The second day of the 31st IFJ World Congress being held in Oman looked at various aspects of journalists at the workplace, from harassment to gender pay equality.
The Congress being attended by journalists from across the globe, focused on IFJ’s policy on harassment and went onto presidium and committees, followed by the report of the general secretary.
Journalists discussed how the pandemic has impacted journalists in their way of working, and said there should be better remuneration for journalists who are working from home. They also pointed out that the pandemic has affected incomes.
“Worldwide, we see working conditions of journalists are going down, especially for women. The home office is really a step back because they have to cover childcare, home and work altogether. Eventually, their working time is reduced and, accordingly lose their monthly income as well as pension. So we are requesting better social conditions for women’’, said Renate Gensch, Ver.di, Germany.
In her presentation, Sian Jones, National Union of Journalists, UK and Ireland, addressed equal pay and understanding the gender pay gap for women at work places in the UK. She said women work for two months free. She said the successful outcome of the case of Samira Ahmed had opened the door for hundreds of other women.
“This is an important Congress for us to come together with journalists and media workers, so we are able to share experiences working in different environments across the globe where some places are dangerous to work. In the session here, I have been talking about equal pay, where in the UK, women are paid less compared to men, on average, two months less each year. As a trade union, we want to tackle this, and we have had a successful development where we won the case of our member, Samir Ahmed, in 2020 with BBC. It was successful for her as an individual, but it also meant we could open doors for equal pay in other cases, both in BBC and other media places in the UK. It raised the profile of equal pay as a bargaining issue’’, said Sian.
Sylvia Bultoc, Founder and MD, Special Eurasia from Italy, said she has come to cover the event, “It is important that the journalist community comes together and talk about important topics such as impunity and criminal actions taken against journalists across the world, which should not happen at all. The work of journalists is very important because it is their work on which our analysis is based on.”
In the discussion, ‘Ending Impunity’ had testimonies of the families where Fabienne Mercier Nerac from France, Sharmeli Bustios from Peru, Motasem Mortaja from Palestine and Sandhya Ekneligoda shared their stories out of pain. Motasem Mortaja talked about the day he was videoing his journalist brother reporting in Palestine while he was shot.
Motasem, who continues to be a journalist, said, “I did not know that it was the day I am going to record his death.”
Meanwhile, Sandhya Ekneligoda from Sri Lanka has been looking for her husband for the last 12 years and is at IFJ to raise awareness by sharing her experience of a campaign to reach out for the whereabouts of her journalist and cartoonist husband, Prageeth Ekneligoda, who disappeared in 2010 after he wrote about corruption along with the cartoon.
“I will only grow my hair and wear a coloured dress after I know about him’’, she said, dressed in the black and shaved head.
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
