Narratives of Empowerment - Training Workshop on Professional TV News Media Reporting of Working Women Held in Karachi

Pakistan’s leading national and regional TV channels and online media participated in 2 day training workshop on gender and labour sensitive reporting, aimed at improving coverage of women with narratives of positivity and empowerment

Press release | Karachi, Pakistan | 15 December 2015

KARACHI, (ILO News): The International Labour Organization (ILO) of the United Nations this week launched a special training program for electronic media journalists from Sindh and Balochistan provinces on improving portrayal of women in the world of work.

The two-day training that concluded in Karachi on Tuesday evening, December 15, 2015, brought together over two dozen young and mid-career reporters and producers, half of them women, of more than 15 TV channels based in these two provinces. The training was conducted by Freedom Network, a Pakistani media development organization.    

The training was part of an ILO project titled “Gender Equality for Decent Employment (GE4DE)” aimed at ensuring that Pakistani women have greater access to equal employment opportunities and decent working conditions in selected economic sectors; and that stakeholders have increased understanding of and favourable attitudes towards working women’s issues. 

The training was the first in a series of two workshops – the second will be held next week in Islamabad for electronic media reporters and producers based in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Islamabad.

Among the topics covered in the training included, The Gender Lens and Women in the World of Work; Women in News Media; Mainstreaming Women and Work in Current Affairs; Women as Stories in the World of Work; Women’s Stories in the World of Work; and Viewing and Reporting Positively – Empowerment Narratives.  

In the Karachi training, conducted by Adnan Rehmat and Afia Salam, the media practitioners were introduced to the concept of GE4DE, how women in Pakistan have been making strides in their economic, professional and self-empowerment as well as the factors that promote this empowerment.  

A mix of the theoretical and the practical, the training workshop also include interactive sessions and exercises aimed at utilizing modern journalistic principles, tools and techniques to improve professional reporting on women and economic rights, challenges and progress. 

The ILO training series includes a small-grants program to assist reporters and media practitioners participating in the trainings to do research-based quality reporting based on the quality of their story ideas.

Hundreds of journalists have been trained so far in the last few years in Pakistan, mostly print media practitioners, under this program with journalists excelling in reporting on GE4DE issues taken by ILO to its offices in Italy for advanced global trainings. Now exclusive trainings are being held for electronic media by ILO. All of Pakistan’s leading national and regional TV channels, radio stations and online media are attending the trainings workshops. —Ends

 

For further information:

Hiba Siddiqui
Programme Officer
ILO Country Office for Pakistan
Tel: +92 51 2276456-8
Email: