Stop Sexualizing Women Leaders And Stick To Issues – Tanzania MP Lugangira

By Ellen Gyimah @Ellengyimah8

ALISA HOTEL, Accra – October 21, 2022: Neema Lugangira, a Member of Parliament in Tanzania has said that women leaders are mostly not seen on the media for interviews because of online abuse.

Ms. Lugangira said this in response to an issue posited by Head of JoyNews political desk Evans Mensah.

This was on Day Two of the just ended West Africa Media Excellence Conference Award’s (WAMECA) panel discussion on Media and Women Empowerment in Africa held at Alisa Hotel, Accra October 20 and 21, 2022.

The JoyNews reporter had it is difficult to get women to be interviewed on political issues because they were unwilling and unready.

The Tanzanian MP responded that it is the abuse of women online that has contributed to women seeming unwilling to engage in discussions on television and radio.

“I was aggressively abused online but no media house defended me,” she said.

She said most presenters who interview women leaders tend to genderize or sexualize the issues. She added that, instead of the media publishing issues discussed by the women leaders, they rather publish the relational status of the female interviewee.

“We need to stick to issues and not divert to gender”, she added.

Neema Lugangira also stated that the media can be blamed for contributing to gender inequalities in Africa. she said that women are given little or no chance in political conversations. According to her, most presenters perceive women to have little knowledge about politics.

Continuing on gender inequalities, the General Secretary of Peoples National Convention (PNC) Janet Jabila said, “We have a lot of gender inequalities but I have not seen any media reporting on these inequalities. I expect the media to do balance reportage”.

Ms. Jabila said she cannot count the number of times her programs have not been aired even though she invited them to cover. She added that some editors and owners of media houses see women leaders to be always complaining about something and hardly report on their programs.

The West Africa Media Excellence Conference Awards is organized by Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA). In the last 25 years, the MFWA has led efforts to promote media capacity building to hundreds of media as key actors and supporters of democratic consolidation and national development in the sub-region.