Three Swiss newspapers — Luzerner Zeitung, Aargauer Zeitung and St. Galler Tagblatt — have been accused of "gender discrimination and racism" for describing Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the recently-elected director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), as a 66-year-old Nigerian grandmother.
While Okonjo-Iweala is indeed a grandmother and a 66-year-old, describing her as such after such a major appointment is highly insensitive and discriminative against the black race.
This has led to a heavy backlash on and off social media.
“This Grandmother will become the new boss of WTO,” the headline of a report by Luzerner Zeitung read, announcing Okonjo-Iweala’s selection as the director-general.
The article was published in the online and hardcopy version of the newspaper. But following the backlash on social media, the online version of the article was edited to read “This 66-year-old Nigerian will head WTO”.
Linda Klare-Repnik, the coordinator environmental and social management system, at the International Union for Conservation of Nature, called the newspaper out on Linkedin.
“Gender discrimination and racism: Swiss newspaper headlines the nomination of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for WTO Director General as ‘This Grandmother will become the new boss of WTO,” she wrote.
“If it had been a white man, the title would have been along the lines of ‘Harvard Economist, ex-World Bank Managing Director and ex Minister of Finance …’
Nadja Schnetzler, who co-founded a Swiss magazine called Republik, asked how the reporter would have written the election of Joe Biden as American president.
“What would you think if you wrote about Biden ‘this grandfather will be US President’?” she tweeted.
Aargauer Zeitung, which also published the same article written by Jan Dirk Herbermann, apologised for the “wrong” reportage.
“Nigerian Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is the first woman to head the World Trade Organization. We presented the 66-year-old economist and former World Bank deputy head in a portrait and focused on her role as a grandmother in the title. That was wrong,” the newspaper tweeted, after the backlash.
“Okonjo-Iweala is much more than that. For example, Harvard economist, as you can read in our text,” the newspaper added, sharing an updated version of the article.
A Ugandan-born academic and development economist in Germany highlighted that the same media would refer to Angela Merkel, who is also 66 as mother, but refer to Okonjo-Iweala as a grandmother.