Use sports as a platform to drive policy change - Cathy Wong

Oceania Rugby Women's Director and World Rugby Council member Cathy Wong is urging the nation to use sports as a platform to drive policy changes.

While speaking at the Safe and Equal Online Spaces Symposium, Wong says sports is very powerful in the Pacific and in Fiji, it is something that easily opens doors.

She says data has shown that during major events like the World Cup and Olympics, women athletes get the biggest engagement online and most of these engagements are negative.

She adds during the Tokyo Olympics, 87 percent of women who participated were subjected to online violence.

Wong says they are partnering with non traditional rugby people and using sports to try and educate the players on the value of being safe.

Fiji journalist and ABC News Reporter Lice Movono says women journalists get life threatening messages or emails when some people do not agree with their stories or reporting.

Movono says these people find journalists through their profiles on social media and sometimes journalists use other profile names to keep them safe on social media.

She says Technology Facilitated Gender Based Violence was very prominent during the lead up to the 2022 general elections where women journalists were sent messages that were very downgrading.

She adds from the survey she did, one of the women journalists left her work and the country because she was continuously abused online by people who didn’t like her reporting.

Movono says Technology Facilitated Gender Based Violence has been in Fiji for years but she thinks no one really knows how to deal with it.

She says one of the main solutions to this is having a support system for journalists as their work is so stressful.

The Fijian journalist says a support system should be set-up in every newsroom to ensure the safety and good environment for journalists to work in.

Meanwhile, the Head of USP’s School of Journalism, Associate Professor Doctor Shailendra Singh says from the survey they conducted, 83 percent of their 42 samples had experienced sexual harassment in one form or the other and these statistics are higher than 2014.

Dr Singh says if female journalists are not in the right state of mind, or if they are undergoing trauma or suffering in some way, their work will be affected.