The Participatory Video and Young Women’s Leadership is a webinar for the Gender

and Development Resource Center hosted by Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute

Technology last March 2021. The presentation was presented by Ms. Lesley Pruitt, a senior
lecturer at the University of Melbourne. Lesley’s research focuses on recognizing and
enriching young people’s participation in peacebuilding and advancing gender equity in
efforts aimed at pursuing peace and security. Particularly, she has long been interested in the
ways young people participate in politics, peacebuilding, leadership, and development,
including work with creative programs using activities such as music, dance, theatre, and
filmmaking to bring young people together in advocating for social change. Through this,
part of her research methodology is the participatory video that brought unique and wide
areas for the researchers to conduct their studies with quality, effectiveness, creativity, and
accessibility. In addition to this, the participatory video was recommended to use as it is
attractive medium to the young women to share, interchange ideas, addressing problems, and
providing insights by creating videos and filming themselves to disclose their point of view to
a specific problem they had experienced. The aims of the presentation are to talk about
participating videos that can augment stories of young women and also in learning and
discovering unique mediums such as participating videos to deliver insightful discourses
across the world.
Indeed, participatory video is a very useful medium especially now we experiencing
the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns and isolation contributed various effects in the overall
aspect of our self and life. Where many different stories are being composed and indite as we
experienced this kind of new setting. That is why, I am convinced that participatory could
help researchers as well as young women to progress and move forward to share and provide
insights to address a certain problem such as leadership roles that faced abasement from
society. As what Lesley shared in her discussion regarding interviewing and asking
perspective on what is the definition of a leader. As expected, the result showed biases on
gender and on ages. Majority of the answer revealed, men are more suited to become a leader
for the reason they are good in decision making. Sadly, this is true, according to the research
of Mlmbo-Ngcuka [1], 60% of the global workforce, 75% of senior level leadership
positions, and 95% of CEO positions within the world’s largest corporations are held by men.
With this, I concur and affirmed that young women are seldom visible as leaders of
organizations, government bodies, or businesses. Wherein most communities rarely
immediately identify young women as leaders, nor do they actively advocate or create space
for their inclusion.
Did you hear the “old-boy network”? As Dr. Palomares shared her thoughts regarding
to the stereotype between genders on leadership roles. The first thing come into my mind is
this old-boy network. The old-boy network consists of males who have been educated at the
same institutions or who have climbed the corporate ladder together. The “old boys” tend to
promote individuals who are like themselves. Men who are in these top decision-making
roles often look to former colleagues and friends to fill these positions. Women frequently are
not even considered when it comes to promotions because they are outside these networks.
Although corporations claim to be meritocracies—institutions in which advancement up the
corporate ladder is based on performance and skill—the reality is that, despite men and
women's similar educational attainments, ambitions, status, starting salaries, and
commitments to their careers, men generally progress faster, attain higher-status positions,
and receive significantly higher compensation than women.
Furthermore, across the world and across all sectors women’s leadership continues to
be underrepresented. Women must contend with discriminatory laws, institutions, and
attitudes that restrict their leadership and full participation in public life. Women are also
disadvantaged by unequal access to the resources needed to become effective leaders. Young
women experience discrimination based both on gender and on age. In particular, critical
gaps in funding and resources for education, skills development, and mentorship impact the
ability of young women to realize their full potential as leaders. Investing in women’s
leadership requires a lifecycle approach to strengthening and supporting girls’ leadership,
adolescent girls’ leadership, young women’s leadership, and women’s leadership. We know
that investing in young women’s leadership will not only change the trajectory of their future
but that of their communities as well.
Therefore, as we are still in the midst of pandemic, by using the various methodology
such as participatory video would help not only young women but for all of us women to
address and shared our silence battles that is crucial to be heard by the society. By this, we
can stop prejudice and unfair treatment based on gender, sexual orientation, ages, physical
appearance, race, religion and etc. Through media and other mediums like participatory video
we can easily spread advocacy and awareness across nations and could also help researchers
to foster and accelerate their studies as a way to empower women, uncover truths preventing
the stereotyping that men should always be the great model for leadership. Aside from that it
also gives them a wide array of scope in discoursing it internationally, to put it to the center
of attention of global talks.