AMARC Europe is joining the International Women’s Day 2020 campaign

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action adopted in 1995 at the 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing/China. AMARC Europe supports the The Beijing Declaration’s resolutions fully in order to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women and girls, fight women’s economic independence and the structural reasons for economic fractions, to prevent and eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls, ensure equal access to and equal treatment of women in education and health care and enhance women’s sexual and reproductive health as well as education and promote and protect all human rights of women and girls and include men to participate in all actions to achieve full equality.

This year’s International Women’s Day campaign I am Generation Equality campaign is bringing together people of every gender, age, ethnicity, race, religion and country, to drive actions that will create a gender-equal world. However, there is still a way to go: “But even though there has been progress, no country has achieved gender equality. Our best hasn’t been good enough. Challenges remain for all countries, although many of them are not insurmountable.” says the statement of the UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka on this year’s topic.

Media as Key Promotor for Gender Equality

Local, national and international media outlets remain an impactful daily source of information, discourse and exchange platform for a majority of persons in Europe and around the world. Who appears in and creates the news, which angles are been used to report on women and gender equality, how women are portrayed and what is been left out matters as structures and systems of discrimination and inequality are been reinforced through media systems.

The data on women in media, however, is unambiguous: in Europe only 24% of persons who are interviewed, or the focus of a news item are female and only 2 of 12 public radio stations in Germany are directed by women. Women’s points of view are rarely heard in the topics that dominate the news agenda; even in stories that affect women profoundly, such as gender-based violence, it is the male voice that prevails.

AMARC Europe fights for Gender Equality

AMARC Europe emphasizes the importance of the role played by women in the field of communication, media production and community media and identifies key areas for the continuous fight for women representation and gender equality on and off air:

• Women’s access to the airwaves:Women need to have access to the airwaves, in terms of the ability to make their own programmes about political and social issues and entertainment, and also to have programmes that deal with women’s issues.
• Women’s representation on air: Encourage the representation of women in their diversity, and do not emphasise stereotyped roles, such as within the family, for women. Ensure that all people, regardless of gender, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, etc are treated with respect and dignity in all aspects of the content broadcast on the station, whether in editorial content or advertisements aired.
• The special needs of minority women: The diversity of women’s experiences needs to be recognised, and space should be created for women who have faced further forms discrimination, oppression or neglect by commercial and state media. This includes special provisions for including differently abled women, women from minority ethnic, caste or indigenous backgrounds and women from sexual minorities, such as lesbians and transgenders.
• Women’s representation at all levels of station management: Community radio has better women’s representation than either commercial or government-owned/ public media. However, women are still massively under-represented, particularly in areas of decision-making and technical skills and there are too many stations where there is no effective representation of women.
• The use of appropriate technology: While some women are proficient in the use of information technologies, there remains a gendered digital divide and the majority are not. Women are often excluded from the use of technology, including the use of traditional technology, such as operating a radio studio. It is important to acknowledge this gendered digital divide and overcome it, through both dedicated technical training by and for women and investment in appropriate technology.
• Funding and capacity building for women’s radio: Capacity building is a key component for achieving gender parity. This does not only apply to capacity building for women involved in the station, but for both men and women so that they can work together to build a safe, nurturing and supportive environment where all feel able to contribute their best to all aspects of station success.

AMARC Europe calls on its over 250 members in over 20 European countries, friends and colleagues from the (community) media and communication field to make gender equality reality and contribute to this year’s International Women’s Day theme “I am Generation Equality – Realizing Women’s Rights”

On 21.10.2019 the Day of Feminist Radio took place for the second time in a row. Following the international radio conference Claim The Waves in Zurich, Switzerland 2018, this radio- and editorial-spanning day of action was jointly celebrated by 8 free radio stations in German-speaking countries. This year, already 16 radio stations have broadcast the Feministischer Radiotag in whole or in part. The 24h programme featured contributions from a total of 19 radios, projects and editorial offices.

This year, bermudafunk (Mannheim/Heidelberg, D), Radio blau (Leipzig, D), Radio Dreyeckland (Freiburg i.Br./D), Radio Helsinki (Graz, A), Radio LoRa (Zurich, CH), onda/npla, FREIRAD (Innsbruck, A), Radio Orange 94,0 (Vienna, A), Radio Corax (Halle, S..) took part in the Feminist Radio Day 2019, D), Radio T (Chemnitz, D), Free Radio Neumünster (D), Datscha Radio (Berlin, D), frrapó (Potsdam, D), Radio Slubfurt (Frankfurt/O.), Radio Z (Nuremberg, D), Radio LOHRO (Rostock, D), Wüste Welle (Tübingen/ Reutlingen, D), WINGS (North America.

Although there are historical precursor projects of this kind of networking and joint broadcasting, e.g. Interconneciones, unfortunately much knowledge has been lost over the years. This may be due not least to the frequent changes of participants typical for free community radios and alternative projects.

The next international conference Claim The Waves will take place from 9 to12 July 2020 in Vienna, Austria. The supporting programme will include a feminist radio programme for 100 hours, for which an Open Call will also be published at the beginning of 2020.

Anyone who knows more about the history of feminist radio days, has contacts, documentaries, etc. is cordially invited to share these with us in order to be able to continue such important networking projects in the best possible way and not let them sink into oblivion.

Interested parties can subscribe to the CTW information list, the contact details can be found on the website, as well as a more detailed documentation, which will be published in the next few days: http://claimthewaves.noblogs.org

Today is International Feminist Radioday! The International Feminist Radioday today will feature over 24 hours of feminist content from over 12 editorial teams in 3 german-speaking countries. The  broadcasts will include content against the patriarchy with feminist music, interviews, stories, features, shows and discussions.

Why do we need a feminist radioday?

According to a study by the ZHAW less than 39% of the people who shape what we listen and see in Switzerland are women. ProQuote claims that only 2 of 12 public radio stations are directed by women. In these statistics people who identify as trans*, inter or non-binary are not even visible. Chief editors are usually male, the images of women and girls in media are full of clichés, many journalists suffer from sexual assaults at their workplace, topics are distributed according to gender roles – the list of reasons to focus on feminist media coverage is long. Community radios are non-commercial, open and self-determined and have therefore functioned as platform for those, who’s voices are often not heard. The working conditions for women, inter, non-binary and trans are therefore less harsh than in mainstream media. Nonetheless patriarchal power-structures are also present in our field of work. It is mostly male voices which we hear, also in community radio.  In 2017 many editorial teams met for the feminist radio event “Claim the Waves” in Zurich. They decided to network and annually claim the airwaves together on the 21st of October. Feminist journalism means to these editorial teams, that they broadcast their own views, music, topics and listen to people and stories which are usually ignored.

The program schedule is available on https://claimthewaves.noblogs.org

Community radio stations must incorporate the gender perspective in their organisational structures and content, as indicated in paragraph “J” of the Beijing Platform for Action

STRASBOURG, 28/09/2017. The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe has adopted a landmark Recommendation on Gender Equality in the Audiovisual Sector.
This follows the Council of Europe’s Sarajevo Conference Declaration which was adopted in August 2015 under the Bosnia and Herzegovina Chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers.

The recommendation was drafted by a wide range of international experts from funds and broadcasters in Council of Europe member states, with feedback from representatives of prominent industry bodies and academics.

It is the first ever pan-European recommendation to acknowledge the problems inherent in the industry from a gender perspective, including:

– the lack of awareness of the prevalence of gender inequality;
– the conscious and unconscious gender bias at all levels and
– the unequal distribution of funding for audiovisual content among women and men;

and to promote a variety of practical solutions to address these issues.

The recommendation invites governments of Council of Europe member states to:

– review their legislation and policies;
– collect, monitor and publish data;
– support research;
– encourage the ongoing development of media literacy and
– enhance the accountability processes.

It also contains a detailed series of monitoring methods and performance indicators to assist all sectors of the audiovisual industry in collecting data and taking coherent action on their findings. In addition, there is a handy list of reference tools for developing knowledge in this sector. Outreach events will be held to disseminate best practice and share know-how.

The Eurimages film fund was instrumental in providing know-how for the content of the recommendation alongside the CDCPP (Steering Committee for Culture, Heritage and Landscape) and in fact Eurimages has a whole series of measures aimed at furthering gender equality in the film industry. See: https://www.coe.int/t/dg4/eurimages/gender/gender_en.asp

EURIMAGES is a support fund for cinema co-production, theatrical distribution and exhibition established by the Council of Europe in 1988 (Eurimages@coe.int –https://www.coe.int/Eurimages).

Since it was set up in 1988, EURIMAGES has supported 1862 European co-productions for a total amount of approximately €553 million.