[24/July/2009]

By: Ali Alkhail

Edited into English by: Tawfiq Alnadhif

SANA'A, July 24 (Saba)- A human rights report has called for cultural and creative corporations and the Ministry of Culture to expand woman's participation in the cultural and media issues and to give her more opportunities enabling her reaching the decision-making positions in a number of  Yemeni cultural and media institutions.

To enable her hold technical and administrative leadership positions that led to a positive impact on women's issues integration in various programs.

The recent report, made by the OWAM Development and Cultural Foundation in cooperation with the German Foundation Friedrich Ebert on the status of Yemeni women in 2008, revealed that woman is still suffering a lot of the absenteeism and abandon and the low participation in different cultural issues because of the prevailing culture of the community which opposes various creativity arts and cultural activities.

The report stressed on the importance of activating the public administration of woman in the two Ministries of Culture and Information, as she did not play her role properly there. It also called for increasing the media programs that discuss woman issues.

The detailed report showed the gap between male and female workers in culture, media, creative and artistic sectors, pointing out that women departments there did not implement any cultural activities during 2008, due to the lack of financial resources that enable them implement such cultural activities or events to discover women creative profiles and develop their capacities.

It showed that the number of cultural participations that took place in the cultural center in the capital Sana'a in 2008 reached about 70 participation varied from "Festival celebrations, symposiums and theatric and art shows" 17 ones of them were organized by the Ministry of Culture and the rest set up by more than one organization and female participants in all events reached about 20 per cent.

The annual report revealed the low level of official television broadcasting on the Yemeni women's issues in 2008, with 4 programs aired by 4 TV channels of Yemen by 0.7 per cent of the total annual broadcasting, at a rate of 12 minutes per day.

It also said that about 90 per cent of the educated people did not read because of the high rate of illiteracy in the community and the lack of press access to all areas, especially in mountainous and rural areas and almost 10 per cent were interested to read newspapers, pointing out that the majority of newspapers are not interested in women's issues.

It also revealed that the gap between male and female workers at media corporations is wide where the number of the total employees in the official media in 2008 reached 435 women with 15.18 percent of the total staff about 2429 employees.
Saba