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Statement by female media practitioners in Zimbabwe
MISA-Zimbabwe
March 18, 2011

We female media practitioners drawn from the public and independent media, senior and retired female media practitioners, media students and gender media activists gathered in Harare on Friday, 18 March 2011:

Aware and Concerned with the employment disparities and representation of male and female journalists despite female media students constituting the majority in training institutions;

Concerned with the inequitable media representation of women's issues and voices in socio- economic and political issues:

Hereby resolve and demand that media houses and institutions that we represent, formulate gender policies that deal with and ensure:

1.1 Fair allocation of beats and assignments to both female and male journalists thus ensuring equal experience opportunities for them.

1.2 Equal promotion opportunities for both male and female journalists to senior and editorial positions based on merit and not along gender-biased discrimination.

1.3 Effective disciplinary procedures are instituted to deal with physical and emotional sexual harassment of female media practitioners and trainee female and male students on internship with respective media houses.

1.4 Nursing female journalists are not discriminated against in the allocation of beats, but that newsrooms should capacitate nursing mothers so that they are able to go on assignment without compromising their nursing routines.

2. All media training institutions gender-mainstream their intakes and include gender training and mentoring initiatives in their training curriculum to empower and embolden female trainees to venture into the journalism profession.

3. Representative media support institutions such as MISA-Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe Union of Journalists and the Media Alliance of Zimbabwe consider specialised training initiatives to capacitate female media practitioners to cover more challenging beats.

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