Association of Media Women in Kenya Executive Director Patience Nyange has called for the creation of a conducive environment for women to thrive in newsrooms.
Nyange in an interview with the media on Wednesday said in 2022, women in newsrooms reported up to 16 cases of sexual harassment at their place of work.
"The year ended last year, we had a whole team of 16 women who had reported grave cases of sexual harassment and they were not sure how to report the same," she said.
Nyange said upon speaking to women who have stayed in newsrooms for over 30-40 years, questioning whether any of them had reported a case of sexual harassment or moved to make the perpetrators convicted, they said, " they don't report but negotiate it out.
She said that even though there are many mechanisms for resolving cases of sexual harassment in newsrooms, there is a great need for persecution to allow women to work better.
"As long as we are talking about it and we see there is a need and statistics are showing that one in every two women have been sexually harassed, there is a need for us to persecute that and to see that we create a more conducive environment for our women to thrive within the newsrooms," she said.
According to a report by WAN-IFRA more women in media houses-79 per cent experienced verbal sexual harassment compared to physical sexual harassment at 52 per cent between the year 2020-21.
The report showed that the most common reason for not reporting was it would negatively impact one's job (15.4 per cent) and not having evidence (13.3 per cent).
"Action taken by media organisations was limited, with the most common response being warning the accused," the report said.
In its recommendations, to manage sexual harassment, the report called on media houses to create awareness, take complaints seriously, adopt complaints procedures, consider temporary suspension and allow anonymous reporting among others.
