Sexual harassment remains pervasive in African newsrooms, with female media workers facing verbal, online and physical abuse at more than twice the rate of their male colleagues, a major global study has found.
The 2025 Sexual Harassment in the Media report, published by the World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) Women in News programme together with BBC Media Action and City St George’s, University of London, surveyed 2,878 media professionals across 21 countries, including Zimbabwe.
It found that 29% of media workers worldwide had experienced sexual harassment at work, a five-percentage-point drop from a similar 2020 survey, but still evidence of what researchers describe as a persistent and systemic problem.
The study covered 12 Sub-Saharan African countries, Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, alongside countries in the Arab region, South East Asia and Ukraine.
Across the survey, 60% of women said they had experienced verbal sexual harassment at work, compared with 25% of men. Almost half of women (48%) reported online sexual harassment, and 32% said they had been physically harassed. Five percent said they had been raped in the course of their work.
Gender non-conforming respondents reported the highest rate of workplace rape, at 12%.
A Zimbabwean print media senior manager, quoted anonymously in the report, said: “More could be done to equip the newsroom to use existing policies and have perpetrators held accountable.”
The findings expose a wide gap between reporting and resolution. Roughly two-thirds of respondents (69%) said they had never told their employer about incidents, citing fears that doing so would damage their careers, the absence of reporting mechanisms, or a belief that the incident “wasn’t a big deal”.
Among those who did report, 35% said their organisation took no action. Only 14% said their employer “always” acted on complaints. When action was taken, the most common response was simply warning the perpetrator (36%), followed by dismissing the case after review (15%).
A female digital media editor in Ethiopia told researchers she had been harassed by multiple colleagues and her boss at a previous job, but had stayed silent. “I knew I wouldn’t gain trust in the organisation,” she said.
The report acknowledges recent African legislative reforms, including Botswana’s 2021 Penal Code amendment and Malawi’s 2025 national code of conduct on workplace harassment, but warns that enforcement remains uneven and laws have yet to translate into safer workplaces.
Training and policy gaps appear to be a major weakness. Some 77% of respondents said they had never received any sexual harassment training, and 37% were not aware of any workplace anti-harassment policy at all.
The researchers call for mandatory workplace policies, independent reporting mechanisms accessible to freelancers, and stronger survivor-centred support, including confidential counselling and legal aid.
A female print and online news executive in Rwanda summed up the mood among respondents: “Let’s keep breaking the silence.”
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