Locations
Bilan Media
Somali Women Media Project (SWoMP)
Background
Somali women journalists operate in a country that is consistently ranked as one of the worst for gender equality, with adverse social norms that see a woman’s place as in the home. As a result, women journalists face immense challenges, including harassment and exclusion from decision making, training and promotions.
Media houses are owned by men, who also hold most of the powerful, decision-making editorial and managerial positions. Women journalists tend to occupy more junior, poorer paid roles, or work as presenters, where they may be the ‘face’ or ‘voice’ of a programme but have little say in its editorial content. As a result, female journalists are often marginalised, both by their colleagues and wider society. They cannot tell the stories they want to tell, whether that’s challenging deep-seated gender biases or featuring successful women as role models. Women also lack opportunities to learn the digital and business skills needed to run their own media outlets that can challenge this status quo.
The challenges force many Somali female journalists to leave the profession. In other cases, parents actively discourage their girl children from studying journalism or otherwise pursuing a media career. The resulting lack of female journalists in Somalia, particularly in senior decision-making roles, means that there is a dearth of stories of interest to a female audience or told from their perspective and a lack of sustained, interesting, relevant programming for women.
About the Project
The Somali Women Media Project supports “Bilan”, Somalia’s first women-staffed and -led media unit, to blaze a trail for women in the media and challenge long-held gender biases. It provides a safe workplace, world-class digital skills training, and connections with international media and other networks that will allow Somali women journalists to reach millions of citizens with new information and prove they can compete at the highest levels of a traditionally male-dominated profession.
The project also supports women journalists across all Federal Member States, offers internships to journalism students, mobilises women journalists and their supporters, including male journalists and media actors, to address gender biases, and builds networks for south-south cooperation and learning among Somali women journalists and their counterparts in challenging environments overseas.
Bilan’s success and reputation, built up the course of project implementation, have revolutionised the Somali media landscape and been a major step in normalising the idea of women reporters in Somalia. Their appearance in world-leading outlets like the Guardian, BBC and El Pais prove that Somali women journalists can compete with any of their male peers. Their winning of award like the 2024 One World Media Press Freedom Award make it impossible to doubt that an all-women team can operate successfully in a traditionally male-dominated field.
Key Planned Objectives:
- An enabling environment, including, a safe and well-equipped office space that is off-limits to men and contracts that set a new standard for maternity leave and other workplace treatment and benefits.
- Training and mentoring. The project has overseen a programme that brings in the best international and local talent to provide sustained technical training and mentoring sessions on everything from digital skills, like how to record sound in the field, to how to deal with harassment in the office. (Links to endorsements from household name journalists based on their mentoring experiences with Bilan can be seen here: www.bilan.media.)
- Publicity, and partnerships. The project has promoted Bilan and established links with international media and journalism organisations that support women journalists.
- Reducing the harassment of women online and building networks for experience sharing and solidarity among women journalists in similar contexts internationally.
- An internship programme that offers the next generation of women journalists’ practical experience and training during the final year of their degree courses or shortly after graduating.
- Advocacy to address negative social norms, including lobbying for social media companies to change how they deal with the harassment of women and for policy makers to enact and implement better law enforcement. This includes working with journalists’ associations and other groups and also creating a charter for women journalists with concrete demands for action and reform.
- Networks and opportunities for Somali journalists and women journalists in other countries with structural gender inequalities to share experiences, provide mutual support and jointly campaign for change, including through in-person and virtual meetings and by working on joint projects, such as reporting on cross-border issues.
- Support to women journalists at the Federal Member State (FMS) level, including through equipment, training, grants to pursue stories challenging gender biases and opportunities to work jointly on stories with Bilan as a form of skills transfer and to ensure that voices from the regions are heard in the capitals and vice versa.
Achievements so far
- Supported Bilan to win the 2024 One World Media Press Freedom Award
- Enabled the production of reports twice a week on one one Somalia’s largest TV and radio networks on issues ranging from the rising problem of women’s drug use and the effect of HIV on families to features on successful female politicians and women farmers who plant their way through university. These have achieved more than 10m online views inside Somalia (regularly outperforming content produced by male journalists on the same channels) and reached millions more through commissions with international media.
- Brought in household-name female and male journalists, including the BBC’s Lyse Doucet and Mishal Husain, ITV’s Rageh Omar, the New York Times’s Abdi Latif Dahir and Channel 4’s Lindsey Hilsum, to provide training and masterclasses.
- Set up networks with the Guardian, the BBC, El Pais, Toronto Star and New Humanitarian to bring Bilan’s reports to an international audience and raise the profile and prestige of Somali women journalists.
- Secured global visibility in major print, radio and TV media and developed a network of reporters and media groups who are keen to work with Bilan and see it succeed.
- Achieved huge recognition inside Somalia, from the PM’s office, which has involved Bilan in policy consultations and ministries that have responded to Bilan’s stories, down to individual women in local communities who call up to say thanks for bringing women’s voices to the TV and radio. Bilan is quickly becoming a well-respected household name, blazing a path for women in the media and creative sectors.
- Established an internship programme to provide women journalism students and recent graduates a first opportunity in the media.
Impact
What are people saying?
“We received more inquiries about [Bilan Chief Editor] Nasrin’s blog than any other story we’ve run, which shows how strongly journalists feel about this initiative.”Isabel Choat, Guardian Commissioning Editor
“I was delighted to read such a compelling article from a Bilan journalist published in the Guardian about the current drought. Having this kind of highly skilled female journalists is something we have long dreamed of in Somalia .”Farah Omar Nur, General Secretary of the Federation of Somali Journalists
“Bilan Media is a rare opportunity for female journalists in Somalia. Within a short time, they’ve produced significant stories that have been published in international and local media.”Mohamed Moalimuu, Ex-PM spokesperson and current MP