Women legislators decry ‘favouritism’ by media over news coverage

Women parliamentarians have criticised the media for allegedly giving male politicians more favourable coverage as opposed to their female counterparts.

National Assembly Deputy Speaker, Gladys Boss Shollei said the one partner that women need to go places or for the conversation around women to change in the country is the journalists hence the need to give adequate space to male politicians.

She made the remarks as she challenged President William Ruto to honour his promise to give women positions assigned in the Kenya Kwanza charter.

“I can confirm to you that I am a living testimony of someone who has been beaten and beaten by the media. But I used the same media…I had to fight back. My first being thrown into the media was when I was fighting for my life on corruption allegations,” said Shollei.

Women legislators

She made the remarks in a forum organized by the Journalists for Human Rights (JHR) in Nairobi to discuss women’s performance in the 2022 General Election and also deliberate the way forward to women’s leadership not only in Parliament but across all sectors.

 “The media in Kenya, if they change the way they deal with women, things will be easier and more of them will be elected more easily because they propagate the biases and intimidation,” she added.

She said that she knows many women who can make good politicians but are afraid to come out, even as she insisted that the media have a role in encouraging more women so that they do not step back on their leadership intentions.

Njoro MP Charity Kathambi made similar sentiments saying that though women have faced a lot of challenges when it comes to matters of politics, they can stand and appreciate that they have taken a step ahead because of the numbers currently in Parliament.

“The performance of women in single constituencies was good. We are now 29 and even the number of Governors rose from three to seven. Apart from that it is important we appreciate that women have come back, they were MPs but lost in 2017 and have now been re-elected,” Kathambi noted.

“We have undergone a lot of challenges and appreciate media houses and though there are times we experience a lot of bias, we appreciate the few times we have got media houses supporting us,” she added.