The Global South Needs More Female Journalists | Opinion

As women running newsrooms in Afghanistan and Somalia, countries regularly rated among the worst places on Earth to be a woman, we know what you lose without women on the ground talking to people.

You not only lose more than half of a population's voice, you lose a whole perspective. You lose first-hand accounts of women forced into child marriage, single mothers, and victims of sexual violence. You lose in-depth explorations of female genital mutilation and post-partum depression. In our societies, women see things that men can't, or won't.

There is, of course, no country in the world where women should not be part of the media landscape. And yet female journalists remain woefully underrepresented. A recent study by the International Women's Media Foundation found women make up about a third of the global journalism workforce. In Afghanistan, some 2,000 female journalists were working just three years ago; as of December, there were only a few hundred. In Somalia, fewer than 30 percent of the country's journalists are women.

Though Afghanistan and Somalia rarely appear together in world events, our countries face similar challenges when it comes to making sure women are heard.

This August will mark three years since Kabul fell to the Taliban, who have since imposed some of the most draconian rules the world has ever seen against women, limiting our education, work, how we dress, and where we can go. For many, merely leaving their homes is seen as crossing a forbidden boundary. In Somalia, by contrast, women can work openly as journalists, but the work is risky and extremely challenging. Female journalists in Somalia are shut out from decision-making inside media organizations, harassed and abused while out reporting and in offices by their colleagues.

Afghan women, who since 2021 have been banned from attending school after sixth grade, including university, are acutely aware of the need to inform the world of what is happening inside Afghanistan. The Taliban realize the weight of the power of reporting; in recent months, new limitations have been introduced in several parts of the country, banning women and girls from speaking to the media, or having their voices broadcast, even in advertisements.

Being a female journalist in Afghanistan is increasingly risky and difficult. Most have lost their jobs since the Taliban takeover. Those who remain must operate in stringent conditions which require women to be completely covered, including their faces (our reporters use face masks and long dresses to avoid the all-encompassing burqa), and accompanied by a mahram, or male relative, at all times when out of their homes. And yet, since the fall of Kabul in August 2021, I have been bombarded by messages from young women, asking how they could become journalists. "I don't know any other reporters," one emailed. "Could you help me become one, so I can address this suffocating situation?"

Our reporters at Rukhshana Media are spread across the country and must work clandestinely, often with concealed identities. This work was never easy. Since the founding of my news organization in 2020, questioning officials about women's rights has always been a challenge. But now my reporters navigate Taliban checkpoints daily. Many do not want their families to know they are working out of safety fears—people who criticize the Taliban increasingly disappear, or show up dead.

The potential disappearance of female journalists would compound our tragedy, and deprive the world—and Afghan women at home—of opening a window into women's issues and human rights abuses under Taliban rule.

Both of our countries are unstable, and it is impossible to predict the future. But while it is clear that Afghanistan is going backwards, there is some room for optimism in Somalia.

As the country's only all-women newsroom, Bilan Media has been working to change the narrative on Somalia both at home and globally. Our reporters try to show audiences at home and abroad to see beyond war, disease, and famine by telling the stories of young female farmers, a headmistress who introduced period education in her school, and a woman engineer who shattered social norms and set up her own construction company.

Rukhshana Media and Bilan Media both arose out of an urgent need to address a dearth of information about women in their countries. We are both young and small, but our stories have reached millions in our home countries and our journalists' reports have been published all over the world.

But perhaps the most important part of our work is this: Our very existence gives Afghan and Somali women and girls the courage to become journalists in these difficult conditions and the knowledge that they matter, no matter what their families, colleagues, neighbors, and governments may tell them. Having a rare appearance on television or writing in the pages of a newspaper should not be a privilege—it is a necessity for us all.

Zahra Joya is editor of Rukhshana.

Hinda Abdi Mohamoud is editor of Bilan.

The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.