World Press Freedom Day May 3 - Gender & Media - Women Journalists' Commitments & Challenges
World press freedom day – May 3, 2015 – Themes
*Independent & Quality Media
*Gender & Media (With Special Focus on the 20th Anniversary of the Beijing Declaration & Platform for Action)
*Digital Safety for Journalists & Their Sources
Reporters Without Borders
http://en.rsf.org/women-journalists-commitment-and-05-03-2015,47647.html
Reporters Without Borders pays tribute to ten women journalists from the four corners of the globe, ten women with different backgrounds who have told us about their jobs, their commitment and the specific challenges and dangers they face in the course of their work.
More and more women are entering journalism, a profession long reserved for men. Some have chosen to focus on investigative reporting, covering human rights violations, corruption or other subjects that are off-limits in their society. Like their male colleagues, they are the targets of threats, intimidation, physical violence and even murder because of their reporting.
But because they are women, the harassment often takes specific, gender-based forms, including sexual smears, violence of a sexual nature and threats against their families. The very fact of being a woman journalist is regarded in some societies as a “violation of social norms” and may lead to reprisals.
In a profession that is still mainly masculine, many women prefer not to speak out about the specific difficulties and dangers to which they are exposed in connection with their work. But a worldwide study published last year by the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) spoke for itself.
Nearly two thirds of the 977 women journalists questioned in the IWMF survey said they had been the victims of intimidation, threats or abuse in connection with their work. In a third of the cases, the person responsible was their boss. Nearly half had been subjected to sexual harassment and more than a fifth to physical violence. Despite the psychological impact of this abuse, most of the victims say nothing.
But some do. “I was often threatened by phone or in anonymous letters for two years (...) I was warned that I would be responsible for the deaths of members of my family if I did not stop working,” an Afghan woman journalist told Reporters Without Borders last year. In the end, she did resign but she went public about the harassment. Women in a patriarchal society often give up working because the authorities do not protect them and impunity is the norm.
Physical safety is a constant challenge for Zaina Erhaim, who trains citizen-journalists in northern Syria and for Farida Nekzad, the founder of Afghanistan’s Wakht News Agency. Hla Hla Htay, anAgence France-Presse reporter in Burma, and Marcela Turatti, who freelances for Proceso in Mexico, constantly confront the difficulties of being a woman in “a man’s profession.”
Iran’s Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani and Liberia’s Mae Azango describe the harassment they have received because of their journalistic commitment to women’s rights. Khadija Ismayilova, Azerbaijan’s leading investigative journalist, and Brankica Stanković, Serbia’s most famous TV reporter, have been subjected to sexual threats.
In Democratic Republic of Congo, Solange Lusiku Nsimire, the only female newspaper editor in the eastern Kivu region, is worried about here family, which has been the target of threats and attacks. Her concern is shared by Morocco’s Fatima Al Ifriki, who even stopped writing at one point in order to protect her family.
Noting the dangers that women journalists confront, the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity stresses the “importance of taking a gender-sensitive approach.” Such an approach needs urgent implementation.
Women Journalists' Commitments & Challenges
Извор: WUNRN – 01.05.2015
