Chapter 18

Asia-Pacific Women Demand Equal Access to Leadership in Community Radio

By Bianca Miglioretto and Janice Lopez

In 2006, the AMARC WIN conducted an email survey among women community radio broadcasters in the Asia Pacific region as regards to their situation and needs. Out of the 23 respondents from 12 different countries in the region, 18 were women.

These 23 radio stations or production groups employ between two to 41 staff, wherein the gender balance is close to equal among the employees (see table). One community radio in Fiji is an all-female project and one station in Indonesia has a male-only staff but does not call itself an all-men’s station. However, with a closer gender appraisal of leadership and technical positions in these radio stations, a different picture can be gleaned. Women make up only 28 per cent of leadership positions, which is comparatively better than in mainstream media, where women occupy only three to five per cent of leadership positions, as reported by the International Federation of Journalists in 2001. Still, women lack access to decision making in the community radio sector.

Almost all the radio stations (21) have between one to five hours of weekly programs by and for women. These programs cover issues such as women’s rights, health care, violence against women, literacy, and success stories of women in society. Most of the respondents have very positive experiences in community radio work. For example, after listening to a program on discrimination against widows, Nepali widows in one community changed their white sari to red sari, an outer garment worn primarily by Hindu women, which can be draped in various ways. Culturally, widows may never wear red clothing or sari because it is a symbolic representation of marriage. Housewives are no longer afraid to talk about issues that used to be taboo. Thanks to a radio program, a woman was able to get land and property from her ex-husband who left her.

Among the most important changes the women community radio broadcasters want to bring to their radio stations are: (1) Women’s access to leadership, decision making and management; (2) Access to all aspects of radio production, especially technical tasks; and (3) More gender-sensitive and feminist programs and perspectives in the radio stations.

The most important training needs that the women broadcasters mentioned are: production and technical skills including ICT; gender and feminist perspectives in community radio programming; journalistic skills (e.g., interviewing, script writing, anchoring, reporting); and management, administration and sharing of decision making. All the respondents want program exchange with other radio stations. The topics they are most interested in are gender and women’s issues, the protection of women’s rights and women’s success stories. Furthermore, they all want to join the Women’s International Network of AMARC Asia Pacific. Interestingly enough, five of the respondents are current members of AMARC but said that they did not know about WIN.