Calls for more action on gender equality in media

The international community is calling on news chiefs around the world to take positive action on gender equality for this year’s International Women’s Day.

UNESCO is joining forces with the Global Alliance on Media and Gender, co-led by the ABU, to launch the Women Make the News 2015 campaign under the theme, “Yes we must!  Reaching Gender Equality in the Media by 2030”.

They are inviting editors-in-chief of newspapers, radio, television and online to produce special supplements or programs on the theme and to entrust women journalists with editorial responsibility for their newsrooms during the WMN initiative, from 1 March to 5 May, which encompasses International Women’s Day on 8 March and World Press Freedom Day on 3 May.

This year’s theme echoes Women Make the News 2014, Advancing Global Partnerships to Achieving Gender Equality in and through Media, stressing that UNESCO and its partners are determined to keep up the momentum started by the pioneering Global Alliance on Media and Gender (GAMAG) and to highlight gender and media in the Beijing+20 Review process.  

The WMN 2015 advocacy efforts will also continue to push for change that includes promoting an increase in female sources interviewed in the news to at least 30%, inviting international development organisations as well as private corporations to pledge to be a part of a donor framework to support the activities of GAMAG, strengthening cooperation with media partners and their role in GAMAG and shining a spotlight on the need for partnerships to achieve the objectives of the Media and Gender critical area of concern of the Beijing Declaration.

The theme of the United Nations observance of IWD 2015 is “Empower Women, Empower Humanity – Picture it!” It will be one of the main topics of a Special International Gender and Media Side Event of the Fifty-ninth Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (Beijing+20) to be held in March 2015.