Women's Empowerment and Good Governance Through - amarc

Best Experiences for an Action Research Process 28
work of Radio Pengdwendé, but the station’s contribution has been far from negligible.
Furthermore, during different meetings, whether organized by the decentralized State authorities
or by development NGOs, women take the floor more and more frequently and it becomes
clear that their concerns are often quite different from those of men. This observation has its
importance when we know that still today in certain regions like northern Burkina Faso, women
cannot sit with men to discuss or exchange opinions.
Finally, from the testimony of women themselves, the access to cultivable lands is becoming
easier and men no longer take the most productive lands away from women as they used to
in the past. This practice is therefore on the decrease as it is regularly denounced over the
Radio Pengdwendé airwaves.
Certainly it can be said that women’s situation in the departments covered by Radio Pengdwendé
is not a cheerful one, but through the programs it produces and those it is given for
broadcast by the development organizations, the station contributes to behavioural changes.
But while women have conquered a space of freedom and expression and are beginning to
enjoy their business rights and freedom of action, their place in the communities is not yet truly
what it should be.. There is still a long road ahead, one with many obstacles.
The challenges and opportunities
Recruitment is one of the major challenges. It is, in effect, very difficult to find women and girls
in Burkina Faso who wish to do radio. This is because journalism is seen by the majority as a
man’s domain. For example, the Communications and Journalism Department at Ouagadougou
University, which trains journalism professionals, has 11 students in its graduating class,
of whom only two are women, and in the next class there are seven students, all of them
men.
While there are women who want to do radio, in most cases they are not qualified to do so.
This difficulty in recruiting means that it is often men who talk about women’s issues, which
undoubtedly constitutes an obstacle to achieving goals with respect to the advancement of
women.