LAB 6 - Gender equality in the media

Advancing Gender Equality in Media Industries, International

AGEMI has designed learning resources to inspire and inform both students and media professionals. It has also developed a Resources Bank of Good Practices that is openly accessible as a must-go place to learn about a multiplicity of transformative practices from around the world. It aims to provide: gender-sensitive education and training for students and media professionals; opportunities for cooperation amongst sectors and provide practice-based knowledges through collaborations between universities and professional associations; contribute to the elaboration of ethical standards and gender-aware and gender-sensitive governance of the media, given its specific focus on media policies, standards and regulatory practices.

Presenter(s)

Karen ROSS

Professor of Gender and Media at Newcastle University

United Kingdom

Karen Ross PhD is Professor of Gender and Media at Newcastle University, UK. Her teaching and research are focused on issues of gender, media, politics and society. She has published numerous papers and books on these topics and her latest monograph Gender, Politics, News was published in 2017 (Wiley-Blackwell). She is editor-in-chief of the International Encyclopaedia of Gender, Media and Communication to be published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2020. She was principal investigator on an EU-funded project on Advancing Gender Equality in the Media (2017-2019) and is currently the UK and European regional coordinator for the Global Media Monitoring Project 2020.

initiative 2

An all-women newsroom, Chai Khana Media, Georgia

Chai Khana Media was established to provide unbiased, quality journalism focusing on human stories through powerful and creative storytelling in a conflict-marred region. In the South Caucasus unresolved and protracted conflicts which broke up at the fall of the Soviet Union have shaped deeply the society. Chai Khana works across conflict lines and it aims at portraying people (specifically women and minorities) as they are, beyond the image of “the enemy” or “the other.” The project empowers young, female journalists, counters disinformation through reliable, unbiased reports, and revitalises narratives across the region through innovative, storytelling. Chai Khana publishes in five languages (Armenian, Azerbaijani, English, Georgian, and Russian) thus engaging with vulnerable communities in the region and allowing individuals divided by conflict and language barrier to read stories from “the other side” - to understand it.

Presenter(s)

Monica ELLENA

Senior editor, Chai Khana Media

Ukraine/Georgia

Monica Ellena is senior editor at award-winning platform Chai Khana (Tbilisi, Georgia). A former staff journalist for ABC News and Bloomberg News in London, she has reported from the Balkans, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union for both leading and specialised publications like the Financial Times and Eurasianet. She has extensive experience on refugee issues and forced displacement in UN-led missions from Kosovo to Afghanistan and regularly conducts training for journalists on journalism ethics and gender and conflict-sensitive reporting.

Discussants

Discussants are invited to take part in the Labs in order to share their experience with the presented democratic initiatives and try to bring broader perspectives to the following discussions.

Banu GUVEN

Journalist

Turkey

Banu Güven is one of Turkey’s leading women journalists, pushed out of the country’s mainstream media due to her critical approach and targeted by online smear campaigns. She was anchor of Late Night and Prime Time news at NTV for 14 years and at IMC TV for 3 years. The latter was closed down under emergency rule in 2016. She now works freelance and writes columns for Deutsche Welle Turkish, Cosmo ARD and diken.com.tr. She is the holder of the Henri Nannen Prize for her Outstanding Performance in Journalism in 2017.

Barbara TRIONFI

Executive Director, International Press Institute (IPI)

Barbara Trionfi is Executive Director at the Vienna-based International Press Institute (IPI), a global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists dedicated to safeguarding and fostering media freedom and promoting quality, independent journalism. Barbara joined IPI in 2000, as a press freedom adviser for the Asia-Pacific region, where she had previously studied and worked for over four years, carrying out research in the field of human rights and freedom of expression. Later, as press freedom manager, she oversaw IPI’s global press freedom monitoring and coordinated IPI’s global advocacy. With an academic background in international relations and human rights, Barbara has taught courses at Webster University, Vienna in Media Ethics, Media Literacy and Cultural Diversity and the Media. Her field of expertise covers different areas related to press freedom and freedom of expression, including self-regulatory media accountability systems, safety of journalists, and international mechanisms to protect press freedom.

Contributor

Lisa KUZMENKO

Gender expert for the mass media, head of the Ukrainian NGO Association ‘Women in media

Ukraine

moderator

Caterina BOLOGNESE

Secretary to the Gender Equality Commission, Head of the Gender Equality Division, Council of Europe

With a background in languages and law, Caterina worked in comparative criminal law research in Germany before joining the Council of Europe, where she has worked on constitutional and criminal law reforms and monitored trafficking for sexual exploitation. She directed the Office in Georgia and worked for many years with the Organisation’s anti-torture monitoring, where she focused on women in prison. Since 2018 Caterina manages the Council of Europe’s team working on gender equality. She is Secretary to the Gender Equality Commission, the pan-European intergovernmental forum which steers gender equality policies and standards, including the 2019 Recommendation on combating and preventing sexism.

rapporteur