5 keys to the new guide to gender balance for Spanish media

Until the end of 2019, conquests had been made and debates had been promoted within the culture of old organizations and this forced many to relax and rethink the place it occupies. women in today’s world. However the pandemic coronavirus brought it all back.

In this universe a question nevertheless appears: reduce the gap between men and women in the newsrooms of the world. How to tackle the issues and the daily agenda, without a doubt, is no easy task both for the mainstream media and for independent journalists. This real photo of various media and journalists is perhaps one of the many issues they bring up regarding the advancing gender equality around the world.

For this reason, to reverse this situation, the Ibero-American Network of Women Journalists (WINN), and the World Association of Newspapers and News Editors (WAN-IFRA, for its acronym in English) -and as advanced Infobae yesterday officially launched the Guide to Gender Balance which aims to give journalism professionals the information necessary to increase gender parity in editorial staff.

The presentation that took place on Tuesday was chaired by Gabriela Oliván, Director of WINN, and Rodrigo Bonilla, Director for the Americas of WAN-IFRA. Joined this dialogue: Jineth Bedoya, Colombian journalist, writer and activist against gender-based violence, and Paula Escobar Chavarría, journalist, editor, author, teacher and columnist for CNN.

Towards the end, a video was released with posts from media references, including Valeria Cavallo (Infobae), Ricardo Kirschbaum (Clarín), Chani Guyot (Newsroom), Carlos Costas (ADN), Carmen Gloria Lopez (ex TVN), Mijal Iastrebner (Sembra Media), Margarita Barrero (El Colombiano) and Virginia Alonso (publico.es)

According to a recent study by Accenture y el Women20 (W20) del World Economic Forum (WEF), The pandemic has delayed the reduction of the global gender gap by 50 years, exacerbating the imbalance. Faced with this situation, he called on leaders to act in the areas he identified as the most unequal.

According to the latest report of the International Women Media Foundation (IWMF) on the situation of women in the media, although women make up 50% of the population, only 24% of people in the global media are women. Only 1 in 5 experts in the world is a woman. And when you look at the news signatures, only 37% were written by women. Only 1 in 5 experts in the world is a woman. And when you look at the news signatures, only 37% were written by women.

5 keys

The Guide presents:

1 -Practical cases, organizational strategies and case studies in the world.

2. Help identify the different ways the media presents gender stereotypes, how to avoid them and how to develop organizational strategies to improve gender balance in content.

3. Includes designing measures and tools to measure progress.

4. It contains analyzes of successful cases from news organizations around the world.

5. It also provides tools on what to do internally in the media in cases of gender equality violations and harassment.

“If the media cannot represent women as equals and stereotype their jobs, social roles and attributes, it perpetuates and reinforces gender inequalities. This is not only the case for women, but also for trans, ethnic, sexual, origin, class and religious identity, ”the Guide reads.

Gabriela Olivan, Director of Women in the News Network expressed in the presentation: “Through this guide, we are contributing to our goal of promoting diversity and bringing strategies and knowledge to the media to improve gender balance in content and writing.”

Colombian journalist Jineth Bedoya Lima, deputy editor-in-chief of El Tiempo, founder of the organization “It is not time to be silent” indicated in the presentation that this guide it is fundamental and celebrated that it was translated into Spanish. “Journalists still have many shortcomings to report on gender equity and equality, and especially on how we should apply this equity in our texts and our audiovisual media”, This journalist who covered drug trafficking said in a note that a group of men raped, kidnapped and abused her when she was 26 years old. “I kept silent for many years until I could no longer be silent. I was first trained to understand what gender equity is. And then I trained other journalists “, he counted.

Asked by Paula Escobar about how after the Me Too movement the coverage of issues has changed and if there is a before and after this moment, Bedoya Lima said: “We have learned something, in each Latin American country, collectives have been born to launch this appeal to the media, so that they have a responsibility on the issue of gender violence ”.

And he added with a review: “Crime of passion … I don’t know why we can’t get out of this yet, to understand the impact of femicide. However, we find several journalists who make their own guides and keys. That there is a group of journalists investigating this is a big step forward. There are groups of people who talk about tools to better inform. Today I see more men interested in talking. I feel like men are more interested in knowing. It is a difficult task. Transformations are born like this ”.

Bedoya Lima argued that the media should apply parity: “Why are there no women in the highest positions of power? Our responsibility is to open these paths. Gender manuals should include not only gender-based violence, but also equity. Women should be included in expert directories ”.

For her part, Paula Escobar Chavarría added: “There are few women in leadership positions in the media, which are full of women at the grassroots but not later in the top positions. There are reports that say there are 67 years left before parity is reached in the media ”.

The guide and his contribution

The To guide gender balance calls for rethinking the work of journalists taking into account that the media influence knowledge generation and hierarchy in the world.

If the media cannot represent women as equals and stereotype their jobs, social roles and attributes, it perpetuates and reinforces gender inequalities. This is not only the case for women, but also for people who are trans, ethnic, sexual, origin, class and religious identity. In most of today’s news media, women have far fewer opportunities to be portrayed as the protagonists of a story or cited as the experts compared to men, the work.

To change the way we work and produce content that treats men and women equally, we need to examine our own biases and become more aware of the different ways we stereotype gender, the Guide noted.

Women make up 50% of the world’s population, but many news outlets feature significantly fewer women than men in their content.

The Guide, as a document agreed between very representative actors of the journalistic industry, calls on the media to assume the commitment to improve the gender balance, through the active search for women who are consulted as sources and experts, generating a balance of stories of women and men while avoiding gender stereotypes, comments and sexist ideas. Its ultimate goal should be equal treatment of men and women, both their media workers and the subjects of their stories.

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