However, women in Zambia are more vulnerable as they are the worst hit by poverty, HIV and AIDS, illiteracy levels which are high amongst women. According to the 2007 Zambia Demographic and Health Survey, 10 percent of women and 17 percent of men have 20 completed secondary or higher education schooling. According to UNICEF, the prevalence of HIV in Zambia amongst adults in the age brackets 15-49 is 14.3 percent; 16.1 percent of the females are more likely to be HIV+ and males at 12.3 percent. This clearly 21 demonstrates that women are the hardest hit by socio-economic ills on the continent. This in correlation with the earlier statistics on the prevalence of sexual abuse suggests wider social ramifications for gender based discrimination in both personal and professional spaces. Effects of gender based discrimination are not only felt by the victims of the practice but the consequences have a potential to extend to the organisations they work in resulting in a possible reduction in productivity and motivation of not only the person concerned but also of colleagues who are privy to what is happening. Coupled with the costs of potential litigation and loss of reputation, a lack of attention to gender discrimination may prove costly in many respects. Against this backdrop, MMA sought to enquire into the prevalence of gender discrimination by asking media workers whether they thought gender discrimination in Zambian media workplaces was a problem. Their responses are graphically shown below. Figure 5: Is gender discrimination a problem in Zambian workplaces Yes No Despite the constitution ensuring protection against violation of human rights and any form of discrimination, the figure above illustrates that 85 percent of the participants thought that gender discrimination was a problem within their work environments. The ability of both men and women to identify gender based discrimination as problematic, suggests that although the victims of gender based discrimination are predominantly women, greater awareness is happening. The acknowledgement by men; that gender-based discrimination is of value particularly in light of the fact that often the perpetrators of gender based discrimination are likely to be men. What was telling was also what respondents thought were the causes of gender discrimination; which is captured in the following quotes. 14