Gender and decision-making in the print media in Uganda : experiences of newspaper editors

Abstract

The media plays a crucial role in framing public debates and shaping public perceptions by selecting the issues to be reported and how they are represented. For the media to accurately mirror societies and to produce coverage that is complete and diverse, it is critical that the news reflects the world as seen through the eyes of women and men. The historically scarce presence of women in editorial positions however conveys the message that women are not worth listening to and that a woman’s point of view is not valued in an editorial setting (Andsager & Mastin, 2003). Only when women are equal partners in the multi-layered work of deciding what constitutes a story and how that story might be told can we paint a more textured, accurate picture of the worlds that we all – male and female – inhabit (WMC, 2014). In Uganda, participation of women in the media has generally been studied, but not the experiences of women in editorial positions in Uganda’s print media regarding participation and decision-making. This study examined female placement in the physical, and operational editorial structure of the print media in Uganda and assessed how female editors participate in editorial decision-making in the print media in Uganda, analysed gender and power dynamics in decision-making in newsrooms and the institutional and personal gender-related challenges hindering women’s rise to senior editorial positions in the print media in Uganda. The study increased the understanding of the operation of the print media industry in an effort to realizing a gender-responsive and inclusive media and contributed to the generation of new knowledge on gender, women, participation, and decision-making in the print media in Uganda.