Pushing the equity agenda

PETALING JAYA: Women empowerment and equity will be among the pillars of Star Media Group’s (SMG) content across all platforms.

It is the media’s responsibility, said SMG chief content officer Esther Ng (pic), to drive change and to break down barriers to equality through in-depth stories and discussions.

Covid-19 had made things tougher, she said.

“That’s why we want to dive deep into the diverse issues facing women in the region and more importantly, see how we can all work together to make things better,” said Ng.

She was speaking during the How I broke the story: Sharing gender reporting best practices session held in conjunction with the five-day International Journalism Festival (IJF) in Perugia, Italy, yesterday.

In support of the 2022 International Women’s Day global collective against discrimination and gender bias, The Star, as chair of the World Editors Forum (WEF) (Asia Chapter), and in collaboration with its regional media partners, has embarked on a year-long women empowerment initiative to highlight stories that celebrate and promote equality.

Ng said although legislative Bills to make sexual harassment and stalking a crime were recently passed, cases were still under-reported, adding that there was a lack of public awareness and infrastructure to ensure that justice is dispensed swiftly.

“We still have some way to go.

“A proposed amendment to the Federal Constitution allowing automatic Malaysian citizenship for children born abroad to Malaysian mothers has yet to be tabled.

“And at the workplace, pay equity and gender diversity across all levels of management are not yet in place,” she said, adding that housewives as well as working women were worn down by the burden of unpaid work for which they were not compensated.

“To put a value on the important yet often intangible work that women were doing at home, a poll was conducted on our digital platforms, with a majority of the 648 respondents calling for tasks like cleaning, cooking, caregiving, babysitting and doing laundry to be valued monetarily.

“Some 40% of respondents said they should be paid between RM100 and RM500 per week, 27% think they should be paid between RM501 and RM1,000 per week, 15% valued their work at between RM1,001 and RM2,500 per week, and 16.8% want more than RM2,500 per week,” said Ng.

Ng, who is the WEF (Asian chapter) chairman, is also the first Asian woman editor to sit on the board of WEF, which has its headquarters in Paris, France.

She also sits on the board of the Asia News Network, an alliance of 24 prime media houses in the region.

Other speakers at the event were CNN global gender inequality project ‘As Equals’ managing editor Eliza Anyangwe and editor Meera Senthilingam; Reuters investigative reporter Reade Levinson; BehanBox founder and editor Bhanupriya Rao; and independent senior investigative journalist, editor and author Claire Provost.

The 17th edition of Europe’s biggest annual media event ends on Sunday.