A skype interview with Journalist Tamara Imad. Studying Media and Television at university; Imad started as a blogger on Tumblr. She had various interests and started writing about politics, human rights, and social life.
Funded by the EU, CGDS is producing podcasts, in Kurdish, Arabic and English to promote understanding of gender issues in the region. The following is one of the podcasts produced for the project.
A skype interview with Journalist Tamara Imad. Studying Media and Television at university; Imad started as a blogger on Tumblr. She had various interests and started writing about politics, human rights, and social life.
Imad addresses gender inequality in Iraq, she implies that from the moment of birth, women face discrimination. She couldn’t go outside of her home without a male companion, or to the market without her mother. In addition, many women have left their jobs because of their family, husband or society. Furthermore, there have also been cases of women getting killed for not wearing the Hijab (Veil).
She got interested in gender equality and women’s rights because of the experiences she faced in her childhood. Imad began reading and understood that women everywhere in the world face some sort of discrimination. The journalist points out that both men and women face difficulties in Journalism and reporting, but women face them more often. Males usually receive favoritism over females. Investigative journalism is also difficult for women. In order to gather information they have to travel to different places and gather clues.
Because Tamara Imad is a woman, she faces blackmail in the process of retrieving information for her stories. Young female journalists face more challenges than older female journalists; especially if they wear the Hijab. She also worked with some Arabic media channels in the gulf, writing about civil rights and women rights. There, Imad was more empowered and taken seriously when she was working with the non-Iraqi media.
In conclusion, Ms. Tamara Imad advises the aspiring young girls who want to become journalists, to build their capacity, read more, learn more and become more empowered.