March 2023 - February 2025
430 K€
Democratic governance Gender equality
CFI believes that gender inequalities and stereotypes should no longer have a place in the media. To help eliminate them, CFI, in partnership with the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), launched the Equal Voices project in March 2023, aimed at the media in Ivory Coast and Ghana. The aim is twofold: firstly, to encourage them to promote, through their editorial practices, a more balanced representation of women and men in media content. Secondly, to support them in drawing up internal policies to protect their female staff from all forms of harassment and to facilitate their access to positions of managerial responsibility.
The project began in July 2023 with the selection of eight beneficiary media outlets, four from Ghana and four from Ivory Coast. Representatives of these media outlets were brought together in September at the launch seminar in Accra (Ghana), alongside around fifty people from the media, non-governmental organisations, journalism schools and public institutions in both countries. The lively and productive debates focused on the place accorded to women in the media and the obstacles they face in their professional practices.
To ensure that these obstacles to change were removed, two aspects were taken into account in the construction of the project: the managerial aspect and the editorial aspect. In practical terms, to ensure the success of these two challenges, the project managers proposed two separate training programmes for the beneficiaries: a peer-to-peer programme to support the media in implementing management policies in favour of gender equality, and a training course on gender-sensitive journalism, to be offered by the MFWA in 2023. These specific actions are now bearing fruit, as Hervice Kouakou Kouassi, Head of Production, Programmes and Broadcasting at Radio Soleil, explains:
“Since our return from Accra, we have been passing on what we have learned about stereotypes and gender issues to our staff. So we decided to produce a programme dedicated solely to young girls, called Écoute au féminin“.
Hervice Kouakou Kouassi, Head of Production, Programmes and Broadcasting at Radio Soleil
To ensure other concrete achievements, numerous exchanges have been organised between the people mobilised on the ground and CFI. Esther Krawczyk, head of the Equal Voices project, explains::
“Since the project was launched, we have been working with a wide variety of stakeholders, which has made it possible to become aware of the realities on the ground that can slow down progress towards gender equality, and to adapt the transition. I’m convinced that seeing this project through to the end will enable us to bring about real change locally, nationally and even internationally”.
Esther Krawczyk, Project Manager of Equal Voices
This ambition is already taking shape, with the Ivorian and Ghanaian stakeholders taking the initiative to exchange views on equality on a more regular basis. An initial consultation session was held in mid-December in Abidjan (Ivory Coast), bringing together members of the media, public and private institutions and civil society organisations, who pledged to produce a national roadmap by 2024 to improve the representation of women in the media.
“What advice do you have for a female career in the media sector?: interview with Abigail Larbi Odei at the Media and Development Forum in Paris – July 2023”
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