Women in Balkan Media ‘Still Far from Top Positions’

Even though the vast majority of reporters in the Balkans are women, top management positions are still dominated by their male counterparts and more needs to be done to ensure equal representation, an online panel discussion organised by BIRN on Tuesday was told.

Jeta Xharra, country director of BIRN in Kosovo, who moderated the expert discussion entitled 'Platform B: Power Dynamics in Media: Why Don't We Have More Women in Top Management Positions?', said that there are few female managers in the media industry in the Balkans.

Representation of women in the media is also usually problematic, Xharra argued. "[Media] often misrepresent women, distort them, and in the Balkans, media often focus on their sexual attributes instead of their ideas, activities and successes," she said.

The picture is equally grim in all the Balkan countries, where women are very rarely owners of media outlets or hold management positions, reports have shown. Women are more equal to their male counterparts at the level of editor-in-chief, but the majority work at lower levels, as journalists or content creators.

Biljana Petkovska, director of the Macedonian Institute for Media said that various recently-published reports have highlighted the problems that female journalists are facing in North Macedonia, including well-established narratives that they are "less capable [than men] of doing their job" or that they achieved their career goals by inappropriate behaviour.

Petkovska said that journalists' associations, media institutes and media outlets themselves should "strengthen support for women journalists and establish mechanisms in cases of threats, sexist insults, hate speech and violence. In that way, not only would relevant institutions be alerted...