An assessment review of SWJO-led gender activities under the IMS Somalia Programme (2024–2025)

The IMS Somalia programme has a central focus on advancing gender equality and women’s inclusion in media in Somalia, where women journalists face complex challenges shaped by insecurity, lack of safety, professional barriers and unequal access to leadership and decision-making spaces.

Through our long-term partnership with the Somali Women Journalists Organisation (SWJO), the IMS programme has sought to address the structural barriers facing women journalists by advocating for improved safety conditions in newsrooms, maternity protection and greater decision-making power.

SWJO, with IMS’ support, developed the Somali Gender Declaration in 2016, which became a cornerstone of this overall gender equality work. The Declaration was created to confront major obstacles like lower pay for women journalists, sexual harassment in the newsroom, heightened job loss risk and broader social stigmatisation. The IMS programme in 2024-2025 enabled SWJO to build on the Declaration by expanding the commitments for strengthening women’s role in the Somali media sector. A baseline study was conducted of how women and girls are reflected in Somali media content: the picture revealed a dismal approach to inclusion of female voices and perspectives across radio, TV and social media. SWJO conducted an intensive series of media stakeholder workshops across the country on the barriers to women’s inclusion and the critical need to overcome them. SWJO also developed the first tracking tool for use by the Somali media in systematically monitoring and measuring gender representation in media output.

At the end of 2025, IMS commissioned an independent Somali gender consultant to analyse the results of the IMS-SWJO work, to critically examine the approaches taken and their effectiveness and to identify lessons learnt and recommendations for further future work in this area. This report contains:

– Assessment of the results and emerging impacts of SWJO’s gender-related interventions with implications for newsroom practices and professional environments in Somalia.
– Analysis of the piloting of the gender in content tacking tool, documenting what worked, what did not and the underlying reasons for these outcomes.
– Experiences , perceptions and reflections of journalists, editors, media managers and partner organisations regarding the practical challenges of addressing gender equality in and through media.
– Key lessons learned and promising practices emerging.
– Illustrative stories of change and emerging gender champions.