How the ReportHer Awards is Boosting Women’s Representation in Media

On the 8th of July, 2023, journalists and media practitioners came together for the maiden edition of the ReportHer Awards, organised by Women Radio in partnership with the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ), and with support from the UN Women and Government of Canada.

The ReportHer awards were given to Nigerian media organisations and journalists who had committed to reporting women in the past year. AriseNews won the Television category as the TV station that reported women more and gave prime space to women. BluePrint Newspaper won the print category. Voice of Nigeria won the Radio category as the media platform that aimed at fair reportage of women. Techcabal won the Digital category. Titilope Fadare, a senior reporter at Premium Times Nigeria won the Individual Journalist category as the journalist that interviewed, covered, reported more women’s stories, and ensured gender-balanced reportage. Titilope emerged as the ReportHer Journalist of the Year, and has won a scholarship to train at the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom, courtesy of UN Women and the Government of Canada.

According to Lanre Arogundade who spoke on behalf of the board of judges, the selection period was from March 2022 to March 2023. The criteria included the informative nature of the entries, ethics and professionalism, social responsibility of journalists on the female gender reportage, the extent to which women were used as news sources and the 50-50 representation of women in everyday stories.

Why This Award is Important

During the award ceremony, Beatrice Eyong, UN Women country representative to Nigeria and ECOWAS mentioned that the media are active shapers of perception and must thus be intentional in giving prominence to women-related issues to change the narrative that has been on for so long. She said, “If we do not achieve gender equality and empowerment, we cannot achieve sustainable development goals.” Indeed, that is true. It isn’t news that women are grossly underrepresented in media, either as experts or as subjects of stories. In a 2015 report, women made up 19% of experts featured in news stories and 37% of reporters telling stories globally. Also, only 24% of expert voices in the news are women.

But awards like the ReportHer show that there’s a glimmer of hope when it comes to the ample representation of women in media. Many Nigerian journalists are not only inviting more women as experts, but they are intentionally featuring women in stories and paying attention to the way women are featured and spoken of in the media. 

The ReportHer Awards is encouraging journalists who are putting in the work to see women represented in media, and fostering and boosting a journalism space/culture where women are duly acknowledged. It also serves as a prompt to journalists to pay better attention to women in their stories.

What’s next?

At the award night, Toun Okewale Sonaiya, the co-founder of Women Radio 91.7 encouraged the winners not to rest on their oars as there is more to be done to achieve a 50:50 balanced reportage of men and women. Toun said every one of us must adopt a deliberate commitment to report women more and increase female representation in the media. She also noted that the 2024 ReportHer Awards will expand to photographic journalists categories.

Congratulations to all the winners on their work towards advancing the rights of women and girls through media visibility.