‘People say women are not ready to talk’

Q&A with Leah Mushi

Journalist and Senior Program Officer at Internews in Tanzania

Leah has held numerous roles at community and national broadcasting newsrooms across Tanzania and is a co-founder of African Women’s Media Network. As the host for a popular television program, My Vote, she continually sought out interviews with women experts. Leah shared her experiences and some strategies with Reflect Reality.

Reflect Reality:  What obstacles limit women’s voices from appearing in media in Tanzania?

Mushi:  People say women are not ready to talk. In Tanzanian culture, women should be behind. Men are out front and should do the talking. In our culture, we believe the ones with the opinions are men. Of course, we have more than 120 tribes and most of the people live in rural areas where the [traditional] ideas are still there. Things are changing, but even in Dar es Salaam you find it. Even today if you go to the university to find young [women] scholars’ perspective on a topic, they will shy away and let the men talk. Even if there is an accident on the road and men and women see it, females will shy away and let the men talk.

If you are too vocal [as a woman] people will start to wonder ‘Why, why are you so vocal? Something is wrong with you.’ Even women working in media are often considered too vocal. They will shame you – this is why lots of women are not comfortable and worried about being vocal.

Many women who have the chance [to be interviewed], don’t know how to communicate their topic well. They do not know how to communicate with media. Even women politicians, they often just copy everything from men or from other persons. They don’t know how to talk about themselves.

RR:  What obstacles do journalists face when they seek out women’s voices?

Mushi:  Journalists have few resources. I’ll give you a scenario. Journalists from a media house, two to three crews go in one car to cover a story. The driver will drop group one here, group two there, and group three over there. Soon, they all move on to cover another story. You find yourself having to collect your story very quickly before the car comes back for you. You don’t have the luxury or time to look for and start convincing women [to speak up] or explain the importance of speaking up. The environment itself does not allow it.

Nowadays lots of women and men are trained that they should have both male and female voices, so they are cautious when they are trying to get the story. The thing is, they are not getting experts. They speak to people on the street just to fill the gap of having female voices. They are not trying to find female experts in a specific area.

I have a vivid example from when I had a civil education television program called, My Vote, on Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation. I needed political scientists to explain some issues. At university they train women political scientists. But try to get them to speak on air about an idea or explain it, it is totally difficult. It was a hassle. Men would call me and asked to be invited to speak. I had this huge list of men. I needed someone with the same knowledge, but different gender. Not getting a woman was an insult to me.

I would go to their offices to record women because they didn’t want to be on TV at the studio. I would record them and play it on air. Sometimes, I would have to resort to getting two women for general opinions on the street, and then I could get one expert who is a man.

RR: What other strategies are there to source expert women?

 Mushi:  If you want to get a [woman] expert comfortable you will have to coach her before the interview. Tell her about the topic and ask what she knows about it. She will ask you, ‘What should I say? How should I talk about it? Am I doing this right?’ This doesn’t happen with male experts. If you are not passionate, and if you are not motivated enough to convince women to speak out, you will find you are missing their voices.

Finding women politicians is not as hard. They will speak up, and there are more than 300 in Tanzania. IT, finance, infrastructure, those are difficult areas.  You can get women [in these industries] at the grassroots level, but not the top, expert level.

In Tanzania we have women chambers of commerce. You find women experts in various topics, in top career levels. All these women are dealing with lots of things that affect the daily lives of Tanzanians. They have opinions, but they shy away to speak with the media. Their chairwoman, she is the one who is talking every day, she will speak with the media. Instead of just getting her, all these women should be trained to speak with the media.

It’s a well-known issue that women’s representation is low in media, electronic, print, and broadcast. Apart from being sensitized that you need to present women, I [don’t] think there is a deliberate effort by most of the media houses. There are no [newsroom] policies to remove the gap. If there is not a policy instructing them, you find [journalists] coming from a tribe where they don’t respect women and they will say, ‘Do you have to speak about it [sourcing women] in everything, is it really necessary?’ It is important [policies] are written.