In 2006, the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) Women's International Network Asia Pacific conducted an email survey among women community radio broadcasters in the Asia Pacific as regards their situation and needs. Out of the 23 respondents from 12 different countries in the region, 18 are women.

These 23 radio stations or production groups employ between 2 to 41 staff, wherein gender balance is close to equal among the employees (see table). One community radio in Fiji is an all women's project and one station in Indonesia has only male staff but does not call itself an all men's station.

However, with a closer gender look at leadership and technical positions in these radio stations, a different picture can be gleaned. Women make up only 28% of leadership positions, but which is comparatively better than in mainstream media where women occupy only 3 to 5% of leadership positions, as reported by the International Federation of Journalists in 2001. Still, women lack access to decision-making in the community radio sector.

POSITION	TOTAL	WOMEN	IN %	MEN	IN %
Overall staff	291	130	45%	161	55%
Leadership positions	75	21	28%	54	72%
Technical Staff	54	15	28%	39	72%
Administrative Staff	61	27	44%	34	56%
Program Producers	108	47	44%	61	56%
Volunteers	315	137	43%	177	57%

Almost all the radio stations (21) have between one to five hours of weekly programs by and for women. These programs cover issues such as women’s rights, health care, violence against women, literacy, and success stories of women in society.

Most of the respondents had very positive experiences on community radio work. For example, after listening to a program on the discrimination of widows, Nepali widows in one community changed their white sari to red sari, an outer garment worn primarily by Hindu women which can be draped in various ways. Culturally, widows may never wear red clothes or sari because it is a symbolic representation of marriage. Housewives are no longer afraid to talk about issues that were taboo before. A woman got land and property from her ex-husband who left her, thanks to a radio program.

Among the most important changes the women community radio broadcasters want to bring to their radio stations are:

• Women’s access to leadership, decision-making and management;
• Access to all aspects of radio production, especially technical tasks; and
• More gender-sensitive and feminist programs and perspectives in the radio station.

The most important training needs that the women broadcasters mentioned are:

• Production and technical skills including ICT;
• Gender and feminist perspectives in community radio programming;
• Journalistic skills (e.g., interviewing, script writing, anchoring, reporting); and
• Management, administration, sharing of decision-making.

All the respondents want program exchange with other radio stations. The topics they are most interested in are gender and women's issues, the protection of women's rights and women's success stories. Furthermore, they all want to join the Women's International Network of AMARC Asia Pacific. Interestingly enough, five of the respondents are current members of AMARC but said that they did not know about the Women’s International Network.

AMARC are encouraging more women community radio broadcasters to participate in the survey. Please contact the WIN-Representative for Asia Pacific, Bianca Miglioretto (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), or the Regional Coordinator Suman Basnet (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) for further details.