KABUL (SW) – The Afghanistan Women Journalist Association has shared findings of their survey about the state of affairs faced by the females in this industry in the last two years.
Mina Habib, the head of Afghanistan Women Journalist Association, told a gathering that 200 journalists from all over the country participated in this survey, and 90% of them are currently working. She added: “In the section of existing challenges, 45% of the participants cited unemployment and women journalists staying at home, 10% lack of access to information, 7% lack of job and psychological security in the media as the biggest challenges in their way, and 2% observed hijab and wearing a mask has been called a preventive measure.”
According to the Afghanistan Women Journalist Association, the purpose of conducting this survey is to reveal the obstacles in the way of female journalists and to find a solution for it.
Mina Habib said: “Our purpose of conducting this survey was to know their challenges so that our organization can take action to solve them, as most of them complained about their bad economic situation because they were the vulnerable group of this transformation, so that they should be worked with with the cooperation of the government and external institutions.”
The participants of this survey mentmentioned many ways out of the existing challenges, financial issues, eliminating gender discrimination in the media and creating more job opportunities for female journalists. Female journalists acknowledged existing challenges, but they say that conducting such surveys is not very fruitful in resolving all issues.
Hajra, one of the female journalists, told Salam Watandar about this: “There are many problems, lack of access to information for women, which causes their work to be undervalued and their income to decrease. On the other hand, these programs and the presentation of statistics and figures do not heal the pain and are not very effective.”
Zarghua, another female journalist, also says: “I have been in the media for 14 years, in the last two years we are generally not employed due to the lack of funds, we have to work without a salary. Hopefully, the results of this survey will give us a solution.”
It should be mentioned that before, media supporting organizations have also said that after the political changes more than two years ago, out of 2,750 women working in the media, only 545 of them are working now.
ENDS
