Imagine if every time a male leader was featured in a news piece, he was introduced as “Frank Mwaura, husband to Janet Machuka.”

Sit with that for a second.

It sounds odd. Almost diminishing. Like we have taken a full, accomplished individual and reduced him to a supporting character in someone else’s story. Yet this is a framing women in leadership are subjected to every single day. Subtly. Consistently. Often without question. The way we introduce people is not just a matter of style. It is a matter of perception. Over time, perception becomes belief. Over generations, belief becomes culture. That culture shapes who we see as worthy of authority, whose voice we trust in a crisis and whose leadership we take seriously before they even open their mouths.

That question sat with me throughout two of the most thought-provoking days I have had this year facilitated and moderated by Terryanne Chebet (MPRSK) , Senior PR Consultant at Quill & Foundry Communications

The Room in Sleeping Warrior Camp, Elementaita, Kenya

On April 17th and 18th, 2026, I sat with journalists, editors, storytellers, digital creators and advocates. We all gathered for one purpose and that is to interrogate the systems we have normalized in how we cover women in public life.

The convening was hosted by the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center for Women and Development (EJS Center), founded by former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, in partnership with the Africa Leadership and Dialogue Institute, founded by Julie Gichuru. Two women who have themselves lived the weight of being framed, misrepresented and reduced. Two women who chose to build institutions that refuse to let that continue. The theme was reporting on leaders training specifically gender-sensitive media coverage on women in public leadership but the entire time I didn’t experience just a training but a deeply needed conversation.

I expected presentations, note-taking and the familiar rhythm of a professional training. What I did not expect was to sit across from people who were asking the same questions I had been carrying quietly for years.We identified the same gaps, same patterns and feel the same responsibility made the urgency real.

Equipped is where the training ended. Accountability is where my work begins.

We Need Villages and Communities

One training, no matter how powerful, is only a spark. Real, lasting change requires villages. The communities should be intentional, consistent spaces where journalists, editors, photographers, producers, and storytellers keep returning to these conversations, long after the conference room has emptied.

The media industry moves fast. Stories are filed under pressure. Editorial decisions are made in seconds. In that environment, bias does not announce itself loudly. It slips in quietly through the words we choose, the images we select, and the details we decide to lead with. Without communities that keep this conversation alive, even the most well-meaning journalists revert to habit.

I remember asking Julie Gichuru on how to better approach some conversations that are sensitive but important at the same time. Her response was, build a village. These villages do not have to be formal. They can be WhatsApp groups where someone flags a problematic headline. Peer reviews before a story is published.

Monthly check-ins where a team asks honestly: are we doing this well? The structure matters less than the consistency. What we practiced Africa Leadership and Dialogue Institute was learning, the formation of shared language, shared standards and shared accountability. That is what makes change compound rather than fade.

The Weight of an Introduction

One moment from the training has stayed with me more than any other.

We were examining how women leaders are introduced across different media formats. Print, broadcast, digital. The pattern was striking. Across the board, introductions for women consistently included relational identifiers. Her husband. Her children. Her marital status. Details that, for their male counterparts in identical roles, were simply never mentioned.

It is such a small thing. Sometimes a sentence. Sometimes just a phrase. Yet the signal it sends is not small at all. It tells the audience, before the woman has said a single word, that her professional identity is secondary. That she is first a wife, a mother, a daughter and then, almost as an afterthought, a leader.

The shift required here is one of the simplest any journalist can make. Lead with her authority. Introduce her by her role, her expertise, her track record. The same instinct we apply to men without thinking, apply it to women without hesitation. A woman can be a mother and a Minister. A wife and a CEO. The question is which identity we lead with when she steps into a public leadership role, and what that editorial choice communicates to every person reading or watching.

The Image Is Part of the Story

Visual storytelling is an area the media industry has consistently underestimated in this conversation. Every image chosen in a newsroom is an editorial decision. Every photograph either reinforces a woman leader’s authority or quietly undermines it. I loved how Dorcas Muga-Odumbe was keen on this session.

Is she captured in a moment of command? Or has the image been selected because it makes her appear softer, more approachable, more palatable to an audience that has been conditioned to be uncomfortable with women in power? Is the framing consistent with how her male counterparts are depicted in similar roles?

Photo editors, visual journalists and social media managers must be part of this conversation. The image is not decoration. It is not filler. It is narrative. When the words say “powerful leader” and the image says something else entirely, the image wins. It always does.

Frameworks Are How Change Survives

We had a great moment coming up with frameworks that will be used. A structure guides the goals. Good intentions are not systems. Passion is not policy. Awareness, without structure, is fragile.

Newsrooms change. Senior editors move on. New teams arrive with different priorities. In the absence of clear, embedded frameworks, the progress made in one era quietly unravels in the next. Editorial guidelines, gender-sensitive checklists, accountability mechanisms, and onboarding training are not extras. They are the architecture that determines whether this work outlasts the people who started it.

For digital creators, there are frameworks but they need to be harmonized.

What struck me most in our discussions around this was a simple but uncomfortable truth: most newsrooms in Africa do not have these frameworks in place. Not because journalists do not care, but because the structures were never built. Awareness exists. Willingness exists. What is missing is the scaffolding that turns individual intention into institutional practice.

Frameworks outlast individuals. They create consistency across teams and across time. They ensure that gender-sensitive reporting is not dependent on who happens to be in the room, but is woven into how the room operates, always.

The Responsibility We Carry

Covering women in leadership accurately is not about doing women a favour. It is about telling the truth. Fully, fairly and without the filters of bias that have been quietly built into our industry over decades.

Leadership has never looked one way. Women have always led, governed, built, negotiated, and shaped this continent. The gap has never been in the leadership. It has been in the storytelling.

I left with a responsibility. To be more intentional. To question more. To speak up in rooms where these standards are being set. To contribute to villages that do not let this conversation end in conference rooms, but carry it into newsrooms, boardrooms, classrooms, and the digital platforms where the next generation of leaders is being defined right now.

The real question is no longer whether we understand the problem.

It is whether we are willing to do the consistent, unglamorous, necessary work of changing how we tell the story.

Every. Single. Time.

Point to Note: A Story Still Being Written

The story of how we cover women in leadership is still being written. Every editorial meeting is a chapter. Every image selection is a sentence. Every introduction is a word that either builds or diminishes the world we are trying to create.

The question is what we choose to write with it.