Temitayo Ayetoto

Temitayo Ayetoto of BusinessDay Newspaper organised a one-day discussion session with her colleagues, to address the noticeable gender gap existing in the voices heard in news reports, which many reporters are either unconscious of or less concerned about. The participants, who were from key desks, including maritime, technology, real sector, agriculture and women magazine, made personal commitments to always make gender balance considerations when gathering and writing news. The session yielded positive results as anticipated, the Agric editor, also female, tabled concerns raised on gender imbalance in newsroom leadership at the training to the newsroom manager, who then directed that the conversations should involve every member of staff and not the female staff only.

“Lack of Resources Pairing Rural Women’s Agric Productivity”, a story by Temitayo highlights the challenges constraining the productivity of rural women in agriculture even though they constitute nearly 70 percent of the labour force. Some of the challenges, which borders on gender issue such as lack of recognition for women’s effort, economic disadvantage as a result of denial to land access (a patriarchal formula for accessing land), and access to credit facilities, impair the chances of growth of women in the industry unlike their male counterpart, who make up less of the labour force, but are widely recognised. Temitayo hopes the story gets the government to design policies that promote gender inclusion, particularly in the agricultural sector. Also, she believes that it will help discourage the subtle discrimination against women in the industry.