Imagine media that promotes gender justice...

Keynote speech by Joanne Sandler, UNIFEM

Imagine media that promotes gender justice. We have to imagine it because it needs to proliferate at all levels: in the mainstream media, in the blogosphere, in alternative media. It needs to exist because gender justice is critical in its own right, central to the achievement of justice in general and inter-dependent with the achievement of social and economic justice.

Gender biases and prejudices in the media emerge through the ‘choices’ media managers, advertisers, and media professionals make each day.

Media professionals’ beliefs about gender to some extent undergird decisions on content, story choices, the angle to adopt and the choice of spokespeople .

Gender inequalities, biases and prejudices manifest themselves in the numerous ways in the media.

Partner: Asociación Civil Artemisa Comunicación (ACAC), Argentina

The project is implemented by Asociación Civil Artemisa Comunicación (ACAC), a not-for-profit organisation that promotes equality between women and men through communication.

  By Redemtor Atieno, Kenya 

Many communicators told stories about their work during WACC’s Congress 2008. One involved work in Lebanon and Iraq working with journalists to build peace.  In 2005, Samir Kassir was assassinated by a car bomb. The Lebanese journalist was a vocal critic of the Syrian presence in Lebanon. Kassir is just one example of the scores of journalists worldwide who have been targeted, brutalized and sometimes killed by the enemies of press freedom. Against this backdrop the Forum for Development, Culture and Dialogue (FDCD), with support from WACC, has initiated a project on the role of media in building a culture of peace. Headquartered in Beirut, Lebanon, and active in the Middle East, FDCD organized a training program in Amman, Jordan, for journalists in situations of conflict.

Learning more about the lives of people remote from our own present is a vital part of communicating to build a more peaceful future. The following story comes from a project carried out under WACC’s communication for peace programme and symbolises the ongoing need for truth, confession, and reconciliation in Chile.

By Julienne Munyaneza

La version française suit.

A group of more than 50 Christian and Muslim Rwandan women have met in Kigali, Rwanda to discuss the responsibility of women and families in the fight to eradicate AIDS. The series of workshops, which ran from January 15-18, 2007, was organized by the Centre for Training and Documentation (CFD) in partnership with WACC. This initiative is of high importance given that women are in the majority in Rwanda and more than half are either genocide or AIDS widows.

Hombre aunque te mueras de ganas
-ya no – persigas a Doña Iguana,
no le rajes la barriguita
-ayayay- que ella sufre pobrecita.
No le arrebates los huevitos
-que así – no nacen los iguanitos,
conservemos todos la Vida
y ya no, y ya no causemos heridas.
Conservemos todos la Vida
Y ya no y ya no causemos heridas. (La Nueva Canción de la Iguana)