Questionnaire

Gender equality and particularly equal pay is one of the priorities of the NUJ and the questionnaire is therefore placed in the wider context of other awareness raising activities such as conferences. The women’s conference led to the NUJ making a decision to assess every area of the union to see whether there is a fair representation of women at every level. The plan was to explore the statistics and then formulate a strategy. The main objective of the questionnaire was to obtain information about women’s experiences at work in the media industry and to understand patterns and themes regarding gender in the organisation; in particular whether media staff who are member of the Union have been steered into a particular direction because of their gender and whether they have experienced discrimination, harassment and/or bullying at work. The organisation found it difficult to bring people together in a traditional meeting format due to other commitments. The questionnaires helped start a process of reaching out to women and identifying what experiences and problems they have had at work and how they think the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) should address this.The last survey of its members was done in 2005/6 so this method is intermittent and not carried out regularly.