Women in Media: Diversifying Voices, Strengthening Coverage

Women in Media: Diversifying Voices, Strengthening Coverage
Across the globe, women journalists and media professionals work, often under difficult circumstances, to bring light to the issues that affect all women. Internews media projects aim to open eyes to gender issues and to give voice to women so that they can change their lives for the better.
In collaboration with Global Girl Media, an organization that empowers high school age girls from under-served communities through media, leadership, and journalism training, Internews Kenya Country Director Ida Jooste led a storytelling training for girls in South Africa's Soweto neighborhood. (Watch the Global Girl video)
"In this six weeks I was able to encounter, to discover, some of the talents I had," said Annah Tseko, who decided by the end of the course that she wanted to pursue a career in broadcast engineering.
"They're still at school, but in just six weeks they discovered their voice. I'm very sure some of the girls will go on to choose journalism as a career, amplifying the voices of their generation."
- Ida Jooste, Internews Kenya Country Director
The girls produced stories on a range of topics, including explorations of serious social topics, such as hostility and violence directed at lesbians in South African society.
GlobalGirl Media reports have aired on a variety of media outlets including ESPN, BBC, Univision, Al Jazeera, Soweto TV, and internews.org. ( More)
The responsibility for improving coverage of women's issues does not only fall to female journalists. In partnership with the ManUp campaign, calling on young men and women to work to achieve a safer world for women worldwide, Internews led training sessions in South Africa for 90 teens. The trainings helped advocates for gender equality and safety learn how to utilize media to communicate their messages. (Watch video on ManUp)
Global Human Rights with a Focus on Women's Rights
Richard Dimanche traveled 1,500 kilometers and five days on the top of a truck during the rainy season to attend an Internews human rights reporting training in Central Africa Republic (CAR). Dimanche is director of Zereda, a community radio station in the midst of a rebel zone surrounded by the Lord's Resistance Army. In CAR violence against women is a widespread phenomenon. "But nobody takes actions because it happens all the time," Dimanche said. "We have to change that and information on radio is important to help with that."
The training in CAR is part of Internews' Global Human Rights Program, which has launched a series of human rights journalism training seminars to build journalists' knowledge of human rights issues and to spur innovative coverage of those issues.
Given the critical importance of women's issues as a human rights concern in many countries, the curriculum has a particular focus on women's rights. Internews seeks to sensitize journalists, and through them the public, to women's perspectives on a broad spectrum of issues, with special attention to two areas: violence against women and women’s economic empowerment.
More about Internews' Human Rights Reporting program.
(Courtesy:INTERNEWS)