#OneDayIWill: Every Day Is a Good Day to Hear More Women in the Media Farhana Haque Rahman - Inter Press Service
go to original March 8, 2016

#OneDayIWill: It’s International Women’s Day, and Google is celebrating women by asking them to finish the sentence, “One day I will..” (googledoodles)

On International Women’s Day newspapers and radio shows are filled with women’s voices. Yet too often the media’s attention is fleeting.

These are the best of times, but without a doubt also the worst of times, for journalism and journalists – especially women in the media.

According to the Global Media Monitoring Project, women still account for only 24 percent of the people “heard or read about in print, radio and television news across the world.”

Or as women’s media organisation Foreign Policy Interrupted have put it: “a woman over 65 is less likely to be cited as an expert in the media (than) a boy in the 13 to 18 age group.”

Hearing women in the media is not just about who is holding the notebook and voice recorder. Journalists also need to think about who they quote in their articles.

IPS is proud to have an editorial policy of deliberately seeking quotes from women on all topics, not just on topics that have traditionally been considered “women’s issues”.

For those women who are journalists, many face violence and harassment even as they go about their daily work. Two-thirds of more than 900 women journalists surveyed by the International Women’s Media Foundation said they had experienced some kind of threat or abuse – often by male colleagues. We all should take a deep breath.

More than one in five of the women media professionals asked said that they had experienced physical violence in relation to their work – the majority of these described it as sexual in nature – and government officials, police and apparently random people in crowds were cited as frequent perpetrators.

Read the rest at Inter Press Service

Related: International Women's Day 2016: Mexico Celebrates Ladies with Sexist Jokes and Strippers (Latin Times)

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Related: A Look at Issues Facing Women on the Other 364 Days of the Year (Broadly.VICE)

Related: This #IWD2016, AHF Aims to Honor & Support the Estimated 16 Million Women Living with HIV (AIDS Healthcare Foundation)

Related: 48 Male Politicians Push for More Women Leaders Worldwide (The Huffington Post )

Related: 16 Women Who Are Standing Up to Violence in Their Communities (The Institute for Inclusive Security)

IPS is an international communication institution with a global news agency at its core, raising the voices of the South and civil society on issues of development, globalisation, human rights and the environment. Check out the website at IPSNews.net

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