29 Nov 2021

Media practitioners have been challenged to be gender sensitive when reporting on participation and development of women in sports.

Private consultant on issues of local governance and gender development, Onkemetse Tsimanyane, said in an interview that it was important for the media to understand that issues of gender in sports were a development discourse that affected women.

“When we review media articles, most of them have negative reporting that put women in sport on a bad light,” he said.

Tsimanyane expressed these sentiments after the WASBO gender sensitive reporting workshop organised for the media was cancelled due to low turn up.

He, however, said in the case of media in Botswana, 40 per-cent reported positively about women in sport.

Tsimanyane described sports as a sphere of development that could create jobs.

“The media should take lead and tell people the importance of sports and how it can change athlete’s life,” he said.

He said it was important for media practitioners to introspect as to which issues they could put to the fore to improve participation of women and make them love sports especially the girl child.

“As a nation we should also look back and see what has gone wrong. Let us start with our culture and society and challenge the negative things that put women in the peripheries of development,” he said.

Tsimanyane said he was aware that women in some instances had issues of confidence, saying this was partly influenced by how the society had shaped them in the past.

WASBO publicity officer, Thulaganyo Retshabile, said despite the fact that the media did not turn up for the workshop, they would find another date.

She said the idea was to have a conversation with the media on how they could report about women in sport. Ends