In the Republic of Moldova, women constitute only 20% of the protagonists of journalistic contents. This is a very low figure when the women represent over half of the country’s population, UN Women Moldova representative Asya Varbanova said in an international workshop entitled “Message that makes the difference. Sweden’s experience in promoting gender equality in the media and photography”, IPN reports.
Asya Varbanova reminded that 30 Moldovan media outlets were recently monitored to see how they observe gender equality and the results will be made public in the nearest future. A general conclusion is that gender equality is not yet a reality in the Republic of Moldova. “If we analyze the number of women and men in Parliament, local councils or from the viewpoint of empowerment in the areas of activity, we see there is an inequity between men and women. And this inequality founds a reflection in the mass media too, regrettably,” stated the representative of UN Women Moldova.
According to Asya Varbanova, the problem resides not only in the number of women, but also in the way in which their presence is reflected. “Most of the times, the women are presented not as leaders, experts or specialists in particular areas, but rather on entertainment pages. Of the 30 media outlets that undertook to respect gender balance, many remained regrettably with the assumed commitment on paper only,” said Asya Varbanova.
Ion Mazur, head of the advocacy, publications and organizational development department of the Association of Independent Press (API), said the journalists have the moral and deontological obligation to promote gender equality. “On the one hand, we have good results, but unfortunately, we have also poor indicators which we didn’t manage to improve. The monitoring will continue,” stated Ion Mazur.
Nina Orlova, senior program officer at the Embassy of Sweden in Moldova, said women’s rights are human rights and the mass media play a very important role in forming in society values, attitudes and perceptions of particular problems. “The mass media can influence society and can bring about changes. We need to together build a more equitable society from the viewpoint of gender,” stated Nina Orlova.
The international workshop “Message that makes the difference. Sweden’s experience in promoting gender equality in the media and photography” was staged by the API in partnership with the UN program “Women in Politics”, with financial support from the Government of Sweden.
