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Funmi Iyanda
Lagos, Nigeria
Funmi Iyanda is a multi award-winning producer and broadcast journalist. She is the CEO of Ignite Media and Executive Director of Creation Television
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Friday, January 25, 2008

OOPS!!

So it turns out Hope Eghagha is a man sigh! Thanks Ainehi. Whatever happened to gender specific names ehn? It is of course a good piece whatever the gender of the writer but I was so hoping for non mashed brain, puke inducing pieces from women that I was hoping Hope;-) would be female especially since the other writers on the page were female. Of course I put my big foot in it but then doesn't that emphasize the point?

I have since yesterday therefore been asking my newspaper editor friends (mostly male) why this is so. They insist that when the girls come in they insist on going to the fashion, beauty, family and food beat. Is this so? Not that there is anything wrong with those beats which can be written by anyone regardless of gender but where are the brilliant, edgy, irreverent, iconoclastic female writers and journalists cutting across a diversity of areas from politics to nuclear science or car racing? Granted there isn't a lot of that quality even with the male journalists but at least it is much better than the backyard kitchen banter that women issues, opinions and images are reduced to. So is it that the women are not stretching themselves or the industry is just pure testosterone? I would like the opinion of women in Nigerian print media on this.

Have a great weekend peeps!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It isn't exactly that serious journalism is pure testosterone, but where are the women armed with the nitty-gritty of such rocket science? Hey, I'm not trying to be a chauvinist here, but I believe this is like politics, some women out there will have to prove themselves.

Naija Sutra said...

i have to agree with the guys on this one. men are naturally not that into fashion as women are and in other aspects too but what can i say? women do have to prove themselves.