Report of a survey conducted by Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ)

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2017

Gender composition of Nigeria newsrooms

INTRODUCTION

• The worldwide statistics on female leadership in politics and business reveal a stark reality. In politics, only 56 (38%) of the 146 nations examined by the World Economic Forum have had a female head of government or state in the past half-century.
• To change the media narrative in Nigeria, the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism launched the Report Women! Female Reporters Leadership Programme in 2017. As part of this initiative, WSCIJ conducted a survey on the gender composition of newsrooms in Nigeria in 2017. This report outlines the findings.

METHODOLOGY

• For this study, we chose the descriptive research design of the survey type to describe and understand the issues.
• To gather information, we sampled 180 journalists and media managers from 85 different news media organisations across 28 states in Nigeria.
• We used simple descriptive statistics like frequency counts and percentages to make sense of the data we collected from the survey.

Results on WSCIJ survey on gender composition of Nigeria newsrooms

Gender ratio of respondents

No of media houses

Media houses

Media houses

Media houses

No of States

Educational qualification of respondents

No of years of professional journalism experience

Number of respondents that head their desks

�Comments by respondents on female leadership in the newsroom�

• Bossy and dictatorial
• Twice as hardworking but underappreciated
• There is no glass ceiling. Competence plays a huge role to merit certain positions.
• Women are very firm, principled and forceful because most times the men think because of their gender, they are too weak to perform excellently well.

�Comments by respondents on female leadership in the newsroom�

• Demands of the job on the woman especially if married are high. Most at the top are single women or divorced
• They are usually strict and domineering
• Women can feature in more leadership positions in the newsroom if they would just stop their helpless disposition and not too favourable complaints and excuses when they are are assigned responsibilities...

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• -They are hard to get along with. They are very tasking and demanding. They do not get along with the male counterpart
• Women leaders are easy to access and more accommodating.
• They are underrated by stereotypes.
• They are mean. Most women are more comfortable and free working with male leaders

Comments by respondents on female leadership in the newsroom

Comments by respondents on female leadership in the newsroom

• Women are considered to be weaker partners and sometime their actions proved that even though some are hardworking like men but most of them concentrate more on families affairs and less on the job
• Women are not likely to perform optimally due to their nature of being very soft as mothers.

Observations

There are about the same number of total female and male reporters

in the newsrooms covered.

Observations

• Most of the respondents have spent at least 5years in the profession. Some of them have been around for up to 15 years. They are therefore persons that are due for leadership positions.

Observations

• All women related desks are headed by women.

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Observations

• Most hard beats ‘politics’, have male heads, quite a number of them do not have a female in the team.

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Observations

Leadership at the desk level is fairly balanced. Women are heads of desks like crime, current affairs, health, agriculture, business, development, women issues, judiciary, legislature, bureau chiefs and more. The challenge however seems to be moving from the desk level to the next hierarchy.

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Conclusion

• By the time we compare the numbers at the higher levels, the ratio of women in leadership drops significantly.

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• The trend we observe therefore matches global trends of women in leadership positions in business and in the media.

The big question is…

What happens to the women on the desks that makes it difficult for them to get to the next level?

Infographics: Nieman Reports