Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) studies have consistently revealed that women are grossly underrepresented in the media in contrast to men. In 2010 this survey showed that in Africa, 77% of stories in the media reinforced gender stereotypes, almost eight times higher than stories that challenge such stereotypes (5%). The advent of digital media technology, including mobile phones, provides new opportunities for the empowerment of women both in and by the media. As broadcasters seek to engage with audiences in new ways, targeted media capacity building projects are able to highlight and emphasize the voices of women and their role in society.
 
Via this project, the CBA aims to facilitate a greater engagement between the NGOs working with women in the communication for development sector and the mainstream broadcasters in South East Africa. By bringing together women from CBA broadcaster members and the women from the C4D media sector, this project will strategically promote a new approach to gender in the mainstream media via a number of different interventions: Firstly, the roles of senior women managers in member organizations will be empowered; Secondly, at a time when there is an increased demand for content, the potential for content production by and for women who have until now been regarded as ‘passive’ audience will be recognized; and Thirdly, the project will facilitate media content production and sharing between women’s NGOs and mainstream media throughout South East Africa on an initial and sustainable basis.
 
The initial phase of the project will be a two-day workshop to train female senior employees from CBA member broadcasters in South East Africa. This training will enable them to support and oversee the project over its duration, and will create regional ‘project managers’ from within the broadcasting organizations themselves. These regional project managers will be key in delivering the outputs by maintaining and developing the relationship between their own broadcasting organizations and the Women NGOs in terms of media content production. This workshop will be followed by a two-day seminar for broadcasters and NGOs. These seminars will involve content producers/journalists /project managers and media organizations from across South East Africa and local partner NGOs working in the field of women and media.
 
The project will seek to build capacity and willingness in the mainstream media to broadcast quality gender sensitive content by facilitating content production. It will bring together and involve local women’s NGOs, programme makers, presenters, CBOs (Community-based organizations) and gender activists in South East Africa with a view to increasing the visibility of women’s voices, gender concerns as well concerns of the poor, including service delivery issues in broadcasting.