By Providence Obuh

ONLY four percent of media reports on women are centred around gender balance, according to media monitoring report on the portrayal and reportage of women and girls right issues.

The report titled: “Mainstreaming Gender Reporting on Affirmative Action of Women and Girls Rights Issues” is a key finding by the Journalist For Christ (JFC) a faith based NGO and it also covers the outcome of an extensive survey and a one month media monitoring report by six Nigeria national newspapers in the month of May 2015.

The purpose of the project is to engage the Nigerian media to mainstream women’s rights issues in media reportage in order to advance and build public understanding.

Meanwhile, a summary of the report shows that out of 1031 reports on women and girls right, there were only 40 reports that advocated gender balance invariably representing four percent of that figure.

Further findings shows that though newspapers generally gave special space profiling the achievements of women across the six newspapers, but the contents of this special coverage did not necessarily translate to reports that advocated gender balance.

For space allocated to stories per specific subject issues, it was observed that though the pages were focused on women, the issues discussed were however not limited to women and were not specifically to address the issues of denials and discrimination faced by women just as rural reporting on women and girls issues was low compared to state and level reportage, where rural issues represented 8.4 percent, state and national issues represented 30 and 40 percent respectively.

The report pointed out that the editors of the newspaper realise that there is the need to give more space to report about activities of women by profiling them in special interview and features pages, however, in as much as this portends greater media visibility for women, the attention is still highly elitist driven and does not necessarily address the challenges of social inequalities faced by women.

Further to that is the fact that the profiling of women in special reports have not only become the obsession of reporters but also a marketing plan tool, “Women are still the selling points, especially as subjects of entertainment and lifestyle related issues. This approach needs to be de-emphasized.”

The report recommends that while it is important to talk and report women who have national presence, there is also the need for the media and journalists to look at women in the rural areas, in addition, media owners should help articulate the challenges facing women in an unbiased way; while reporting cases of rape and abuse is important they go a step further in looking at justice system and intimating the public with the outcomes of criminal proceeding against perpetrators of violence against women.

“There are several women who are contributing meaningfully to commerce and other developmental issues in the society. Media owners should as a matter of urgency showcase these women more, rather than limit reporting about women to entertainment and lifestyle.”

However, Executive Director, Media Concern Initiative-for Women and Children (MEDIACON) Dr. Princess Olufemi-Kayode, said that there is a need for national conference on sexual violence.

She said this while delivering a paper titled: “Issues on the Rights of Girls and Women; Perspectives and Issues from the Angle of Sexual Abuse.”