journalists in the West Nile region for a critical dialogue aimed at transforming media structures and practices to foster gender equity and inclusive reporting. The session, conducted under the M-SPACE Project, is supported by the Royal Danish Embassy alongside partners such as the Uganda Editors Guild, African Centre for Media Excellence, Uganda Radio Network, and Embassy of Iceland in Kampala, Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), and the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC). Together, they aim to address the underlying structures that entrench gender disparities in Uganda’s media industry.

Throughout the face-to-face dialogue, journalists were asked to reflect on the composition of their media houses mapping out who holds power, who makes decisions, and who gets what assignment. This exercise revealed a clear gender imbalance: men overwhelmingly dominate positions on boards, management teams, and key decision-making spaces, while women, persons with disabilities, and other marginalized groups remain underrepresented or absent entirely.

This disparity extends into recruitment processes. Journalists noted that recruitment panels in most media houses are often composed of men, and interview questions posed to female candidates tend to probe personal responsibilities such as child care or household obligations inquiries rarely directed at men. This, participants agreed, subtly filters women out of leadership pipelines.

Once in the newsroom, the career trajectory of female journalists is further stifled by the conditions surrounding promotion. Several attendees recounted stories where promotion opportunities were linked to regional favoritism, sexual advances, or opaque criteria rather than merit and performance.

“Sometimes, it’s not about your experience or academic qualifications but about who you know or worse who you entertain,” lamented one journalist.

Prudence Joan, a journalist, vividly highlighted how gender roles at home impact women’s professional lives:

 “When a child falls sick, society expects the mother not the father to leave work and attend to them. This affects women’s consistency at work and automatically side-lines them from opportunities for growth.”

The group also examined job assignments within newsrooms and observed that they are often distributed along gender lines. Men are routinely allocated political, security, and economic beats — the so-called ‘serious’ stories while women are disproportionately assigned to lifestyle, entertainment, or human-interest features. Moreover, staff members, especially women, are rarely consulted on what they would prefer to report on or where their strengths lie.

Ariku Gilbert from Access fm asked: “When do editors ever ask female reporters what beats they want to cover? The assumption is always that hard news is for men.”

These patterns, participants acknowledged, are compounded by deep-rooted cultural norms that position men as natural leaders and women as secondary. Consequently, editorial meetings and key newsroom decisions are dominated by male voices, leaving little room for women and other marginalized groups to shape news agendas.

Andy Opingopi, another journalist, underscored the need for policy interventions to rectify these imbalances. Reflecting on Uganda’s recent National Resistance Movement (NRM) primaries, he noted that despite the presence of female politicians and voters, there was minimal female journalist representation in the coverage.

“We need more women covering critical political events because lived experiences matter. How can a man fully capture the realities of menstruation or women’s health in politics without that first-hand understanding? Gender inclusion isn’t just a preference it’s a policy necessity ‘’ Andy stated

The dialogue further revealed a critical gap in how newly graduated journalists are integrated into newsrooms. Without proper mentorship or orientation on gender-sensitive reporting, these young professionals often perpetuate the biases they find entrenched in the media industry.

UMWA encouraged journalists to advocate for comprehensive gender policies within their organizations policies that do not merely exist on paper but actively guide recruitment, promotions, decision-making processes, and job assignments. Such policies would ensure that promotions are based on competence, leadership skills, alignment with the organization’s values, and problem-solving abilities not favoritism or gender biases.

Additionally, the dialogue urged media houses to rethink their recruitment and promotion panels to ensure diversity and fairness. Instead of relying on homogeneous male-dominated committees, they should include women, human resource experts, and external stakeholders to uphold transparency.

Participants also emphasized the need for regular training sessions on gender, disability inclusion, and refugee representation in media. Journalists proposed that mentorship programs be developed to prepare women and other underrepresented groups for leadership roles within media houses.

 Margret Ssentamu, the Executive Director of Uganda Media Women’s Association (UMWA), emphasized:

“This is not just about women it is about justice in storytelling. If newsrooms remain homogenous, we will continue producing one-sided narratives that do not reflect Uganda’s diversity.”