ABU Secretary–General at the IPDC-UNESCO HQ in Paris

On 23 March the ABU Secretary-General participated in the IPDC Thematic Debate which brought together stakeholders and Member States to discuss how to mainstream gender in media, with a specific focus on the UNESCO draft document on Gender-Sensitive Indicators for Media that will be submitted to the Council for its consideration.

Participating organizations were the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the International Women´s Media Foundation (IWMF), the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU), and the African Media Initiative.

In his presentation to the IPDC, Dr. Mottaghi said there is a clear intersection between women’s empowerment and media development. “Gender Equality highly depends on social development and social development may not be well achieved without media development.  It is in fact media development that can accelerate social development and play an important role in achieving Gender Equality.”

Dr. Mottaghi referred to the excellent work that the ABU is doing in promoting gender equality by conducting several capacity building workshops and seminars and forums on Mainstreaming Gender in Broadcasting with pilot projects in 6 broadcasters to implement GSIM in organisational policy and programmes and added that the Union will continue to do so in 8 more broadcasting organisations in 2012/ 2013.

The Gender-Sensitive Indicators for Media are a set of indicators to assess gender equality and women’s empowerment in media. The purpose of this UNESCO initiative is encouraging media organizations to consider their own internal policies and practices.

These indicators were developed by UNESCO in cooperation with the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and other major stakeholders.