In Progress

Community radio1 can have the potential to empower disenfranchised communities. Yet like other communication tools, community radio may also further disenfranchise the most marginalised within communities. For example, it’s been hard to find female participants for trainings that I’ve conducted with indigenous communities in Malaysia. This is not surprising considering the multiple roles women play in their daily lives. They can’t easily travel to a central location for these trainings as they would need to organise child-care, find someone to cook for the family, and sometimes, even seek permission from their husbands or fathers. In this context, it’s so much easier to just work with men – perpetuating and strengthening imbalances of power within the communities.