Tunisia: Meeting promotes female journalists in union leadership

A Tunisian journalist gives a presentation at a recent meeting in Tunis organised to advocate women journalists' participation in professional unions.

At a recent meeting in Tunis, women journalists from across the Maghreb announced an upcoming campaign called "Women in Union Leadership". The initiative aims to encourage women to participate in unions and to "promote to decision-making positions inside these unions through training, networking, communication and formation of pressure groups".

The forum, held April 17th-19th, was organised by the International Federation of Journalists (FIJ) and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Attendees participated in a series of dialogues in which women journalists representing 14 Arab countries and Iran related their experiences in unions and leadership.

"The message of our meeting is clear – to encourage women journalists in the Arab region to join unions, to take part in their elections, and to run for leadership positions," Algerian Sarah Bouchetob told Magharebia.

Bouchetob, who is responsible for Arab world projects, said that she is already optimistic about developments in Tunisia, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. She added that she looks forward to the next elections in Algeria, "so that we may see whether we have advanced in a good way".

At the last conference of the National Union of Tunisian Journalists held in January, three out of nine victors were women. In Morocco last March, five women acceded to the 19-member panel at the head of the journalists' syndicate.

Many attending the conference said, however, that conditions of female journalists are still below expectations in some countries. Journalist Adel Bouhlal said Tunisia has women who "enjoy enough professionalism and competency to lead and make decisions", but there has yet to be a single woman editor-in-chief, in either official or privately-owned newspapers.

Mounia Belafia, Vice-Secretary-General of the Moroccan National Press Syndicate, told Magharebia there are still "pockets of resistance" in Arab society keeping women from these positions of authority. Opponents of gender equality attempt to minimise what they view as risks by ideologically exploiting women, she added.

"There are many calls... to make women wear veils," she said, "but [also] calling for allowing women to take off their clothes in order to exploit them. We find ourselves with a choice of two traps; the first is the veiling and hiding, and the other is pornography and sexuality. Both are different forms of extremism," she said.

The meeting concluded with the identification of a set of goals and principles on which the journalist unions and syndicates will work in co-operation with the FIJ. The most prominent of these goals is "the need to increase the representation of women journalists in leadership positions in the unions and associations, with the adoption of a quota system. This is in addition to the enhancement of abilities of women journalists in unions through training."

Participants in the meeting agreed on the need "to involve male colleagues in all gender-related issues, enhance the union policies and trends in order to guarantee union rights of women journalists, and to protect them against all forms of violence and harassment they face in their work. This is in addition to ensuring the integration of the social gender approach in collective bargaining and common agreements."

By Jamel Arfaoui for Magharebia in Tunis