Women Make the News 2011

Source: UNESCO
Launched annually on the occasion of International Women’s Day (8 March), Women Make the News (WMN) is a global initiative aimed at promoting gender equality in the media. This year’s theme, Media and Information Literacy (MIL) and Gender, seeks to highlight good practices in this area and emphasize the importance of fostering media and information literate societies as a way to improve the understanding of women and men about gender perspectives in media and information systems.
UNESCO believes that this year’s theme is equally important to national and international media organizations, and to civil society organizations concerned with gender issues. Together with its partners, UNESCO invites such organizations, as well as professional associations, journalists’ unions, women and men working in the media to share their thoughts on how MIL can help women and men understand gender equality and to challenge the media to address this issue.
Are you promoting MIL in your media organization? How are you doing this? Do you think MIL can help to address gender equality? What programmes have you implemented in your countries and communities? What were your challenges? How did you involve the media, women and men? What are the creative ways in which you have used MIL to mainstream gender issues? Through these and other questions, share your experience, good practices and recommendations in considering gender equality, and media and information literacy.
You can submit your contribution to UNESCO by 30 March 2011 via the Women Make the News website using Join the campaign box (top right). It will contribute to inform UNESCO’s decision to support MIL initiatives and will be featured on the website. Editors-in-chief of print and broadcast media are also invited to join this UNESCO initiative by producing special programmes on the topic, and by entrusting women journalists and reporters with editorial responsibility for the newsroom during the WMN campaign.
Participants in the campaign will receive pins bearing the Women Make the News logo. They can further promote the initiative by downloading its banners and logo from the Women Make the News website.

For many years stakeholders globally have focused on the media development to address issues surrounding gender equality and women’s empowerment. MIL is necessary for users of media and information systems and can promote gender responsive media behaviour. Through MIL, audiences (readers, viewers and listeners) are equipped with the necessary competencies to assess the gender sensitive performances of media and information systems, and to participate in them.

In 2009 UNESCO partnered with the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association to produce the Guidelines for Broadcasters on Promoting User-generated Content and Media and Information Literacy, which offer simple and practical suggestions to media organizations and their audiences.

UNESCO intends to promote the inclusion of MIL in formal and non-formal education systems through its Model Media and Information Literacy Curriculum for Teacher Education.

Breastfeeding with Men’s Involvement

Rationale of Gender & Breastfeeding
By James Achanyi-Fontem, Cameroon Link
Introducing the issue of gender during the training in Delhi, India last July 2009, Renu khanna, talked about the rationale observing that it is increasingly being recognised that a gender perspective on social issues helps refine action strategies to bring about desired results for social change and equity.
The platform for action resulting from the 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing(1995) and the programme of action of the International Conference for Population and Development (Cairo 1994) legitimised the concerns of women’s movements world over that a woman’s perspective as well as gender perspective is essential in social sector policies and programmes.
Renu Khanna said, a gender approach takes full account of gender differences and responds appropriately to them in the development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of services in any sector. As such, the training was designed to help breastfeeding advocates to build strategies on gender and breastfeeding in their respective constituencies.
To better understand issues, it was revealed that gender is not sex and vice versa. Sex refers to the biological differences between men and women, while gender refers to roles (behavioural norms) that men and women play and the relations that arise out of these roles. These roles, it should be noted, are socially constructed, not physically determined.
Gender characteristics are relational, change over time, are institutional, vary with ethnicity, class, culture and so on. Gender sensitisation calls for male responsibilities and participation. It aims at promoting gender equality in all spheres of life, including family and community life, and to encourage and enable men to take responsibility for their sexual and reproductive behaviour and their social and family roles.
The importance of male involvement was further reaffirmed in the platform for action adopted at the UN World Conference on Women in Beijing 1995, because gender issues are not the concern of women alone. Helping men understand hoe gender equality benefits them can help them become key allies in creating a more gender-equitable world.
This means that the achievement of gender equality will not be possible without the active involvement and support of men. Gender sensitisation for men is necessary so that interventions for women and girls are not derailed by male resistance.
It is important to make it clear in this contribution that promoting gender equality is not about granting privileges to women while disempowering men. It is all about creating integrated approaches that benefit all. It is about creating a gender equitable and just world.
The gender gap in many countries are so wide that a vast majority of women are poor, illiterate and suffer ill health and poor nutrition, with inadequate education and poor job opportunities. Their low social and economic status hampers their political participation and decision-making.
Very often, the current patterns of domination and inequality are so deeply embedded in cultures and institutions that we do not recognise them and thereby even accept them as the norm. Good examples are violence against women, giving boys more food than girls in a family, unequal pay for women, child care and housework being women’s responsibilities. Women will be empowered only when they enjoy equal treatment and have access to education, economic resources and enjoy good health.
The enhance men’s awareness, Paul Sinnapen emphasised that men have to be sensitised about the existing gender gaps and help them understand gender roles and their impact on social and economic disparity among women. Change in patriarchal mind set and attitudes of men are crucial in bringing about gender justice.
Addressing participants in Delhi, India as breastfeeding advocates, Sarah Amin, Co-Director of WABA, outlined that for a long time breastfeeding promotion has focused on the child, often to the absence of the mother, the woman. She added that breastfeeding is a symbiotic relationship between the mother and the child, and thus any analysis and response or interventions should take into account both persons involved in the act.
According to Sarah Amin, gender inequalities, including the inequalities in health status and access to and use of health services, not only make women’s lives more difficult, they also often make breastfeeding and other tasks, such as child care and nurturing very challenging. Breastfeeding advocates can better support women to breastfed when they understand the causes of gender inequality and know how to analyse and address such unequal conditions.